STRV

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an engineer at an educational technology company. We connect teachers, partners, and students to communicate with each other.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We needed to increase our mobile engineering capacities.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve been working with STRV to augment our developing resources. To jumpstart every sprint, we tell them how we work and our expectations, and they start working independently but also contribute to the overall codebase improvements. For our most recent project, STRV has been helping us upgrade our messaging system on the iOS front, which involves updating the data model, implementing the UI, ensuring performance, and adding collateral features like reactions and scheduled messages. 

Regarding tools and technologies, their team has used Swift, SwiftUI, and Core Data.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Martin (CTO) and their engineering and project management teams throughout the partnership.

How did you come to work with STRV?

Someone referred them to us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2015, and the engagement is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to their work on developing core features, our app has been around the top 10 most downloaded apps in August and September, contributing to our app’s revenue and putting us in the top 20 paid subscriptions on the iOS App Store as well.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

Martin has been great in delivering our requests within deadlines and budgets, giving input, and providing helpful feedback. Regarding communication, we use Zoom, email, and in-person meetings — they’re very responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their high-quality engineering team is their best attribute; they’re responsive, flexible to our education season schedule, and easy to work with. In addition, STRV also responds to our requests to change the engineering resources they provide.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — STRV leads a straightforward process and is a quality partner with strong engineers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the asset manager for a private fund that invests in various assets. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

My responsibilities include project management of any assets we’re working on, one of which involves STRV. I work with them on web design and development for one of our projects.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve been working with STRV on creating a website and its backend. The team has done all engineering and advising for the website. For documentation, we’ve provided them with legal documents necessary for the site, such as the site’s terms and conditions and privacy policy. Our team has also shared with them some ideas of what we want to do. 

In terms of features, the site is similar to LinkedIn. Users can create profiles for their careers, specifically in the entertainment business — we’re focusing on women's representation in film and television media in Hollywood. 

Moreover, users can create profiles as someone providing film services or as a hiring manager. The idea behind it is to create a one-stop portal for people in the industry — specifically women and those who identify as women — to find jobs that would otherwise be unavailable to them.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with two teams from STRV. Each team consists of five people. I mainly communicate with the project manager of each team. The other members are engineers and QA specialists. 

How did you come to work with STRV?

I wasn’t the one who contacted STRV; my higher-ups did that, so I didn’t know who referred them to the team.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $50,000–$100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021, and the engagement is ongoing. We’ve started the project from scratch, but we’re almost done now. We’re only wrapping up a couple of loose ends. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

STRV’s work has helped bring our vision to life. This is a dear project to us as we work in the entertainment industry, and we hope to bring change to the hiring process of women and those who represent women in the industry. 

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

The team has delivered everything on time and within our budget. When delays happen, the STRV resources are fantastic at communicating those things to us and helping us sort everything out. To communicate, we use emails; we connect through Zoom or our personal dialers and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

STRV provides great support in guiding us through the process. We’ve never created a website before, so we had no idea about the field. Their team provides robust explanations of how everything works, what’s the process like, and how long things will take. Whenever we can’t understand something, they always explain things to us well. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. We’ve had such a great experience with them and never had any hiccups or misunderstandings. If we’re not on the same page, it’s quickly cleared up. Whenever there’s any miscommunication, it’s simply because we don’t know what we’re doing, and we rely on them to tell us how to complete our project — they’re great at it. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide blockchain services to B2B clients and are building a cryptocurrency exchange for B2C clients. We also have some cryptocurrency mining operations that help companies invest. I’m the chief product officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

They provided me with design services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We described our challenges, and they came up with possible solutions. Brainstorming took place with both us and the designer, but we didn’t have any specific requirements. We had some preferred colors, but we were rebranding as well, so we were basically starting from scratch. It was more of a collaboration on the creative part, and they executed on the design.

What is the team composition?

We worked with one designer and one project manager.

How did you come to work with STRV?

