Startup Development House

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of the company. I lead all of our development and advertising efforts.

For what projects/services did your company hire Startup Development House, and what were your goals?

Our project was to build a website with a lot of back-end business intelligence tools built-in, as well as other side services to power some of our marketing efforts.

How did you select Startup Development House and what were the deciding factors?

We visited Poland from the US and went to 4 or 5 cities. After interviewing over 15 companies in person we chose Startup Development House. They gave the best presentation, were the most organized, had the tech stack we wanted, as well as reasonable pricing.

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

We use Jira for project management. Our tech stack roughly is Google Cloud, Ruby on Rails, React, Nodejs (NestJS), Slack. Our deliverables vary greatly and constantly. We started out with scoping the project, which was myself learning from Startup Development House, and then we've adapted to mostly doing maintenance through Jira.

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

At our highest point we had 7-8 people, and now we have only 3. QA, Front-end and back-end web developers, and a PM.

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

I think initially for us, we struggled with our project due to my personal time constraints of not being able to work on the project full-time. As the developers learned more of the project they've found tasks on their own. Everything had loose deliverability times but most deadlines were kept.

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

Originally we had a PM, but our company could no longer afford the PM, so we went without. In general, we use Jira to manage tasks / projects and slack for communication. We work off flexible timelines.

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

I think the biggest thing for us is that our developers are now finding things to fix or improve. This has actually increased our company's overall revenue which has been a huge game-changer.

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

I think it took some time to find the right team for our project who really understood our goals. A lot of our staff was swapped in and out initially (designers, PMs), which was pretty frustrating since after someone learned our project they left us. Training is probably one of the most expensive parts of a project so turnover was rough. Once we got the right team in place though things have been amazing.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the founder and CTO at CHOOOSE. We build digital tools so that we all can make climate action part of everyday life.

For what projects/services did your company hire Startup Development House, and what were your goals?

We engaged SDH to provide us with a skilled product team to contribute in developing the CHOOOSE products: CHOOOSE Connect: Deliver trusted climate compensation options to your customers, directly in your e-commerce store or app.

WeCHOOOSE: Easily calculate and compensate your own business' climate footprint. MyCHOOOSE. Make climate action part of your routine, and share your impact with friends and family. Having raised capital for the development of our products we had to quickly set up a skilled product team.

To meet our customers’ timelines and requirements, we needed a team that was incredibly fast, experienced, and easy to scale up quickly.

How did you select Startup Development House and what were the deciding factors?

The company attitude was fitting. We needed the right experience, with solid skills. Our quality criteria for developers is quite high, Start-up.house developers were amongst the few passing our tests with solid results.

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

We decided to partner with SDH with a clear intention of scaling over time - a long term relationship. SDH’s developers and UX/UI designers joined forces with CHOOOSE’s existing team. The setup remains flexible and adjusts to our growth. SDH was tasked to focus on front end development and design.

A remote team structure and process was put in place, where work is structured in short iterations and close collaboration and communication occur on digital surfaces. SDH’s design team works closely with the our Product Manager on planning, wireframing and user interface design.

They also support the sales team with building design teasers of the new solutions used in clients pitches (resulting in winning significant new accounts). The SDH’s JavaScript team-lead is in direct contact with CHOOOSE’s CTO and Head of Product to manage the team, set priorities and plans for future development.

The team and setup yield agility, quality and efficiency. More recently, SDH is also contributing with full stack / backend development.

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

• 1x Senior JavaScript team leader
• 1x Javascript developer
• 1x Javascript / fullstack developer
• 1x UI/UX designer

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

Several major partner have been signed due to the resulting products, including big brands such as Heathrow Airport. 20+ customers are being onboarded onto the WeCHOOOSE platform, including big enterprise such as Santander Consumer Bank. And this is only the beginning. Feedback from customers is great.

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

Project management is at large a CHOOOSE responsibility in the collaboration, but the whole team is contributing. SDH has been very responsive to tuning and optimizing the team. Actions have been made swiftly to improve deliverables when needed.

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

Agile, quick turnaround time. Responsive. High quality devs. Resources have been reliable and remained part of the team for a prolonged period of time.

