Thoughtful

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of a two sided marketplace for the construction industry.

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

We wanted a mobile app for people to be able to more easily connect with contractors, more easily create a contract between owner and contractor as well as dictate the release of funds from an escrow account.

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

Chris and Thoughtful, represented a full stack development effort that fit the project needs. After interacting with him a few times when deciding which firm to choose, it became evident that his insight, engineering approach (explored through his blog) and demeanor would align well with my goals.

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

We had a few meetings were we explored the concept, and then Chris began producing wireframes, and developing an approach that would best fit the project goals.

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

We have worked with multiple designers and freelance engineers to keep progress towards the app build. Chris has been integral in directing each person and their talents for the benefit of this build.

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

I am pleased with Chris' responsiveness, and the quality of work that has been produced. With his help, the app went from concept to live in the app store as well as the google play store.

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

Communicating with Chris is easy through Slack, Notion, and Linear are also project management tools that have been used to communicate the larger plan with the team.

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

The most impressive part about working with Chris and Thoughtful is his ability to translate business goals into a useful user interface, and then make that interface function correctly.

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

Having a deeper roster of freelance engineers, and having more full time engineers on staff will be something that improves Thoughtful.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of a cyber security platform aimed to protect consumer's identity and finance

For what projects/services did your company hire The Thoughtful Company, and what were your goals?

We wanted to launch our first mobile app for the consumer market. Our goal was to create a slick app that's easy to operate and use.

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

We interviewed many engineers and found one that happened to work for The Thoughtful Company. On the first interview with him it became clear he has all the expertise we needed and more.

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

We've worked with Chris the founder to help us create our mobile app written in React Native. We had a couple of discovery meetings for features we wanted to incorporate and flows within the app which we wanted to clean up. Chris also advised on and implemented some of the foundations of the app such as the database and integration with Plaid. Working with them is really harmonious and we get our deliverables quickly with the highest quality.

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

We've worked directly with Chris

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

The app is still in development phase but we were able to reach our beta version right on schedule with Chris' help.

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

Chris is good at setting estimations deadlines. The communication has been great. Chris also dedicated his time to us when we had urgent issues.

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

It's obvious how tech savvy Chris is and how much experience he has with developing a project, best practices and project management needs. He could tackle anything we through at him.

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

It has been overwhelmingly for the best.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the software architect for a smart hearing aid manufacturer. We apply machine learning to hearing aids to do more intelligent noise reduction. Our company encompasses all forms of engineering — from electrical to web and mobile applications. My title as a software architect can mean many things in practice. I’m the technical leader of all non-device software like mobile apps and a Windows desktop app that lets doctors program the device for patients.

What challenge were you trying to address with The Thoughtful Company?

The issue was there was just too much work to be done and we didn’t have the staffing in-house to accomplish it. We were late to discover that we needed to have a web presence for partner clinics that sell our device to people with hearing loss. This made us decide to put out a contract to build the initial software.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired The Thoughtful Company for design consultations and ultimately deliver a web app.

This web app allows people to do various things like sign-in, download software, inventory organization, and a complicated checkout process. Since we already had the designs planned out, we let Chris (Founder) focus on it. He then delivered a working base that was fully tested and documented — he also did a lot of work on the backend, so he integrated pretty well into the team.

The technologies we used were Aryaka and Django on the backend.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact was Chris.

How did you come to work with The Thoughtful Company?

I’ve known Chris for several years. We kept in touch after meeting at an event. He’s worked with quite a number of high profile clients and I’ve always respected his technical abilities. I’ve talked to another senior developer who I felt I would need to spend more time with on this project. I didn't go with them because I thought they were an unknown quantity. And even though Chris costs higher, I knew he could own the project and it’ll be worth it.

I offered him the job, he gave me his rate, and we did about five minutes of negotiation.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested about $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

He signed the contract in April 2020 and it was completed in September of the same year.

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

Because the code they’ve created is well-structured, well-tested, and of the highest quality, our junior member, who is a bit inexperienced, is able to maintain it and make changes.