Their reputation preceded them. I knew about them in general and that they were successful in providing services to clients like design and development. I was hoping that they would provide high-quality service.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July 2021–April 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re still working on implementation, so we don’t have any metrics yet, but the general feedback has been that it was a great cooperation with STRV. They were very professional and got straight to the point. There was no time wasted on meaningless tasks, and the designer we were working with was very talented and knowledgeable about our industry. We didn’t have to educate him, as he was doing his own research very thoroughly. They handed over the files in great condition. We were 100% satisfied.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

This is difficult for me to say, as we introduced a number of changes; there wasn’t a set timeline. Their initial estimate was correct, however, and they built a campaign around it.

Our communication was over Slack and Figma. We didn’t use any sort of management tool like Jira because my team was very hands-on. They were as well. We already knew who was working on what.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really appreciated the research that they did themselves, including looking at the competition and comparable projects, as well as our product from the user perspective. They were able to take the best parts of everything and combine them into nice designs for us.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

At some point, they could have been stricter with us. STRV was very polite about everything, but there were some points when the developer could have let us know that an idea wasn’t going to be profitable. This may not be applicable to other clients, and it could just be a personal preference.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Prepare what you want to achieve and don’t try to micromanage them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital product and technology leader at Philz Coffee.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We have an in-store pickup app written in React Native and a display app for our mobile orders in-store written in Swift for iOS. We had a Swift engineer on our staff but needed to scale our team with another developer who could carry over the app’s maintenance and iOS product enhancements.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

STRV helped scale our Swift development team and provided maintenance for our display app. Our customer-facing app depends on our display app, and the team helped us stabilize and ensure the quality of our mobile display unit. Additionally, they helped drive the development of innovative products and then maintained in-production support. When it came to new product lines, we worked with their product team and then passed work over to the development team. 

What is the team composition?

I worked with the CEO and an account representative. At a certain point, we had two iOS engineers and one QA specialist. My main point of contact was an account engineer. 

How did you come to work with STRV?

We had gone through a couple of different engineer shops, and we were vetting a provider because the quality of some of their engineers' work wasn’t great. Then, STRV came to us through our CEO’s contacts at LinkedIn because they worked on the LinkedIn app. When we met them, we vetted them with the same scores we used of all third-party engineers, and they were great on multiple scales; they were easy to work with and very personable. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2019–March 2022. We had to scale back our teams as we continued to focus on and redefine our product offerings, so we ended the contract with STRV due to internal budgets and realignments.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our customer-facing app depends on our display app; if the display app doesn’t work for the employee, the in-store pickup app doesn’t work for the customer. The quality of STRV’s engineering team was reflected in how they supported our mobile display unit, ensuring the success of our customer-facing app. STRV was more of a strategic partner for us than just a contractor. They helped support our development shop in ways that I would never have expected and weren’t even part of their scope.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They were amazing, great communicators, and incredibly organized. In fact, they brought some centers of excellence and best-in-class performance to us. We had a very small engineering team when we started, and they helped us build practices and processes to ensure everyone stayed on track. STRV had more engineers than us, and they brought over best practices that we worked together to implement. They had a big part in helping us mature our internal development process in terms of sprints, working with Jira, and burndown rate. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was most impressed with the quality of the people in STRV’s team. Every person I worked with brought a level of humility and was incredibly smart, and they were also friendly. One of their engineers became like family to us; he was as much a part of our team as our full-time engineers. 

When faced with a challenge, the team was very solution-oriented and collaborative. Working with STRV didn't feel transactional, which was a big part of their success and had a lot to do with what the CEO brought to the table. They weren't just competent at their skills — they were also people-smart. STRV was dependable, and I’ll take them wherever I go. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Some of the design challenges could have been done a bit better. However, that was more of our problem than theirs. In terms of improvements, STRV could have driven more strategy in the process and worked through the pros and cons of something before diving into the development of the solution itself. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is that they know a lot more than you do. Sometimes as a business owner, you feel like you know everything, but STRV will get to know your business well — they’re incredibly smart. They have an excellent shop with mature processes; they write statements of work, follow up, and make sure to negotiate on price. I’ve worked with many contractors in my career, and STRV is one of the best ones I’ve partnered with.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the VP of New Product Strategy for a high growth, venture backed fintech company specializing in providing digital products for small businesses in the US.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

I was brought on to rapidly innovate with new products for our business customers. Having worked in the past with STRV, I knew that they were the right company to partner with. My needs were a full-service design and development engagement for a banking web app. They didn't have to start from scratch but it was pretty close.

