Teamo

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of an incentive management loyalty platform. We’ve curated a digital marketplace of different well-being experiences that allows enterprise customers to give and incentivize with things that are good for the mind, body, and soul.

What challenge were you trying to address with Teamo?

Our goal was to figure out how to help companies attract customers, talent, and partners in the modern marketplace. We needed to build a platform where we could ensure that the incentives we provided were both of the highest perceived value and were able to drive the desired behavior that our users were trying to unlock.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Since we are a digital solution, Teamo has acted as our core development partner. When we started out, we were both a reward and tracking platform, but have since pivoted to being a 100% rewards focused solution, and they helped us implement a product that was feasible for that.

The platform is native on both iOS and Android and is available on the web, and their team provided full-scale development for that. They built a digital gift card feature that allows you to access any of the wellness experiences on our platform, point-to-credit conversion capabilities, and other custom APIs to allow our partners to integrate their systems into ours.

What is the team composition?

We worked with four different members of their team, and our main point of contact was Sohaib (Founder & CEO, Teamo).

How did you come to work with Teamo?

We had worked with a more traditional developer where they basically scope out what you ask for and deliver it exactly. I got to the point where we needed more hands-on, flexible help, and somebody recommended Sohaib. She actually met with him and vetted the company for me, and at that point, we knew it would be a good fit.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay on a monthly basis and have spent around $200,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2017 and the project is ongoing.

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

Teamo has had a huge impact on our business, on the most obvious level simply because we wouldn’t have been able to develop our product without their help. In addition to that, the constancy of their service and the level of knowledge and they have developed with our platform has been hugely beneficial to the work.

In terms of impact in general, the model they’ve provided allows us to test and iterate and build and react in a way that we wouldn’t be able to do if we were outsourcing or working with a larger company. The quality of their work is incredibly high, and the consistency of being able to rely on them is an incredible added value.

How did Teamo perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management work has been strong. We always stay on schedule, which can be difficult with development because of how unpredictable it is, by trying to stay as proactive rather than reactive as possible. Again, Teamo is just incredibly reliable and transparent, so we always know where we are at on any given project regardless of whether we have delays.

Communication has been strong despite the time difference, mostly because of the effort that they put into prioritizing keeping everyone on the same page. We have standup meetings in the morning in order to keep them in the loop, and they do a really good job of making themselves available in case of emergency situations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their thought leadership is really what sets them apart as a company. It’s rare that you meet people with really good development skills who can also think through the business issues and goals and really deliver something that’s going to solve the core challenges you’re facing every time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Some members of their team are stronger at communicating than others, and some people are more comfortable sharing their views. I do think it would be beneficial to get every developer on their team to the point where they were able to share their perspective and bring that extra bit of experience to the table.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you approach the engagement as a collaborative partner rather than just someone to develop your requirements, you will get a lot more value out of the project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the founders and CIO of Surf Media. We place interactive tablets in the back of rideshare vehicles. It’s kind of like an in-flight model, wherein we provide content to the passenger. The device is free for rideshare drivers and they actually make revenue on it every month, based on the advertising we sell on those tablets.

What challenge were you trying to address with Teamo?

We were trying to find a development team that could work at both the MVP stage as well as grow with our product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve built around 10 products with them, including our application that’s managed on all of the tablets we deployed, the driver dashboard, where drivers can sign up, log in information about their account, and get paid through their account. We provided wireframes and designed documentation then worked with them on developing specifications of the build itself using the Google Cloud platform and AWS.

They built a media dashboard where all of our media partners can see metrics about their campaigns and whatever content that they’ve uploaded to our network. Additionally, they created a lot of executive-level analytics that we use on a daily basis to manage our fleet of vehicles, as we’ve grown upwards of thousands of vehicles at this point. We’ve gone through integrations with major third-party ad servers, and Teamo has led that whole process.

What is the team composition?

I work with their CEO, as well as a team of developers.

How did you come to work with Teamo?

We knew their CEO from a previous project that my co-founder and I were both a part of in Silicon Valley. I came to really appreciate his work ethic and it was just a great culture fit.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested approximately $160,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in January 2018, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

We have grown from literally zero devices in the field, to upwards of 1,000 since our launch. We’ve been featured in Forbes, CBS Local News, Phoenix Business Journals, among other publications. We’ve also been a part of the plug and play accelerator, working with Silicon Valley investors, basically due to the technology we’ve built, as well as some major partnerships.

How did Teamo perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve exceeded our expectations. Everything was always communicated clearly and efficiently, and I was never really surprised if there was going to be a delay. I always knew the exact reason why and how to support them in the best way possible. Everything was amazing in that regard. We use Slack, BitBucket, Jira, Sketch, Abstract, and Facebook Workplace.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We value their dedication. They’re located in Pakistan, and we’re in Phoenix, so that’s a 12-hour time difference, which can be tricky. They’re always willing to work around that time difference to make sure that the product would be delivered on time. We have open communication channels for hours at a time during the day so we wouldn’t have to play phone tag all the time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We did have a ramp-up period with them, where we learned a lot about the project management cycle and communication. It was 4-5 months where we were figuring out how that relationship would work. As we started to communicate more through Slack and other channels, that process got a lot smoother.