Sophilabs

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the business manager at thevj.com, an educational website teaching people worldwide how to make a professional video.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

Another developer built our website, but they had already left our company. We needed help in site development and maintenance.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sophilabs has taken over the development and maintenance of our website. They’ve helped us integrate the site to AWS, ensuring it runs smoothly. 

Their team has optimized our site and worked on everything from uploading the site’s pages to refining its UI/UX to renewing and implementing its SSL. They’ve also sorted out our domain names and redirection issues.

What is the team composition?

I work with Martin (Co-Founder). 

How did you come to work with Sophilabs?

My boss found Martin by chance. After our developer left, we had some things that needed to be done with the website. We spoke with different developers, but all of them said they couldn’t work with us because our site was too complicated. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since November 2021, and our partnership is ongoing. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Since working with Sophilabs, our user base has increased by 5%. They’ve fixed our site’s issues and helped us quickly and efficiently. Thanks to them, we have a functional website. 

How did Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

Sophilabs’ project management has been outstanding — the level of service we’ve received from their team has been incredible. Unlike the other companies we’ve worked with, they are responsive.

Sophilabs takes care of technical issues with the utmost urgency, professionalism, and efficiency. We’re blown away by their work. We primarily communicate through Zoom and Google Meet. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sophilabs’ technical knowledge is impressive. They are knowledgeable, professional, and efficient. I’m positively surprised by the level of care we’re receiving from them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set your goals as clearly as you can. Work with Sophilabs because they’re very knowledgeable in finding solutions. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product for a nonprofit organization in the educational fintech world. We provide financial aid counseling for students.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

We needed help with developing a web application.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sophilabs helped us develop and set up two mobile-optimized web apps, one for students and another for counselors who work with students. When we reached out to them, we had already done the design, so they first worked with another contractor of ours who was helping us develop the backend. They helped us integrate that backend and create a frontend for the app.

At a certain point, we recognized that the backend wasn’t working well, so Sophilabs helped us redevelop it. About halfway through the project, we reconfigured everything in Django, and they then helped us add new features.

Among said features, they integrated an administrative function, a system to translate financial documents that uses optical character recognition technology, and a library of classifiers to interpret the standard format of those documents.

This app also has a sign-up/sign-in system, a profile creation capability, and a search engine where users can search for colleges in our database. Within that search engine, we have a lot of data tied to each college, including their graduation rate, cost, location, and the campus’ diversity.

Through our app, students can upload a financial aid document to our service. Then, we translate it in the backend and give them the results in the frontend afterward. If the students decide to share their information, their counselor can also see the result, as well as any other information about the student. Additionally, they can message their students from within the app.

After they developed the application, Sophilabs was in charge of the QA. Currently, they provide maintenance to the app while they continue to add features, so we’re still working together.

What is the team composition?

We work with a team of four people from Sophilabs. We’ve had different people fill the roles throughout our engagement, but we’ve always worked with a QA person, someone who does the classifier work, a frontend CSS developer, and a backend developer who leads the project for us.

How much have you invested with them?

Last year, we spent around $80,000–$90,000, and this year we’ve spent almost $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2020, and we completed the app at the end of 2020, but our engagement is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The improvements that Sophilabs made to our app definitely helped fix the things that weren’t working well. However, I can’t share any metrics nor statistics because, as this is a new app, I have nothing to compare it to.

How did Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

Sophilabs is excellent at meeting the milestones that we’ve set for them, and they’re always on budget. As we’ve gotten to work more closely over the last six months, we now have a process where we’re able to set reasonable timelines and expectations. However, this wasn’t the case when we were trying to launch, but it is usual to find issues when launching.

We have a standing meeting with the whole team every day, and we usually communicate through Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sophilabs has excellent quality engineers and very clear processes. They’re also very flexible, and they adapt to what we do. Additionally, they’ve worked closely with us to find the right resources for the project.

We started working with two engineers, and they worked well, but we needed some other skillsets for different parts of the project. The people from Sophilabs did a great job working with us to find the right team for our project, and we now have a team that we really like.

Some of those resources work for us part-time. Even though I know that they have other clients who might need those resources, they’ve also done a very good job respecting the contract and keeping those resources assigned to our project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It took us a while to sign a contract, and I think that Sophilabs is still figuring out how to have the right documentation in place. For example, we recently had a question about security protocols, and I could see them making some improvements to how they communicate those policies on the go.