SOLUTION

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

I was previously a founder of a fintech startup and utilized STRV for their design and development services of a website for my company. Having had a delightful experience working with them in the past, I knew that I wanted to give them a crack at this new project which was much more complex. I put the bid out to a few different vendors but in the end, owing to their excellent track record, I ended up selecting STRV.

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

We started with a sales and project engagement laying out the desired outcomes and goals. STRV assigned an excellent project manager to coordinate between myself and their team.

We settled on using NodeJS as a backend language because of the third party APIs were were integrating with (they had a NodeJS SDK). We also went with react for frontend work since my company already had a react environment. We moved into the design phase using Figma to go back and forth on mapping out the user stories to UI/UX work.

Eventually we moved to coding and pushing to staging/production environments (Kubernetes, Gitlab, AWS). Third party APIs used were: Auth0 for authentication, Unit for Banking as a Service and Plaid for bank account aggregation. Finally we set up the customer data platform using Tealium, Heap for Analytics, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud for transactional/marketing emails.

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

• 1 salesperson
• 1 project manager
• 1 UI/UX designer
• 2 backend developers
• 2 frontend developers
• 1 QA engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

STRV hit all of their milestones including the desired delivery date for the MVP. We were able to execute a phased approach so that we could conduct the necessary compliance and information security deliverables while continuing to iterate on product features. All expectations for product functionality have been met thus far and we signed a contract extension to continue working with them for ongoing maintenance and feature iteration.

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

We had regular weekly check-ins with project and design in the beginning and were able to communicate asynchronously using Slack. Initial product requirements were provided in Jira and we also used Google Cloud products to continue the interaction (Hangouts, Docs, Mail, etc.). As my company was able to eventually bring on our own UX designer, STRV was able to quickly iterate on our enhancements without causing unnecessary delays in the overall project timeline.

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

Most impressive was how quickly the project manager came up to speed on the project; especially the complexity with deploying a highly regulated product in a banking service and the subsequent information security components. He quickly went from project manager to thought partner when it came to scoping out additional features including investigating additional solutions / APIs for product iteration. Also impressive is how quickly their developers work and while the time zone difference was 9 hours, you really couldn't tell based on their ability to work and communicate no matter the time.

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

I can't think of anything else at the moment. We will look to evolve some of the visibility into sprint planning but that was purely a choice given the bandwidth constraints on our side.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder & CEO of a consumer internet startup. We currently have nine full-time employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We were prototyping a consumer internet application to see if it could become a company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We brought STRV on to build the prototype. Then, we expanded the team's size to continue building features and developing the application.

At one point, we were building web, iOS, and Android versions, but we narrowed our focus to iOS. We use a mixture of software languages, including Swift for backend, Node.js, and Render for infrastructure. For the admin tool and frontend, we use the React admin library.

What is the team composition?

Throughout the project, we’ve probably worked with 20 people. At one point, we were working with around 12. Now, we’re primarily working with three. As we proved the concept for the company with a survey, we’ve built our in-house team, which we discussed with them from the beginning.

How did you come to work with STRV?

My co-founder found them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $2 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2019, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our goal is to iterate on features until we have a working application to accommodate thousands of daily active users. Although we’re not there yet, STRV has helped us build the app. Also, we’ve worked on developing a process where we can quickly experiment and learn more from our inaugural user base and the agile development culture we’ve built.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been solid in their project management. We always develop accurate forecasts, and they’ve partnered well with us. As we built our team, the partnership was healthy, productive, bilateral, and honest. Overall, it’s been a good performance.