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

Difficult ask, but perhaps a bit more proactively managed the quality of certain past team members deliverables.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of VCLeaders, an educational platform for venture capital professionals.

What challenge were you trying to address with Startup Development House?

We had a very clear unique selling position in mind when we started, but it didn’t align with our design. We were heavily focused on delivering the business value to our clients, but we didn’t focus that much on the underlying design or UX, especially online. 

We hired Startup Development House to redesign our brand and make it actually reflect our ambition and unique selling points, and that’s what we achieved.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a workshop with the SDH team for them to find out what our company was all about and how they could reflect it in our new branding. They created a new logo design, color palette, and theme. They presented several propositions, and we quickly discovered what would end up being our new brand.

A new logo and brand design were the first set of deliverables, and the second was a new website that encompassed a very simplistic overview of what we do. The site would also allow us to manage our content distribution, and we achieved that with what we call a ‘thought leadership platform.’ The website has a CMS that, for now, allows us to distribute our texts to readers. We also have a functionality that will enable us to distribute our videos and podcasts, as well as a bookstore through which we will distribute our handbooks and guides to the community.

We had a straightforward process from the very beginning, which didn’t change much. We did trim the scope down a bit, in order to not flood the market with all of the things we wanted to offer.

What is the team composition?

Their product owner was our main point of contact, and we also had pretty good communication with their CEO and lead designer. The product owner was the go-to person for any questions we had. We discussed design with the lead designer, and we talked to their CEO about anything business-related. It was a linear and straightforward process.

I’m not sure how many developers they used for the project, because the product owner served as the liaison.

How did you come to work with Startup Development House?

Their CEO reached out and told us that he liked us when we started the company, and he participated in part of the program. In a sense, they knew us from the very beginning, and we were also familiar with their work through social media channels. When we decided that something needed to be done with our brand, Startup Development House was our top-of-mind contact.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost was $10,000–$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them on October 1st, 2019, and we finished the project by late-January 2020. We had some internal work to do before we went live, which extended the length of the project.

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

Looking at our social media channels, we’ve grown from 400 LinkedIn followers at the launch to 1,400 right now. We’ve more than doubled our follower base, and that could be attributed to the new brand and message. I can’t give any hard evidence, because this is a work in progress and it’s hard to define the strength of the brand as of now. We haven’t done any granular research on its perception yet.

How did Startup Development House perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything was quite nice on their side. The team was really responsive, and we had no problems getting their attention if we wanted to talk business or design. 

The design was the most crucial part, and it was flawless. I hope I’ll be able to work with those kinds of designers in the future. I was extremely satisfied with their designers, and we’ve already started discussions with Startup Development House about future collaborations. In terms of project management, they were well-organized, and everybody understood where everybody else stood from the beginning.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It was the design. The VCLeaders’ logo is a V and a C put in a geometrical triangle, put together to be a rocket ship. It didn’t take them that long to come up with it, even though we’d worked on our previous logo and didn’t find anything satisfying. It was just a matter of weeks for us to find a common language and redefine what we stood for. In effect, that helped us with the rest of the work.

When we talk design with the Startup Development House team, I’m pretty sure we’re in good hands. We’re much happier with what we have now than we could’ve ever imagined coming into the discussion with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It will help if the customer comes to the engagement with Startup Development House knowing what they’re looking for. Defining the scope will make the project most valuable. Secondly, while knowing or not knowing the scope, it’s important for the client to be honest and transparent about what they have and what they need.

We came to Startup Development House with a simple task in mind: to design the whole thing for us. If we’d narrowed down the scope to provide an answer to a specific problem, I think that we would’ve come up with several conclusions much sooner. That was on our end. I’m able to speak about what we liked and what the result was because they helped us find out. Had we answered some questions internally before, it would’ve been easier on our part. We had to postpone some things because we didn’t find answers internally in time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of Maindeck, we are a ship tech company. Maindeck is a SaaS-enabled marketplace within shipping, and we help ship managers with their dry docking process, from the first inspection the final report.

What challenge were you trying to address with Startup Development House?

I needed to develop a website in order to attract users such as shipyards, and I needed to do so within budget. It had to be done professionally because we have very demanding clients. We didn’t have any in-house technical knowledge, yet we had high expectations, so it was quite the challenge when we began our search for a partner.

