Techstack Ltd

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Product Lead at Bunking, a Social Marketplace to find like-minded people for overnight experiences. We are a custom-built marketplace platform leveraging multiple third-party APIs and custom UI.

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

We had problems finding high-quality and trustworthy developers that are affordable. We wanted a partnership with a company which we could build a solid foundation with and work together. Techstack was our solution. They are a cut above any other tech suppliers we've worked with.

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

I knew Techstack through working at my previous company, Ruckify. Ruckify was also a custom-built marketplace platform and we were delighted with their work. So, I re-engaged them for Bunking. Working in Ontario, Canada's EST timezone, a fair billing rate, and excellent communication were vital in deciding to partner with Techstack again.

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

Techstack developers are integrated into the whole product development process. We have hired full stacks, frontend developers, and Quality Assurance Professionals. They work in React.js and Express/Node. Techstack's developer's communication is fantastic, and they are essential to the success of this product.

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

We've worked with 5 developers / QA and the management team of Techstack. I'd give 15/10 if possible. There is no critical feedback other than a full recommendation from Bunking & Marketplace Studio.

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

Ramping up and down dev power as the project required plus the added benefits of the team willing to work on EST has sped the project launch date up by a lot. The 3 Techstack developers we currently have on the project are our top performers and we trust them as we would a full-time teammember.

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

We decided to take full control and treat Techstack's team as one of our own. They are included in our daily standups, dev meetings, and demos. Each Dev is responsible for estimating timelines for their tickets with Storypoints. The Management Team of Techstack works with us to overcome any obstacles Bunking faces.

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

The dedication. Teckstack employs people who live in Ukraine and even when the war started, the whole team was dedicated to the success of Bunking once they were in a safe place. I cannot say enough good things about this company and its employees.

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

No, I am extremely happy with everyone who I've worked with so far.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a peer-to-peer rental marketplace, and I’m an executive there.

What challenge were you trying to address with Techstack Ltd?

We needed developers to redesign the already existent features of our native iOS and Android apps. We also wanted the project to be quick and with good quality and cost.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Techstack Ltd did custom software development for us. They redesigned the platform and went through different phases to ensure that their work had the right specs we were looking for in this partnership. We produced several deliverables. We initially had a kickoff meeting with their team, where we introduced them to the project and explained the goals we had. We also discussed the timeliness and went through the different inquiries of business and functional requirements, technical limitations, and so on. After that, they produced a list of questions for our team, and we started working.

Their workflow was autonomous because they had their project manager and QA lead, so we only intervened to support them with solving technical problems or anything they required. In the end, they delivered the right product and released it to the production environment.

What is the team composition?

We mainly communicated with the project manager, but we also talked to their development team to discuss specific questions.

How did you come to work with Techstack Ltd?

The CTO of our company found and chose them to work on everything to do with our native application.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $300,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on this project from September 2020–July 2021.

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

It’s challenging to measure the impact of a specific development team, but I can say that we enjoyed working with them. Communication was ideal, and they were always available for us whenever we needed to meet specific deadlines. They were always involved, and it was pleasant working with them. Their professionalism and quality of the code were excellent as well.

How did Techstack Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Jira to see reports about the project’s progress, so I had good transparency about their work. They were also willing to help us add a developer at a smaller cost to reach our goals — everything was ideal. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their communication and willingness to deliver results through a helpful approach were what distinguished them from other providers. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — they solved any issue quickly.

Any advice for potential customers?

Communicate the requirements and expectations clearly from the beginning. If you’re not happy with something, say it.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Corel is a large software company that owns a number of significant software brands. They have a lot of different companies under the Corel umbrella, such as Paralells, WinZip, CorelDraw, and MindManager. I was the VP of engineering for CorelDraw, MindManager, ClearSlide, and WinZip.

What challenge were you trying to address with Techstack Ltd?

We needed to develop web services for a number of desktop applications. Historically, Corel hasn’t been an expert on the web development side of the business; it has been mainly focused on desktop software. When we started to look into ways to increase resources for web development, we found Techstack. We hired them to build web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), web data storage, and some web products as well.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Corel worked with Techstack quite extensively for lots of different teams. For example, one of the applications I was managing was a driver update utility for Windows, and Techstack actually sourced the drivers themselves. We built a bunch of different scrapers that could go online, find drivers, and download them. Then, the app would also pass the driver to unpack it, determine its contents, populate a database with all of the stored information, and then recreate and save the package so that the desktop app could check for any new driver versions available on our database. Finally, it would send those packages down to the client and update the drivers on the desktop.

We worked with them on different marketing technologies. We built scripts for Google Ads and dashboards for our marketing teams. For the dashboard, our team would put everything into Google Docs or Office 365, and Techstack would introduce information from different sources, use APIs, and then publish that data on the dashboard so that we didn't have to go and manually extract information in different places.

We also did migration work from on-premise to AWS servers, and we were developing automated QA for our online mind mapping application.

When we initially started working with Techstack, we were doing a lot of .NET development with them because the driver database and the packages were handled with .NET. Towards the end of my time with Corel, we were doing a lot of Java development with ClearSlide, as well as other frontend technologies.

Additionally, we were doing some Structured Query Language (SQL), Personal Software Process (PSP), and mobile development, which used C#. From their recommendation, we decided to move from MySQL to Redshift in order to change label storing and retrieve data.

However, Techstack wasn’t always given the opportunity to recommend the technologies we’d use because Corel had some legacy codes, so they had to inherit what we were using. We had a hybrid approach where they actually built things from the ground up, and then we had other times where they had to deal with what we had.

What is the team composition?