I trust Sophilabs and their work, but it would be good if they had more standardized protocols and documentation processes around certain key aspects of business engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clearly communicate your needs and be willing to try new things for a couple of months to find the right fit for you. Additionally, have an appropriate scope of work for your project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the general manager of a benefits engagement platform that employers purchase. My team builds and services a business within our company that’s focused on delivering virtual care.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

Our engineering resources were limited, and we needed a team to finish our web application. Sophilabs came in when the app was halfway built to meet our standard for customer readiness.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sophilabs completed the application and added features. At this point, they’ve done the vast majority of the work and been really involved in the project. Also, they’ve worked with our internal engineers on integrations between different apps. They continue to work with us to build out the product.

The team is familiar with a handful of technology. They’ve used React, Node.js, Python, DynamoDB, Lambda, and more.

What is the team composition?

Our steady team is four engineers plus one project manager. At most, we’ve had five engineers to wrap up something in time.

How did you come to work with Sophilabs?

We had a prior team, and they weren’t meeting expectations. We brought in a part-time tech lead, and she needed a team underneath to fill out the application.

We wanted to prioritize someone who we could vouch for. A friend had worked with Sophilabs, and they got me in touch with one of their co-founders. I connected with him, and I liked the way he spoke about the product. I also liked how willing he was to put their first few weeks of work at risk so we could validate the quality of their work.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our partnership in April 2021, and it’s ongoing. We would love to expand our work with them next year.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Our main objective was to have a customer-ready application. So far, we’ve been live for a month. Only one person has had a tiny bug, and they fixed it within 30 minutes. Other than that, we’ve been extremely pleased with the quality and stability of the app.

How did Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

During development, we had sprints to complete the functionality and then a month of sprints for stability and testing. If things are breaking, they get the alerts before us.

We use Slack for communication and Trello to track progress.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re great at what they do, but I’m more impressed with their accountability, especially as a supplemental team. Sophilabs takes pride in their work. They arrive at meetings on time, think things through with anticipation, and ask great questions. Their level of engagement is impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I honestly can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Treat them as part of your team and give them information about your business. They’ll be better engineers, and they’ll be able to potentially think of solutions to your problems or ways to improve your larger business context.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of Raha, a startup with a meditation app in Arabic.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

We had not built an app before and needed development support to build an audio meditation app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided a design in Figma. Then we collaborated with them to create a storyboard and determine features. From there, they developed the front- and backend of the iOS app.

The app features a Firebase algorithm to track the number of sessions and hours each user spends on the platform. Sophilabs also set up an admin website so we would be able to change the names of sessions, upload audio files, and choose pictures in real-time for the users. The app even allows users to give feedback using a five-star rating system.

We originally created the app in English, but then we translated it into Arabic.
Now Sophilabs provides ongoing maintenance support and we plan to work with them on an Android version in the future.  

What is the team composition?

I worked with Martin (COO) initially. The frontend developer is my main point of contact, but I also work directly with a project manager. I didn’t have much interaction with the backend developers.

How did you come to work with Sophilabs?

A colleague of mine who had worked with them recommended them. I did a lot of research, but I felt most comfortable with Sophilabs when we spoke; they gave clear estimates on the timeframe and scope. Plus, their pricing was quite reasonable.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $6,000­–$7,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around September 2020, and it’s ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The visuals were really important to us and Sophilabs implemented them perfectly. The final product looks even better than the Figma design I showed them. Even more importantly, the app plays files quickly and with minimal lag or sound issues, creating a seamless experience.

Sophilabs has responded to feedback throughout the project and is quick to accommodate change requests. For example, I messaged them about making one of the buttons easier to click and they fixed it immediately. Even when we receive feedback from users, they’ve implemented those suggestions as well.

The admin website is extremely easy for me to use; I really appreciate the real-time aspect of it. I am quite satisfied with Sophilabs and the work they’ve done for us. 

How did Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve guided me through the process, which was extremely helpful since I had no experience. They’ve provided accurate timelines by breaking down the hours required for each task. They’ve always delivered on time.

They follow an Agile process and work in two-week sprints. We have meetings to discuss progress, and we communicate via Slack. They are available and responsive.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

They pay attention to detail and make things look the way I want them to. The team is quite product-focused and has an eye for UX. They really listened to me about what I wanted and were willing to make changes.

Are there any areas they could improve?

So far, our engagement has only been positive. I don’t have anything negative to say.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t hesitate to ask questions because they will clarify whatever it is. It always helps to understand how things work. If you’re looking for someone you can trust, this is the team for you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product at Moneythink. It’s a tech nonprofit that focuses on helping students in the US figure out how to afford college.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

We’ve been developing various applications over the last 5–8 years. We were designing a new web app and enlisted their support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sophilabs is developing a responsive web application from the ground up. They’ve helped us establish the backend infrastructure using Terraform, Docker, CircleCI. We’re also building a lot in Python and Django.