We have multiple meetings per week, and a lot of time, we communicate on Slack. We used Jira and GitHub initially, but we’ve moved from Jira to Notion.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re good at designing and engineering the product, which is rare. They have outstanding technical expertise on iOS and Android and are really collaborative, strong partners, particularly for building a consumer app. Overall, it’s hard to find a group that’s good at all of that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think there’s an opportunity for them to shuffle team members less.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The optimal team size is around 4–6 people when you're starting. At one point, we had six team members, but we revved it up to 10, and it was too big. In fact, STRV warned us that adding engineers doesn’t always increase velocity.

Also, having an internal product manager to pair with their project manager can help. It depends a bit on if you’re trying to build a hybrid engineering team, but I think it’s rare to be able to recruit and outsource developers, and they’ve been successful at that. They’ve stayed up and sat down as we’ve built our team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of Sound Off Media Inc., a social media platform company based out of Morgan Hill, California.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We needed help with mobile app development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started off working on the design phase of the project, going through everything from user flows and wireframes all the way to the final design, including colors and font selection. These deliverables were sent in a series of Figma files.

After that, there was a handoff between the designer and their mobile app development team that was in charge of native iOS implementation. They developed it using Swift and then deployed it into TestFlight.

Generally, the mobile app is similar to Twitter. It has features where you can create your user profile, upload your profile photo, connect to other users, and follow them. You can also post your own content on the platform, including pictures and text. At the same time, you can react to other people’s posts by sending an emoji as a response. At a very broad level, those are the main features that their team implemented.

STRV also built a landing page for our company along with a feature to publish blog entries. They used a different technology stack between Vercel and Sanity for the frontend deployment. They also did the design, which was mostly just graphics. We collaborated on the copy of the text and fed in images from the Figma files. We used those as visuals for the website.

What is the team composition?

We work with about nine people from their team, including a designer, project manager, three iOS developers, two QA specialists, and two other people that work on the frontend of the landing page.

How did you come to work with STRV?

We were searching for mobile app development companies online and eventually found them on Clutch. After reading some of their reviews, we quickly reached out to them.

How much have you invested in them?

So far, we’ve spent around $275,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working in December 2020. Our engagement is on pause right now, but we’ll begin again once we’ve secured more funding.
 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app has yet to be launched, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive — well-designed, responsive, and bug-free. Overall, we’re extremely satisfied with STRV’s services, and they’ve definitely exceeded our expectations.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve done well in executing quite a complicated project. Although they’ve missed some deadlines, the work that they’ve done is just simply amazing; I wouldn’t take any points away from them in this regard.

Furthermore, their communication has been stellar. People are always reaching out to make sure that we’re satisfied and understand each phase of the project, including costs. It’s been a really greeting experience working with their team. 

We use Slack to communicate and hold bi-weekly Zoom meetings with their team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What we’ve found most impressive about STRV is their thoughtfulness, attention to detail, and communication. They have a more accurate sense of the work, and they didn’t try to give me an unrealistic offer just to get me on board.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really can’t think of anything that they need to improve on. Most of the things that didn’t go as planned were all because of me.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to fully utilize all of their services, especially during the discovery phase of the project. You can leverage them by conducting customers interviews and other things of that nature to make the most out of the engagement.
 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager at a startup technology company called Citizen. Our product offering is an app that sends users alerts about crime, safety, and other issues going on in the community. Users can take live videos to share what’s going on around them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

Our in-house engineer designed a basic version of the solution that features summarized details of incidents and un-curated video from other users. We wanted to create a more tailored, polished experience with live hosts who produce a curated news experience. STRV provided a contract engineer to develop a web interface that allows our hosts to pull in specific pieces of media, from user videos to interactive maps and more.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our news anchors have a large amount of media that they can pull into the live broadcasts, and Michael (Engineer) developed the web interface that allows them to choose and integrate the specific pieces they want.

User videos are one type of content that our producers have access to, but our producers also utilize an interactive map. This map can be augmented by highlights drawn by our hosts live on-air, as well as spun around and physically manipulated to show users critical information like possible escape routes. In summary, this software allows our producers to compile everything needed to put together informative live broadcasts.