I worked with the three founders: Ivan (CEO), Artem (COO), and Aleksey (CTO). I had pretty good relationships with each of them, but Ivan was my main point of contact. We had about five project managers, 10–12 QAs, and 50–60 engineers. The number of people that we worked with increased significantly over a five-year period.

How did you come to work with Techstack Ltd?

I’ve known the founder of Techstack for about 12 years. I first met Ivan when I was working with another group in Ukraine and he was an individual developer. When we met, I really liked him in a personal and professional manner. When he first started Techstack, I kept in touch with him, although we didn’t engage in any immediate work.

When the opportunity presented itself, we started working directly through Techstack, and it kind of grew from there. We initially had a few developers working with him on the driver database, and then as I had new projects added to my responsibilities, I went to Ivan to extend the team and hire more people.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $3,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

ClearSlide was our most recent and significant project; we started working on it in January 2018, and we finished in April 2021.

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

With ClearSlide, uptime was crucial because it was really important that the product worked, was fully available to our customer, and kept a service-level agreement. Techstack was able to keep our uptime and our customers happy, and we were able to make sure that our product was always functioning and working for our customers. Actually, the longer Techstack worked with us, the better they got over time.

Furthermore, ClearSlide was successfully sold last year. Corel acquired it first, then Techstack took over the full engineering output, and then it was sold to another company.

How did Techstack Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

We didn’t rely on Techstack for project management; we did most of it. However, they communicated around deadlines pretty well. They were proactive and told us when something wouldn’t likely go as planned, like if there were any unforeseen technical challenges. They were good at telling us what to expect, how they were doing, and ultimately delivering the work.

For communication, we used Microsoft Teams. We did individual team meetings and weekly leadership team updates. Sometimes we would also do project- or product-specific status calls around planning and estimating. We would follow a typical agile process and do sprint planning, standups, and retrospectives with the team members involved with that process. I would also do more long-term strategic planning with them as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I liked working with Techstack because I trusted the founders. There’s a lot of outsourced development companies, and they’ve got good senior leadership, but the original founders are often detached from the company. Whereas with Techstack, the founders are still driving the company and hiring the staff. To me, that says a lot about how the company will perform in the future and how I can trust that they’ll solve my problems.

As far as the engineers, I always had really competent people working with me. The whole team of 50 developers was really great people. Techstack did a good job at finding talent and recruiting them.

Additionally, we found that their recommendations were quite good. If they suggested that we had to stick with an existing technology because the migration wasn’t worth the effort, that generally was a good recommendation.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When they were smaller, it was very easy to communicate across the company. As they’ve grown, communication has become an area that they need to work on and improve. They need to communicate better with the many clients that they have now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Engage them as early as possible and lean on their technical, strategic, and architectural expertise. If you just want to define every individual task and its execution, Techstack may not be the company you need. However, one of the best things about them is their technical and thought leadership. Thus, if you’re going to work with Techstack, involve them in your story creation or architectural planning, because that’s one of their strengths.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and a principle founding member for Savage Bureau, a brand and design agency based in San Francisco.

What challenge were you trying to address with Techstack Ltd?

They’re assisting us in building a robust web application for a big client. The application is basically a robust event calendar for a large segment of the population to see the company’s events, which they do a lot of. Because of the pandemic, it has become increasingly important for them to give people access to these events via virtual platforms. This company originally came to us with what they had done internally, but it couldn’t support the volume of traffic.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Techstack Ltd augments our development team and they’re responsible for helping us code the backend of this web application. The app is for a large global audience, so it allows the translation of eight different languages and needs to sustain a heavy user base.

What is the team composition?

There are two account teammates that we’ve been primarily interfacing with and then two full-time developers that are contracting with us.

How did you come to work with Techstack Ltd?

We were looking for everything from individual contractors to small and mid-sized development shops. We came across their website and set up an initial meeting and then decided to proceed after verifying their skillset.

How much have you invested with them?

This engagement will probably be about $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in October 2020 and the relationship is ongoing.

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

We’re very happy with Techstack Ltd. The team is proficient in all of the processes that were advertised, as well as proficient in terms of the development language, platform, and skillset. They quickly proved their expertise.

How did Techstack Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

Despite the time difference, they’re extremely responsive and communicative. They communicate clearly, articulately, and deliver on the things they say they’re going to deliver on. Our development team has direct access to the developers and they have regular check-ins to discuss code. The team is efficient and work diligently across timelines to meet and exceed the deadlines that we’re working against.

What did you find most impressive about them?

My tech director is very finicky when it comes to code and he won’t tolerate sloppy code. His approval is a testament to the fact that they’re writing good, clean code and they’re fast.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’ve been very happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Some people can be afraid of experiencing a language barrier, but nothing here is lost in translation.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of medical device manufacturer

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

development of web portal for customer use and internal use

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

I interviewed about 20 teams: looking for solid technical expertise, ability to work well across platforms, flexibility, ability to scale quickly, and manage projects for timely completion. TechStack was by far the best company I interviewed.

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

• UI/UX design
• Prototyping
• Continuous integration
• continuous deployment
• Robust communication security
• Rapid visualization

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

6 people in core team

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

Customer web portal launched with great success. It offers great user experience while operating with large data volume. It passes the recurring security scanning with no issues. Customers love the webportal ease of use!

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

The project has been well executed. The whole team has 'Can do' attitude, researching and implementing modern technologies when an advanced solution is needed. When additional architectural expertise was need - it was easily accessible.

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

This has been the best solution for team extension. The company was able to rapidly scale the project team when needed, provide an advisor resource and implement new technologies. They facilitate open communications with each member, and the team works well together.

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

None