Toschas

Please describe your organization.

We are a tutoring school providing real-time availability schedules of our tutors through a management software.

What is your position?

I’m the Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Toschas?

The amount of data necessary for our company's operations couldn't be managed manually anymore. In order to scale the business, we needed a software solution.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

With Toschas, we have developed an internal booking platform which breaks down the activity of teachers into time slots and areas. It also handles invoicing and salary management. The technology used was Ruby on Rails.

How did you come to work with Toschas?

I was referred to them by a friend.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together fifteen months ago. Our relationship is ongoing.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The project was developed to a satisfactory degree. We came close to the original mock-ups and specifications.

How did Toschas perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management offered by Toschas is very lean, with little bureaucracy involved. This enabled us to reach results quickly. Their team was helpful and straightforward in terms of addressing urgent work. From projection to execution, they receive a 5/5 rating.

What distinguishes Toschas from other providers?

I haven't worked with any other agencies, so it would be hard to name something unique about them. Toschas appreciated the idea behind our project at a human level. It wasn't simply another project which needed executing, but rather a personal experience. This encouraged me to continue working with them.

Is there anything Toschas could have improved or done differently?

They could invest in project management. My needs were met by their approach though.

Please describe your organization.

We are an embassy.

What is your position?

I work within communication and public policy.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Toschas?

We wanted to invent a new documentation platform which hadn't existed previously. The idea was to create a tool that could function as an archive usable by the government and the public. The purpose was to create a feasible, sustainable, and user-friendly solution. Toschas managed to provide this for us.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Toschas provided development for our platform. We were given opportunities for feedback on the basis of which potential faults or mistakes were corrected. Their engagement in this project was strictly limited to the application scope.

How did you come to work with Toschas?

They came to our attention through a recommendation.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The total development cost was 1,250 euros [US$ 1422.56].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them one year ago. The project has been put on hold due to a lack of time on our part. We plan to start it again in September of 2016. It will be formally launched at the end of that month at a regional meeting.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Toschas was tasked with developing a user-friendly and simple platform. Management of the platform is the task of other stakeholders. Given that we're an embassy, our employees aren't especially tech-savvy. I found Toschas to be easy to work with. They made an effort in understanding what we were trying to achieve, and ultimately, they did deliver.

It's too soon to say what the success of the project will be. We haven't taken into account measurable statistics. It may be something to be discussed in the following years.

What distinguishes Toschas from other providers?

My contact from the agency was very friendly and understanding of our needs. I appreciated that he is a young and ambitious person, so his natural curiosity, combined with his skills, really made a difference. I haven't had a lot of experience in working with agencies of this type, but this has been a positive collaboration.

Is there anything Toschas could have improved or done differently?

They could be more flexible when it comes to stepping out of the boundaries set by cost. Toschas was very strict in staying within the results that they were paid for. I found that breaking down the cost based on every action taken by them was a bit excessive. On the other hand, I don't really have the right to demand additional work, even though they would not be paid for it.

Please describe your company.

My company does content marketing, so I either build sites for a business and then market them, or fix the broken sites and market them.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I'm the founder.

What was your goal for working with Toschas Labs?

I can't recall the first project I worked with them on. We've worked together on many projects, each with a different goal.

Please describe the scope of their work.

They've done everything from WordPress to custom coding. On one occasion, we gave them PDFs of a design, which is not how it's done typically. They copied the design perfectly, and then did the back-end developing of it. They've done some work in Drupal, but most of it was WordPress. They've adapted to anything that we've asked them to do. If it's not their usual platform, they've always been able to very quickly figure it out, problem solve, and get things fixed or up and running.

What was your process for selecting Toschas Labs with which to work?

We found them through oDesk. They stood out because they had a great current and relevant website and online presence. I liked the feel and the tone that they used. Once we spoke directly with them, they backed up everything that they had on their site, so it was a really easy decision.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they've done for you?