What was the scope of their involvement?

This was the first official piece of our company. We were hoping to get Maindeck populated with shipyard profiles and to have a database with companies.

Shipyards need to be able to register or sign up, and to be able to add data or and edit info which includes specific shipyard facility information (certificates, location, and pictures or videos).

From a user point of view, a user needs to be able to visit our website and see all the information there in a list view. The website provides different ways of seeing the world’s shipyards. The user experience has been something we have tried to focus on. There are a lot of sites in the shipping field in general, but they usually lack some sort of UX. We wanted to be the first professional shipyard database that shipyards would want to utilize.

We had some initial sketches and designs, and Startup Development House had a lot of input to upgraded the design beyond what we had hoped for. We thought our initial designs were pretty rock-solid, but Startup Development House blew us away with their designs.

The platform itself web-based, and a login is only required for the shipyards themselves. As far as technology goes, the Startup Development House used Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL, and all the standard front-end technologies have been used for the development of the platform. They chose technology that would allow us to stay within our budget and have a robust system. We had a really tight schedule as an exhibition was coming up and we had to make the deadline for that, which we did.

I had something that was previously done in Armenia that was a slightly different module, but it didn’t work out. We are going to redo that next with Startup Development House.

What is the team dynamic?

In total, we have had 4 or 5 members of their team working on our project.

How did you come to work with Startup Development House?

I had seen their profile on Startupmatcher’s reference list. I was in touch with the person from Startupmatcher, and he only had good things to say about Startup Development House. From there, I was in touch with Marek, and was pretty impressed with their work.

How much have you invested in them?

We have invested 10,000 Euro with Startup Development House to date, and we plan to invest more.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2017, and the project was completed in May 2017; however, the relationship is ongoing.

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

Currently, we have a lot of shipyards using the site and they like it. We have also been contacted by shipyards without us having to reach out to them. We have received a lot of positive feedback, and people are happy that there is finally a platform that is easy to use. Other shipyards that had been using other sites that are not as user friendly have registered with us.

How did Startup Development House perform from a project management standpoint?

It has been incredibly good. I have outsourced to approximately 10 companies in the past, and by far, Startup Development House have had everything under control, and I haven’t had to be concerned.

We have been using mostly Slack, Hangouts, and UXpin to communicate. It has been a very good experience for me, and the communication has been really clear. It involved a lot of face-to-face and questions on chat, and the process has been smooth sailing. They really surprised me with the first redesign, and the development after that with testing was within around 2 weeks; it went much faster than I had anticipated, which is why I am sticking with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It really feels as though they are part of your team. It doesn’t feel like they are just someone you have hired; they have the details covered. They are proactive, and always one step ahead so there is no need to follow up or ask questions. They are always on top of things. If there is something they are unsure of or don’t understand, they ask. If there is something that needs to be changed, they take care of it. When they have suggestions, they let you know. It has been easy, clean, and overall a smooth process. They have been really working to move it forward.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of. I have recommended them to many of my friends so far.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company is a leading job board and social network for startups in Northern Europe. Users sign up and create digital profiles before they can do anything on the platform. We have a lot of users and registered companies. I’m one of the three co-founders of the company, and I’m the CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with Startup Development House?

My two co-founders got the opportunity to move to San Francisco to focus on another business they had started. I found myself without a CTO or anyone to do development full-time. We considered hiring someone locally, but we had heard a lot of great stories about using Eastern European companies, especially for short-term needs like ours. All the local options were pretty expensive, and we were pretty lean back then.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We already had a platform when we engaged them, but it was simply a minimum viable product. It was a well-functioning platform, not a beta, but we were planning to do some major improvements. One developer had built the entire site by himself from scratch, resulting in several thousands of lines of code. It was a pretty complex website, and there were a lot of different functionalities on the platform.

One of the first things we did with Startup Development House was to give the entire platform a new look and feel. We felt that it was lacking in terms of visuals, user interface, and user experience. We wanted a more modern platform, like LinkedIn. Startup Development House rebranded the entire website. While we were implementing the new design, we also did quite a lot of frontend fixes to improve the user experience.