We’re working in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS for the frontend. We’re also using an API key technology to plug the front- and backend together. Finally, we’re doing a lot of database work using PostgreSQL. Our application is hosted on AWS, and we rely on various AWS services to provide our features.

What is the team composition?

They lend us two of their developers.

How did you come to work with Sophilabs?

They were recommended to us by a fellow entrepreneur.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve structured the pricing in two phases. For the first contract, we budgeted roughly $30,000, and we expect to pay double that amount for the second one.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Sophilabs in May of this year. It’s an ongoing project.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

They’ve been a very professional and diligent partner. They’re attentive to good process and have a high standard for their work, so there haven’t been too many bugs or obvious problems. We’ve been happy with the quality of their work.

How did Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re integrated into our team, so it’s been a collaborative process between us and their developers. They’re responsive and amazingly communicative.

While we handle most of the project management, we have a good process of setting development goals and communicating whether we’re on track or not. We’re always on Slack, and we use Trello to manage our backlog. Sigma is what we use to design mockups and clarify design specifications. They document technical requirements in Google Docs. Overall, they adhere to our PM system very well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I enjoy sharing a relaxed and friendly working environment with them. We’ve done a good job of being productive and getting work done, but the two teams are also able to joke around and have a good time. We’ve enjoyed how their initial professionalism gradually made way for the growth of a fun relationship. We’re productive, but not too serious.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. We’re always encouraging Sophilabs to give us more feedback. We’re always trying to see how we, as a client, can improve our processes.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to approach them as a partner in leadership. They’re not only able to build a product, but also to architect a bigger technical strategy.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the managing partner of a business intelligence firm for the entertainment industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

We hired their team to develop a dashboard for our firm.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sophilabs developed the initial architecture for the dashboard and then went on to build out all of the features for both back- and frontend.

What was the team composition?

Directly, I worked with three members of their team, including Martin (COO) as well as a project and their lead engineer. There were two additional support engineers who worked on various aspects of the project behind the scenes as well.

How did you come to work with Sophilabs?

They were recommended to me by a trusted colleague, so I decided to reach out to them and move forward from there.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $12,000 with them so far and are planning to spend another $30,000 within the year.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in April 2020 and is still ongoing. We are just about to complete phase one and begin phase two.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Their team has a really great level of expertise to draw from when making decisions with regard to the project, in terms of either specific layout choices or technology stacks to give preference towards. That knowledge also allows them to formulate accurate timelines and stick to them so that we met all of our goals with regard to both quality and budget.

How did Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

As partners, they are very understanding of non-technical communication and are really able to break down what steps need to happen and when in a way that can be understood by everyone. We use slack for day-to-day messaging and hold Google conferences when we need to discuss something more in-depth. Overall, their communication has been quite seamless.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Honestly, everything has been really great so far, but if I had to highlight something it would be their communication and efficiency. They do a great job of making sure that we are always on track and up to date on that progress.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I really don’t have anything negative to say about them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think it’s always helpful to come into a project with clear end goals and communicate those as much as you can from the start. They have a very helpful onboarding process, but the more of an idea you have ahead of time the greater detail you can go into with them and the faster you’ll be able to hit the ground running.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CTO of an on-demand translation company for humanitarian workers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

We were expanding our engineering efforts and needed to release our mobile application on a shorter timeline than initially planned. We wanted to grow our team but didn’t have the capacity to go out and recruit, so we hired Sophilabs.

What was the scope of their involvement?

 They mostly did development on our mobile application. Basically, they were assigned to write code and also make sure that things were delivered on time from their end.

What is the team composition?

They dedicated a full-time engineer from their side and a project manager. Overall, it was five people that shifted throughout the engagements.

How did you come to work with Sophilabs?

They were referred to us by a friend of ours that had worked with them directly.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $5,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2019, and we finished as of June 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

I was particularly impressed by the level of quality in their engineering. Their attention to detail was also quite impressive. We work with a lot of different engineers, but it was comforting that these resources had the necessary skills to do the work, the right attention to detail, and were invested in our end goal of trying to improve. They became our thought partners in assessing how to grow our product to the benefit of our users. It was a pleasant outcome.

How did  Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very flexible and were able to use my Slack and our other meeting tools. From my side, they worked just like any other team member. I managed the cadence and how often we needed to communicate. They were extremely responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They showed investment in the overall success of the project, rather than just meeting their engineering objectives. They evolved to be a sort of partner and helped figure out what was best for the user, which was refreshing to see.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their resources changed at times, which impacted our project. Turnover is understandable, though, and it only happened once in four months. They handled it smoothly and provided discounts and reduced hours to make sure the transition was seamless. It’s wasn’t as good as the same person remaining on the project, but that was out of their control.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very explicit about what needs to be achieved, and develop your own timeline for it. It saves a lot of time since no one knows your needs better than you. If you have a very clear understanding of what needs to be achieved, it’ll be much easier for all parties to get on board.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Jared Chung, I'm the CEO of a career advice platform.

