Telos Labs

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the President and founder of a nonprofit called Giving Connection Inc. Our team consists of seven trustees who serve on our Board of Trustees. Our mission is to connect people with nonprofits in their communities using a search tool designed to make living and giving simpler. Our vision is a world where finding help and serving others is easy.

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

Telos Labs continuously supports the development of our nonprofit search platform aimed at helping individuals in need locate nonprofit resources in their communities. The search platform is beneficiary focused and includes critical features such as keyword search, an interactive map, advanced filtering options, email alerts when new nonprofits join the platform, and much more. Our initial goal was to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) using nonprofits in the Nashville area. We launched our MVP and are currently looking to build out the admin panel so nonprofits can manage their own profiles. We hope to expand to other cities as we grow our user base.

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

I learned of Telos Labs through a mutual connection with their founder, Jordán. I was searching for a trusted company to help with development and it just so happened my friend used Telos for the development of her project. Telos Labs came highly recommended by her and I highly value her opinion. After a few conversations, I knew they would be the perfect fit due to their mission, core values, and socially conscious approach.

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

Telos was tasked with creating our search platform from the ground up. Utilizing my initial mock ups and desired features, they helped design the platform to ensure it is user friendly and useful. They handled all the back end and front end technical implementations along with managing our platform’s infrastructure. They helped us create various critical functionalities such as keyword search, advanced search filtering, user account creation, map integrations, nonprofit account setup, and email alerts.

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

Throughout the course of our engagement, we have had an average 4-5 members of Telos on our team. Our project manager, Claudia, has been our main point of contact from the start. We also currently have three full stack developers and a designer bringing the Telos team to a total of 5. Jordán, the company Team Lead, is also always available for questions and additional assistance.

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

When we started our engagement, the Giving Connection platform only existed in my mind. They have brought this platform to life and made it a reality. We launched our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to our donors and supporters back in April, which led to great success in our second fundraising campaign. We are nearly ready to launch in Nashville, our first city, and begin onboarding nonprofits there.

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

Since day one, Telos has taken on the primary responsibilities of project management and steering the technical intricacies behind the platform’s creation. When I started Giving Connection, I only had an idea of what I wanted to create but lacked the technical expertise to develop it. They continually teach me about the technical aspects of our platform’s implementation and help guide me towards a greater understanding of how to expand our impact.

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

Every single member of the team is passionate about making the world a better place through technology. They are a joy to work with because they bring incredible expertise alongside a curiosity to change the status quo through their passion. Their excitement and dedication for our project ignite my fire to keep pushing the bounds and improving upon our existing platform.

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

Towards the middle of our engagement, Telos noticed that we were lagging slightly on our timeline and project deliverables. Because the Board didn't implement strict guidelines on time, our momentum had slowed. Telos immediately recognized this, and I watched them in real-time discuss how we could improve our process and communication. Now we have a more streamlined process for submitting bugs and feature implementations, better tracking of progress, self-implemented sprints to tackle chunks of the project, real-time testing, and biweekly meetings.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a savings app. Our mission is to help individuals build savings habits by making it feel like play in a direct-to-consumer savings app. We also offer modules that we license to traditional financial institutions in a SaaS model.

What challenge were you trying to address with Telos Labs?

In the early days of building our first project, we brought them on to help with specific development challenges and we’ve continued to partner with them since then.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their team built the backend of our original product, focusing on setting up the initial logic and the capability to integrate with various financial institutions’ APIs. They built out the technical architecture from there and continue to maintain and upgrade specific functionalities as needed. The majority of it is built in Ruby using GraphQL, and they also did occasional frontend work in a hybrid language called metascript.

What was the team composition?

Directly, we communicate with 2–3 members of their team, but I believe there are closer to 5–6 individuals working on our product in total.

How did you come to work with Telos Labs?

We actually had a mutual connection with their owner and started conversations with them from there. We were both small but growing companies and it seemed like they would be a good fit, so we decided to move forward from there.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project first started in July 2018 and is still ongoing.

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

Since we have launched the project, there have been almost no problems with the quality and functionality of the software. They delivered the project quickly and were flexible to all of the changes we asked of them leading up to our launch, and we have been completely satisfied with the results.

How did Telos Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the benefits of working with their team is that you get not only the technological component of their skillset, but you also get a lot of the strategic end-product know-how that they have internally as well. Now that we have a much bigger in-house team than we used to, they are able to serve in a much more advisory role around the strategy and product roadmap requirements that we continue to face.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The fact that they are small, nimble, and easy to work with is one of the biggest assets that they provide. They pay close attention to all of their customers and are consistently detail-oriented, which I really appreciate.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One challenge that I face is finding balance as we grow between how much we leverage them versus the sustainability of our own team. That’s not a criticism of them as much as it is just an ongoing challenge as both of our companies continue to learn and grow.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to solving the problems that you have in a slightly different way than you might have initially thought because they have a lot of creative ideas and experience that they can bring to the table.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the senior director at SaverLife, a nonprofit financial technology group. We help our members build habits so that they have savings when they need them.

What challenge were you trying to address with Telos Labs?

We wanted to build an MVP to help our members, 70% of whom have inconsistent incomes, build their savings. We realized that our platform rewarded consistent savings but that’s not the reality for most working Americans today. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a good sense of what we wanted to build, so we communicated that to them. Telos Labs then worked with us on a short-duration project in which they built out a fully functional MVP, including the front- and backend. 

Using Ruby, they incorporated features that allowed users to open a separate savings account and automate transfers, as well as functionality that sends smart notifications when a user’s income is higher, encouraging them to save — all of which didn’t exist in our previous platform. They worked with us from beginning to end, from strategy to execution.

What is the team composition?

We worked with between 4–5 teammates, including Jordán, who served as our project manager.

How did you come to work with Telos Labs?

They were referred to us by another FinTech company. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested between $10,000–$49,999.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement lasted from June–December 2018.

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

They built out the product according to the quality and functionality that we wanted. In addition to having over 100 people sign up for our waitlist when the program went live, we also had the app reviewed by a third-party security audit firm that gave it rave reviews. They even awarded it an A+ grade in their book of code quality and security, which was really encouraging.

How did Telos Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was my favorite part of working with them. Everyone on the team understood the business case of what we were trying to do, which I appreciated. I was able to have a conversation with any of them about the product we were building and what I needed to do. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were collaborative and quick to work with us to come up with ideas, serving as a strategy partner early on. I valued their project definition and thought partnership. Every team member was thoughtful and was able to interact at both the strategy and engineering level. Telos Labs didn’t operate just as a vendor; it felt like they were a part of our team. After this project, we even hired them for another project. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They were a small team so they could’ve expanded their workforce in order to have more hands on deck to do even more of their high-quality work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just get started. Begin with the small projects that you want them to work on with you. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by what a small, remote team can do. They’re fantastic and I really enjoyed working with them.