It was less than $10,000. They're very inexpensive compared to a counterpart in the U.S. or Canada.

When did you begin working with them, and is the work ongoing?

It's been a couple of years ago now, and it is ongoing. They're fantastic.

Do you have any statistics, or metrics, or general feedback to show the success of the project?

There are no metrics with them because they just do the back-end. I can say that they deliver on time or ahead of time. They're always respectful of the hours.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

They are by far the best I've worked with. Most IT [information technology] developers are so nerdy that they can't have a business conversation. Toschas Labs has been really personable, and we've even ended up becoming friends on Facebook. They're a great group. Their English is excellent, but even more importantly, they understand slang and the nuances of the language, which makes communication extremely easy. Whenever you're dealing with anyone overseas, it's often the case that so much gets miscommunicated or lost in translation, and that's never an issue with them. They're smart, they're fast, and they're fun to deal with. It's almost like they're just down the street from me. They're really communicative. We check in on Google Chat, and the time zone has never been an issue. It's just easy.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

Not really. In the beginning, they were growing quickly and bringing on new people. There was one person I was dealing with, and the communication wasn't great, and there was some over-quoting happening. I just got in touch with Milos, and he handled it really well, and it was put to rest immediately. It was a bit of a glitch, but nothing that I held against them. Everyone has growing pains. The most important thing was how they handled it, and they've been controlling their growth ever since and have been managing it well. So, it's all good as far as I'm concerned.

What advice would you give a future client of theirs?

Stop looking for other developers. Through the years, I've worked with so many developers, and they're usually the drag part of any contract. They just make it a lot better.

Please describe your company.

I was one of the founders of a company that used a real estate investments platform that allowed people to invest in commercial mortgages online. As of November, the company has pivoted to a new focus. It's doing something different, and I'm no longer a part of the founding team.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I was one of the founding team.

What was your goal for working with Toschas Labs?

We wanted an online platform that would allow people to invest as little as $500 or $1,000 into this secure product. The difference between that and a stock market investment is that this pays back a monthly return because it's a debt product. We were allowing our retail investors to get into an underwritten, commercial mortgage transaction. To do that, we partnered with private equity firms that originated and underwrote the mortgages as they're pretty complex.

Please describe the scope of their work.

They contributed to our development for a few months. I had built the original base for it, so when they came in it was a situation where we were kind of three-quarters of the way there, but it needed some additional leverage. They were able to get on an ongoing development process, understand what was going on, and really worked well in terms of specific tasks that we could delegate. They followed our Git-flow, and our management process, and so on.

The scope was really positioned as mid-level to senior-level leverage and support on an ongoing development. I was still coding, as was my co-founder at the time, so we had a few people contributing to the project. There was a little bit of micro-management going on because I was essentially leading the charge and driving the main development.

We needed to make a marketplace for the user, allow them to review corresponding documents, and allow them to invest between $500 and $30,000 online. So, a lot of the main stuff had been built, but we also needed to build a situation where we could offer private discounts on the fees that we take. These discounts would be given to legacy investors who were affiliates of the private equity firm we were partnering with. We used that as a way to encourage them to invest in our product, and we were able to get $2 million during the course of a few months. I delegated this to one of the guys at Toschas Labs, and they could work with it for a few days, and come back with a proposed solution. I would review it, we would discuss, and then it would go into the app.

The visuals of the app had been developed by a front-end developer in a static fashion, and we needed to bring this into the dynamic app. So, I gave them the front-end and JavaScript stuff, and had them plug them into the relevant pages, and the dynamic pages for our app. I also had them work on tests for the app, to help ensure accuracy in the core functionality of the app.

What technologies were used?

It's a pretty vanilla Ruby on RAILS application. PostgresQL was the database, and they wrote some custom SQL queries related to the functionality we needed to add. For the front end, we were using HTML, but we used something called slim templates, which is a templating, Ruby kind of thing that makes it easier and simpler to do the HTML stuff. Also JavaScript and a few Ajax things going on, but not any front-end framework.

