Uptech Studio

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder and CEO of Float. We are the leading credit app for couples to monitor their credit and financial lives together. We are available on Andoid and iOS.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Uptech Studio when Float was little more than an idea on a napkin. Our goals were to expand upon our initial ideas into a live, working product across platforms. We needed work done in all aspects: product, design, tracking, launch, backend, frontend, testing. Everything.

The product launched 12 months after we began development. We have kept Uptech Studio involved to help us run and improve Float day-to-day.

SOLUTION

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

We searched internationally for the best team to handle our expansive requirements. Our deciding factors were experience, professionalism and depth of knowledge on product and engineering. It was extremely important that they would not only produce what we asked for but that they were willing to help us design and build a product that worked and rocked.

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

• Initial product-market fit studies
• Customer journeys for products
• MVP design
• Credit reporting agency API implementation (Equifax)
• Secure backend for consumer financial information
• Backend servers in Ruby on Rails
• Built and optimized user registration and onboarding
• User to user communication tools
• Secure sharing of financial information between users
• Complete design of both native mobile apps (iOS and Android)
• Referral system
• Chat bot (Intercom)
• Email system (Intercom, Sendgrid)
• Mobile push notifications (Firebase, Intercom)
• Deep-linking
• Heroku and AWS
• Integration with numerous affiliate networks on mobile and web
• Website and Blog (Wordpress)
• Advertising attribution tracking (Branch)
• Analytics- complete end-to-end user tracking (Amplitude)
• Analytics service with high-level metrics (AppFit)
• QA- Quality Assurance on every build of the apps
• App store design
• Google Search Ads integration
• Facebook Ads integration
• Apple Ads integration
• Google Play Store creation
• Apple App Store creation

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

I worked across the entire team. Drew and Claude were my engineering leads throughout the project. Matt ran point for product. Adam led UX design. Ryan as well as a grip of Uptech contractors worked on the project development and design.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Uptech Studio completely outperformed our very high expectations. We wanted a complete, working product where we could measure our consumers's journey thru the app. Not only do we have an elegant working product, but Uptech has delivered an app that has become the leading couples credit app for thousands of Americans.

We have no tech debt. The app is nearly five stars in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

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

The Uptech Studio team was thorough and very easy to work with. I had the complete trust and faith in the management of time and money of Uptech. They were very transparent. We leaned on a variety of tools to meet our needs: Slack, JIRA,

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

Beyond the final products that Uptech built entirely, soup to nuts, what I rave most about them is the fact that they take extreme pride and ownership in their work. Since they have incredibly extensive experience in building worldclass solutions, they brought that knowledge to the forefront.

They were motivated to not produce what I asked for, but instead took initiative to test my assumptions to tweak and adjust so that we would have a product that was built for the intended user and exceeded their needs.

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

I wish I had hired them sooner.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the co-founder of HippityPip

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to create a mobile app to help children learn their phone number using a personalized song and engaging animation. UpTech was able to create a song engine that created a personalized song for each child with their own phone number, and sync the song to the animation elements on screen. They also helped us figure out some UX improvements in the sign up flow.

SOLUTION

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

We really liked UpTech's background, with product, design and development leads with both large company and startup experience. We also appreciated that they were able to meet with us face to face to hash out product decisions, as they were located within a short drive or flight of our team.

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

UpTech took our light product specs and were able to create a deliverables schedule to deliver an iOS app optimized for both iPhone and iPad.

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

We primarily worked with a dedicated iOS resource, but also pulled in their product and design to help optimize our flow and analytics.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to deliver a relatively bug-free app in the App Store, driving tens of thousands of downloads. Milestones were met on-time or even early in some cases, and bug fixes were quick when needed.

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

We communicated primarily on Slack to stay up to date.

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

Both the depth of knowledge, from their previous companies and other clients, and their attention to detail.

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

In this case, no. We had a very concrete idea of what we wanted to build and UpTech helped us make it a reality without any hiccups.