For what projects/services did your company hire Sophilabs?

We crowdsource career advice for underrepresented youth. Sophilabs provides software development to support this goal.

How did you select this vendor?

Referral

Describe the project in detail.

Sophilabs does everything software-development-related for our team, including front-end development, back-end development, system administration, and infrastructure / architecture design.

What was the team composition?

Typically 2 staff engineers at a time, plus one manager.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Sophilabs has been our core engineering team for over 5 years.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We integrated Sophilabs into our day-to-day engineering workflow. They integrated seamlessly and the quality and reliability of their work have always been phenomenal.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They care about what we care about: the end user’s experience and business priorities. I love how they make helpful suggestions in the service of our students and surge when needed to meet critical business deadlines and needs. They’re invested in our organization’s success! And of course their engineering is fantastic as well.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Is there something the partner could have done better or differently? Not that I’m aware of.

What advice would you give to someone else considering to work with this company?

Give the Sophilabs room to shine – they can work across the whole stack, so I recommend embedding them deeply into your normal workflow.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We run a nonprofit arts foundation called the SmallsLIVE Foundation for Jazz, Arts, and Educations. We represent several jazz clubs in the New York City area the and artists that perform there.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

We were building a website that was quite complicated.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a massive audio-video archive of past performances, and they integrated it with a membership supporter system where people will be able to register as supporters and make tax-deductible donations to access our archive.

There was a previous site that was cruder than this one, so we built the entire thing from scratch. They used Python to build the site. We had a third-party designer do the look and graphics for the site, and they built underneath that.

We provided wireframes ahead of time. One of my staff worked alongside Martin (Co-Founder & CCO, Sophilabs) throughout the whole thing. My resource had enough knowledge to communicate my design and what we needed to them.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Martin directly. He worked with us nearly exclusively on the entire project and did a fantastic job.

How did you come to work with Sophilabs?

Another partner in my business found them. They worked together at a previous company.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve definitely spent over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since January 2019. The site launched a few days ago and Martin is helping us with all the post-launch issues.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re a very small company, and we’re only just getting this thing launched, but I’ve had some experience with other developers, and Sophilabs is by far the best I’ve ever worked with in terms of communication ability and quality of work.

How did Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very responsive, easy to work with, and attentive to our needs. We used Jira for our communication, as well as general emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve offered a very personal kind of support, and I think that’s rare in these days where everything is so virtual. They really went above and beyond. They’re very amenable to ideas and flexible as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think so. It’s all been very, very good.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go ahead and let them know what you want. Be as clear as possible. Have someone who knows to code or knows how websites are developed so that you can translate your needs into their language.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a company that provides inventory management and warehousing software for small- and medium-sized retailers. We handle everything from tracking physical inventory to getting products listed and managing sales and ordering information across e-commerce platforms.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sophilabs?

We were working on streamlining our onboarding process to try to simplify and gather all the information our new users would need to get up and running with our services more quickly.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project started with a very clear vision for what we needed, so we gave them detailed specifications of what we were asking them to do and then let them run with it from there. We had check-ins at least once a day, and any time issues came up or they had questions or concerns for us, they would reach out to us to get those handled so that they could continue.

How did you come to work with Sophilabs?

We did a lot of searching around to find the right service provider, and one thing that attracted us to them was that they’re based in Brooklyn like we are. Being able to do our initial meetings in person was a huge bonus for us, not only to be able to hit the ground running faster but having that ability at any point in what we hope will be a long-term engagement was very enticing to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $5,000-$10,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

That particular project ran from September–October 2018.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

I don’t have any specific metrics around onboarding time, but I know that their work has significantly increased the overall speed of that process. It has made things significantly easier in terms of both getting clients up and running as well as determining if we are the right fit for potential clients and if they’re a good fit for us.

How did Sophilabs perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very timely in all of the work and were always good about communicating their progress and any delays that came up. Their team was able to follow all of our instructions perfectly and delivered everything fully on time in the end.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Communication with them definitely set the experience head and shoulders above what a lot of other service providers are able to deliver. There wasn’t a lot of time wasted in the process going back and forth over various decisions we needed to make, if any, which was really impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It took a little bit of time at the beginning of the project to narrow down their focus from the scale of our entire platform to the specific piece that we were looking for them to help us improve, so that could probably have been handled better. I would say, though, that it might have been an issue with our communication as much as it was with theirs.