How did The Thoughtful Company perform from a project management standpoint?

The number one thing for me is communication. Of course, you need to be good at what you do — but communication is more important. I paid the premium because I knew I was gonna get good-quality communications and guidelines.

We mostly communicated through Slack, and used GitHub and Jira for the project management. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed with their communication and the ability to take ownership of the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, it worked out exactly like I hoped it would — that rarely happens. They came in at the right time and at the right budget as well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice would be just to go for it and don’t be afraid to trust them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and president of a co-parenting app company.

What challenges were you trying to address with The Thoughtful Company?

They hired them for app development services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially hired another vendor to develop our app. However, that team did a poor job, and there were many bugs and issues with functionality. The Thoughtful Company came in and cleaned up the code and fixed all the bugs to improve the product's functionality. 

They re-platformed the app, moving it from Expo to React Native. They also created an automated alert system that informs us, using Slack, whenever there are issues with the app. Their team created a lot of backend reporting features as well. 

What is the team composition?

We primarily worked with Chris (Founder), but he brought in a few other team members to consult with us on specific aspects of the project. 

How did you come to work with The Thoughtful Company?

I was referred to them by a friend. 

How much have you invested in them?

I’ve spent around $100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together about a year and a half ago, probably around July 2018. Our relationship is ongoing. 

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

We just started marketing the app more heavily. I’ve gotten positive feedback from customers. The performance of the app has improved drastically since we started working with The Thoughtful Company. The team has been accommodating. 

How did The Thoughtful Company perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re good at meeting deadlines. The communication has been awesome. If I have urgent issues, Chris is quick to respond. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They deliver on what they say they’re going to deliver, and often, they go beyond my expectations. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t have anything specific they could improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

Have a good perspective on what you want. Make sure not to introduce changes to the scope, and have realistic expectations. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Founder & CEO of Spiritune, a music-based iOS app that incorporates principles of neuroscience and music therapy to help people reduce stress, regulation emotions and perform better.

For what projects/services did your company hire The Thoughtful Company, and what were your goals?

Spiritune released our commercial V1 product on the app store 9 months ago. We hired The Thoughtful Company three months after our release on the app store to lead the charge in creating a stable, scalable and sustainable infrastructure as we focused on growth and scale post release.

Beyond continuing to build out our infrastructure, The Thoughtful Company works with our iOS developer in integrating with our mobile client, and with me to enhance our current product offering and build compelling new offerings.

How did you select The Thoughtful Company and what were the deciding factors?

The Thoughtful Company had relevant experience in the type of back end development we were looking for and with our particular code base. Also came through a trusted referral.

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

The Thoughtful Company has helped Spiritune meaningfully improve the stability of our infrastructure by moving to managed services, implementing automated testing, and enabling real-time error logging and on-call escalation for service disruptions. The Thoughtful Company has also improved our handling of subscriptions and payments, allowing us to begin testing promotions and win-back initiatives.

Overall, The Thoughtful Company's efforts have given us additional flexibility to pursue larger scale partnerships and clients.

Other SOW includes:

• Maintain and debug infrastructure
• Migrate our application to Heroku
• Oversee backend audio streaming to our iOS client via HLS, as well as implementation of relevant RESTful API usage
• Monitor server traffic, troubleshoot server-client issues, establish redundancy, and scale infrastructure as needed
• Expand existing infrastructure by translating specific client needs into technical requirements and effective code, and supporting local and national client rollouts

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

We work with Chris Roth in a Back End Development capacity

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

Chris has successfully implemented several platforms and improvements that have stabilized our infrastructure and improved functionality in order to make our app perform better and better service our customers and clients.

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

Chris is very thoughtful about timelines and deadlines. We have a process-oriented communication style so that project expectations are delivered in a timely manner.

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

I've been impressed by Chris's ability to tackle pretty much anything back end related, and I trust him to do a thorough job. If there's an issue or problem that requires a bit of problem-solving, Chris is able to evaluate and present a variety of solutions and collaboratively work with us in finding and implementing the right solution to solve the problem or achieve our goal.