Because it is an internal tool, STRV didn’t do much design work. Their engineer laid out the buttons and knobs and dials of the interface with some input from us, but we didn’t care too much about it. The solution just had to be functional.

We finished work on this platform last month and moved Michael, plus one more resource, onto another project. We’re continuing to work with STRV.

What is the team composition?

Michael is our main point of contact, and we’ve also had a sales contact.

How did you come to work with STRV?

We were looking to work with someone to provide extra web development, and I knew some of their service employees personally. STRV’s team has a good industry reputation.  

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent just under $150,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked together since April 2021. The solution launched two months later in June, and we made ongoing improvements to it until about November 2021. We’re now working with them on another web-based solution.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The producers who create these live broadcasts are very pleased with the platform because it gives them much-needed flexibility to bring in a lot of interesting video- and map-based content, including graphics.

Regarding metrics, our new, complex, tailored solution from STRV has driven a higher click-through rate via notifications, longer watch sessions, and increased shares from users compared to our basic, in-house solution.

While our high hopes weren’t exactly met in terms of metrics, STRV delivered exactly what we asked them to, and we’re 100% satisfied. The solution is a very solid improvement to our existing product.

Michael himself met and exceeded our expectations, especially in his ability to refactor code into a stable state.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

We did all the project management on our side. I helped Michael, who was acting as a contract engineer, prioritize his work and manage week-to-week and day-to-day operations. All that being said, Michael’s velocity definitely satisfied us.

We spoke over regular Zoom calls, which happened daily during the first week, and then they moved to twice a week, and finally slowed to once a week when we got into a groove. Some of our producers would occasionally join to help us prioritize features to be developed. We also leveraged Slack to answer questions and preview work outside of these calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Personally, I haven’t used any other contract engineering firms; normally I work with in-house resources. Despite that, I will say that Michael is very easy to work with. He hit the ground running with the skills we needed. The onboarding was very fast.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing jumps to mind right now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would recommend STRV for engineering. They joined our team easily and worked well with us. STRV often tries to include project management and design services, but we didn’t require those offerings. They worked well as a contract engineering firm.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a project manager at AnywhereWorks. We provide tools and services to help people work anywhere.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We needed their development expertise.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

STRV built an onboarding flow application that aimed to streamline our chat support and improve our customer experience. The app had customizable chat widgets that our customers could easily access to help them navigate our processes in three simple steps.

Prior to the development stage, we had a scoping and brainstorming phase, wherein we relayed our requirements and provided the necessary documentation to their team. They then conducted thorough research to flesh out more solutions and design ideas.

During the design phase, STRV presented iterations and wireframes to get our approval. They then kicked off the development phase and handed the final version to us for product testings.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three people from their team, including a project manager, a designer, and a developer.

How did you come to work with STRV?

I found STRV online while searching for experienced design agencies. We then met with them a couple of times to discuss the project, and they came up with a proposal. We were impressed with their initial ideas, so we decided to onboard them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $50,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from January–May 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

STRV delivered a cost-efficient app that met our particular requirements and impressed our customers — they particularly liked its modern and functional design. Our user installation rate nearly doubled since we launched the onboarding flow, and we also acquired clients through the app. Overall, we were happy with the results we received because of their team’s development efforts.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They were on top of the project management game — STRV was always willing to collaborate with our team and adapted well to our processes. We could rely on them to respond to our requests and attend our meetings with helpful ideas. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were most impressed with their impeccable project management skills and commitment to meeting our needs, deadlines, and expectations. Their availability and collaborative nature spoke volumes about their professionalism as a team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

STRV was an effective team that helped us meet our goals, but we would’ve benefited from refined communication skills. The design flow wasn’t relayed well to our team, and we needed a bit more elaboration on that — however, we both managed to resolve this matter towards the end.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t hesitate to hire STRV and try their services. They’re an adaptable team with a thorough process — you only need to communicate with them as often as you can to make the most of your engagement.