SaturdaysHeroes

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of Solid Block Studios LLC. We have been in the software & gaming space for 8 years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SaturdaysHeroes, and what were your goals?

We hired SaturdaysHeroes to help expand our gaming services. We wanted a relationship with innovative people to help iterate on our existing functionality.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We found SaturdaysHeroes by posting an ad on a freelancing site. After a round of interviews, we picked them because of their experience and affordable costs. They seemed genuinely happy to jump on into the deep-end.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They were able to design intuitive UI designs for video games and prepare client to server architecture very well. Each month, we were running 2 week sprints and delivering more content to the end user than we have in the last 2 years. They worked very well within NodeJS, Jira, Lua, Typescript and MariaDB. They didn't stop there, after content was delivered, they would listen to user feedback and bring it to us when they saw a user have constructive feedback.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There were 4 people including SaturdaysHeroes. I was the product manager and developer, we have another lead developer here at Solid Block Studios who provided guidance for the people at SaturdaysHeroes. The vendor had 2 people. One very much enjoyed design and front-end work. He also liked to tinker with back-end technologies. The other was very much back-end heavy.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Within 6 months of working with SaturdayHeroes, we were able to increase our userbase by 60% and our revenue by 30%. Because of spin-up and unfamiliarity with the project, there were naturally more bugs but the developers always went back to correct themselves.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The product management was honest. When there were problems and issues with the project, they communicated. This might sound like a bad thing but if there is one thing I have learned about other vendors, honesty is key. We communicated mostly through Slack and Google Meets.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I found it unique that this company went above and beyond. Most vendors do the work you give them and that is it. At SaturdayHeroes you will get people who want to innovate on your product. They genuinely want to make it better.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We have had conversations around testing code before pushing it a few times before but after each conversation, they do get better at it. This comes with experience. This company is relatively new and with each interaction, I see them becoming better.