They worked with page load speeds and added a lot more images. They provided the design based on our current one as well as some sketches and mockups we had. They were very involved in the design process from start to finish. They created the Photoshop files and basically did the design. We used React and JavaScript for the frontend.

Most of the project involved frontend work, but I know they added some new features as well. We had one full-time designer on the project. We started with two developers, one frontend guy and one backend guy. Eventually, one of them moved to a different project, and then we got a new developer who was basically full-stack. We mostly worked with him, and he was very talented.

How did you come to work with Startup Development House?

They reached out to us about doing some collaboration. We rank pretty high in terms of search engine optimization, and I guess they were searching for a way to find and work with startups in our area. At first, we were talking about doing a partnership, where we would help them with lead generation, and they would refer talented Polish developers to us. Then my co-founders started focusing on their other business, so we started working with Startup Development House instead.

How much have you invested with Startup Development House?

We’ve spent roughly $20,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in April or May of 2016, and the project was completed on January 1^st of this year. We’ve kept in touch, and we’re using them for a new design project right now.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We launched the first version of the platform in November 2015, and the updated version, which Startup Development House worked on, was launched in August 2016. During that first timeframe, we got roughly 4,000–5,000 users who set up profiles on the platform. Since the new version was launched, we’ve grown to nearly 15,000, so we’ve had very good exponential growth. The new platform has a much better UX. After the new site was launched, the average session duration per user increased quite extensively.

How did Startup Development House perform from a project management standpoint?

I’ve always worked with one person, who was my contact point all the time. He’s very good in English and a rapid communicator. He gets back to me whether it’s ten in the morning or nine in the evening. They came here and met with us on two occasions. We mostly used Slack, Envision, and Trello.

What did you find most impressive about Startup Development House?

They seem to be trying to specialize in working with companies in this region. I felt that the communication was super easy. I’ve worked with a few Eastern European companies in the past, and it was always a pain to communicate. With Startup Development House, it was always straight to the point. They seemed to have a really good understanding, and if they weren’t sure, they would always ask. The communication part is definitely a competitive advantage for them. I think that’s the biggest pain point for companies that aren’t in Eastern Europe, but working with developers in that region.

Are there any areas Startup Development House could improve?

Working with one full-stack developer was better than working with two guys, and it was the same price. So, they have some variation in the skill level, and that should probably be advertised even more.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the chief information officer of a web services and development company based in Tuscany, Italy. Our company has an operative unit in Poland and a small commercial office in London. We have a 35-person team in Italy, 15 in Poland, and two in London. Our product is a phone-as-a-service tool that allows users to configure an automatic voice menu. The software also has voice synthesis and recognition functionalities. With it, users can input numbers and manage online profiles.

What challenge were you trying to address with Startup Development House?

We had decided to develop a new product. However, we wanted to avoid involving too many internal resources, mainly because it's difficult to control costs in this situation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started development without having a clear idea of what the process or the final cost would be. Startup Development House helped us define better features and improve the project.

We provided a graphic prototype to Startup Development House. They took charge of product revisions, helped us define specifications, and provided backend and frontend development. Startup Development House also provided some design work in the specifications phase. The technologies used are Ruby on Rails and the ReactJS framework. We have used around five resources from Startup Development House's team.

How did you come to work with Startup Development House?

We defined a budget, created specifications and a small business plan, and proceeded to find a development partner. We have known one of Startup Development House's partners since before the company was started. When we decided to build a new product, we contacted Startup Development House.

How much have you invested with Startup Development House?

The cost of Startup Development House's work was between $20,000 and $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Startup Development House in July 2015. The work is 90% complete. We've started to involve our internal team in it, given that Startup Development House's team is not as responsive as it was in the beginning. We are continuing to work with them on a maintenance basis. When the product goes live, it will need ongoing support and I don't know if Startup Development House is structured to provide this. We plan to do this through our internal team since we know the business and need to respond to customers quickly.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I am very satisfied with the quality of Startup Development House's work, compared to the cost. We did identify some bugs in the software, but Startup Development House was able to fix them. The platform was first sold three months ago, and we realized that customer issues should best be handled by our internal team in order to be fixed quickly.

How did Startup Development House perform from a project management standpoint?