We had some asynchronous tasks, and things like that, but that's just all Ruby libraries that we used, so there wasn't anything else. Assets would be in the cloud and AWS [Amazon Web Service], so the Amazon cloud. Our servers were DigitalOcean, and we were deploying through Cloud 66. So, I was handling the provisioning.

What was your process for selecting Toschas Labs with which to work?

I'm a Ruby on RAILS developer myself, and I've also occasionally onto online platforms like oDesk, Elance, and so on. I've had a mixed bag experience but, at the same time, I'm aware that if you put in the time, and are willing to work with different people, you get to some people you can collaborate well with.

I think it was oDesk where I worked with the founder of Toschas first. We had gone through a few other people who didn't really work out. When we found them, I could tell that things would work out, and they did. I generally do a quick interview and, if everything seems fine, I'll onboard them and give them actual tasks to find out how they work. With Toschas, the communication very good. They were very open and attentive.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they've done for you?

I would say it was around $10,000 to $15,000.

Do you have any statistics, metrics, or general feedback to show the success of the project?

Their work was really involved in just the actual launch of the project. In terms of the metrics that we achieved investing online through the original premise that they developed, we had slightly more than $2 million invested through the platform. The number of investors was around 50, so the average investment was pretty high.

In terms of the technology issues, we never had any problems. Our application was always stable. There was one bug that we had to troubleshoot, but other than that, everything worked fine. We never had a situation where we had a major problem or anything. The technology enabled what we needed to do perfectly.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

We needed good, competent support requiring little hand holding and, for that, the guys we worked with were just great. They were very communicative and very open. It felt like a little bit of an extended development team quickly. I feel friendly with the guys, and to me that felt a lot better than other offshore companies I've worked with. It really felt like these guys were really committed and engaged.

I always felt like the solutions that they came up with were very thoughtful. I don't remember any times where I felt like the way they were doing things wasn't the way we wanted things done.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

I don't feel that I can comment there because I don't feel that we really put them to the test. I don't think I have enough insight.

Please describe your company.

We're an online small business lender.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I'm the head of product management.

What was your goal for working with Toschas Labs?

We were looking for a Web app to serve as a portal for our customers to submit loan requests to us, and to check the status of those requests as they move through the underwriting process.

Please describe the scope of their work.

They were involved in building a front-end client Angular application as well as a Web API [application programming interface] that was a Ruby on RAILS server.

Any other specific technologies they used on that?

The client application includes HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the Web server is a Ruby product. 

What was your process for selecting Toschas Labs with which to work?

I had found them on a freelancer site, and I'd worked with them previously on another project.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they've done for you?

That number is confidential.

When did this project start?

We started in January or February [of 2015] on this specific project.

Is it currently ongoing?

Yes.

Do you have any statistics, metrics, or general feedback to show the success of the project?

Currently, it's in our last stage of testing, so there are some beta users who are our customers. Right now, we're batching up feedback and making fine tweaks and polishing, so it hasn't been released to the public.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

They're very communicative and accountable, which is definitely unique for agencies often. Milos [Mihajlovic, co-founder and CTO at Toschas Labs], my main point of contact there, is very knowledgeable and very creative. We're in constant contact, even given the time distances. He's very articulate and very knowledgeable about their expertise, which is generally Angular and RAILS. I always felt that the customer service was great, and he definitely takes a real ownership role to the product, and points out issues and features that our team here might not foresee. It's great to have them as part of that collaborative effort.  

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

No. I've been 100 percent satisfied with their work, and so much so that I've referred them to other friends of mine who are in a product management role as well and looking for an extended workbench type situation.

What advice would you give a future client of theirs?

It would be just general advice to anybody before working with an outside development team, but nothing particular to interfacing with them. They're a very talented group.