Startup Development House's partners are great project managers. They are also knowledgeable in terms of typical issues around our kind of product. Startup Development House has provided great value from this point of view; they understood our needs and improved our initial analyses, ultimately delivering a better product.

What did you find most impressive about Startup Development House?

Startup Development House stands out in terms of product development capabilities and code quality.

Are there any areas Startup Development House could improve?

The timing and scheduling could be improved. It’s important to put together a clear schedule. Startup Development House was not always able to respect dates—everything eventually comes down to cost versus delivery.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide an internet platform which connects clients with service technicians in a format similar to Uber. Users can look up mobile device repairmen in their area, read their reviews, make a reservation, and so on. I am the CEO of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Startup Development House?

I had an idea and an investor but didn't have resources who could write the code to create the product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I brought my idea to Startup Development House's team, who provided consultation and made a plan for developing it. The platform uses Ruby on Rails, and Startup Development House provided all of the coding work for it. The platform allows users to search for mobile phone technicians based on the type of device in need of repair, the issue that the device has, and the user’s geographic location. Service providers can be compared based on factors like time, price, and location.

How did you come to work with Startup Development House?

Startup Development House was found by my investor. I believe that he was friends with a member of Startup Development House.

How much have you invested with Startup Development House?

The cost of Startup Development House's services has been between $40,000 and $60,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Startup Development House in April 2016. We have an ongoing collaboration for additional development to the site.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

This was my first time working on a project like this one. For the money spent, Startup Development House's work has been very good. The platform is comparable to larger, international services.

We are using Mouseflow in order to track users' activity on the site. I can see how people are using it, where they're clicking, and so on. I've talked to around 60 people who used the site and heard a lot of positive feedback. There is still a lot to do in order to evolve the idea of the project and attract more clients.

How did Startup Development House perform from a project management standpoint?

I keep in touch with Startup Development House's team using Slack, email, and phone calls. We have a teleconference every Monday. They're also using an issue tracking software, but I've only interacted with it occasionally. If I identify an issue with the site, I can send Startup Development House an email and see instant responses. Out of around 50 deadlines, Startup Development House has only missed one.

What did you find most impressive about Startup Development House?

Other companies we considered were all much more expensive than Startup Development House. Their team is made up of good people, and I've had a good experience. Startup Development House listens to clients.

Are there any areas Startup Development House could improve?

I think that I need to improve aspects around my idea, but I can't think of anything for Startup Development House.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the head of innovation and quality team for a finance company in Poland. We provide financing products for small and large businesses.

What challenge were you trying to address with Startup Development House?

Our company wanted to expand the range of our products, so we decided to implement a new online sales channel connected with e-shops. The application is dedicated to small businesses, to connect to people who want to buy goods online and finance them through leasing. We needed a developer to create this sales channel and app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The app is web-based. The key functionality of the app is implementing and connecting a sales channel to an e-shop where the client can choose leasing as a way of payment. We worked directly with two people, but other people worked on our project as well, such as a designer, content writer, and programmers.

How did you come to work with Startup Development House?

We chose them because of their expertise and professionalism. They also seemed to understand the e-commerce market.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started six months ago. It is ongoing, and we plan to continue collaborating with them as business partners.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Feedback on our tool has been very positive. Our experience working with Startup Development House has also been very positive. Their solution for us is relatively modern in terms of our market. They are one of the best IT companies we have worked with.

How did Startup Development House perform from a project management standpoint?

They respond very quickly, and they are reliable and trustworthy. They are not only developers but also consultants to us since their advice is very good. They use specific tools like Slack for project management. We also contacted them via email and phone. We had two schedules: one detailed schedule for parts for the project and then a general schedule. Sometimes, we had to postpone some dates, but overall, everything was on time.

From our side, we had a project manager responsible for performing and providing this project. From their side, the project manager is Alex Stasiak. The cooperation between our project manager and their project manager is very satisfying.

What did you most impressive about Startup Development House?

Since they are a relatively young, small company, it becomes an advantage that allows them to be flexible. Additionally, their responsiveness is as quick as possible.

Are there any areas Startup Development House could improve?

Prices can sometimes be a little lower, but my business opinion is that prices can always be lower. The app could be better tested before giving it to us to test. However, when it comes to their way of working or approach, they are great.