Valere

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy was established in 1987 as one of CDC’s ten “centers of excellence in injury research”. The Center is based in the Department of Health, Policy and Management in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. We are dedicated to high quality research that informs the development of programs and policies that decrease the burden of injuries both nationally and internationally.

Our mission is to close the gap between injury research and practice to reduce and prevent the fires, poisonings, drowning, car crashes, domestic violence and other causes of injury that kill, disable, and inflict pain in alarming numbers. Elise Omaki, MHS, is a Senior Research Associate and a core faculty member with over ten years’ experience conducting injury prevention research and practice including work on child passenger safety, home safety, prescription drug overdose, and violence prevention.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Safety in Seconds is a smartphone app developed by Center faculty to deliver tailored injury prevention education to users about child passenger safety and home fire safety. The program was tested in clinical-trial and found to improve safety behaviors among parents of young children. Our team sought a developer to help add a new module to the app on pediatric fall prevention. The module asks a series of questions and provides eductional content tailored to the user based on a complex algorithm.

SOLUTION

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

In the process of seeking bids for this work, Valere Labs was one of the few vendors that reviewed the source code in order to offer a customized and detailed work plan. They offered a clear explanation about what was needed to achieve our goals, took time to answer countless questions and were patient as I sought various approvals from my team members.

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

Valere Labs ended up doing a full redesign of our app to offer a full content management system that wasn't previously available. The work included planning out a new UX/UI, particularly for the content management system, creating question & message banks, adding capacity for conditionals and piping, and allowing custom logic for producing tailored reports.

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

We worked with a UX/UI designer to layout the program, two developers who produced the app, and a project manager who kept everything moving.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

My team was very pleased with the outcome and we plan to continue working with Valere Labs to maintain and expand the project.

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

I appreciated having mulitple people involved in the project, each with their own expertise and roles. Everyone was patient, allowed me to ask questions and had excellent follow through. The group was committed to making sure I had a product that fit my needs and was within budget and communicated what I should expect thoughout the process.

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

Valere Labs was very good at communicating and helping find a shared language to describe the specific needs of my academic research team to the developers executing the project.

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

None that come to mind!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am an individual, I hired Valere Labs for a personal project

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

I hired Valere Labs for a web application. Goals are confidential

SOLUTION

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

Oh gosh, how did I select the company? Miserable and long story. I called every software company I cold, gave them my idea and went from there. Got a lot of strange responses, some people said no, a lot didint even asnwer the phone. You wonder how people stay in business sometimes. I had just been contracting with Tricension and they were supposed to be working on my project but werent, didint tell me, and didint reply to my messages. I was really desperate at the time, they knew this, and still treated me poorly. Called Valere labs finally and without any hope at all gave them a try.

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

This is all confidential. I dont know what they used but I know coding is involved. My web app is for a microsoft windows computer. Its actually kind of a compex program really.

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

3 The main guy (Daniel), the coder (Yamini), DD (cant remember his position)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I dont even understand your question. Deliverables? I use my software! Everything worked out and I am capable of using it daily. I also was shocked when the program gave me the outcome I hoped for but this is all confidential.

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

You all are really clerical arent ya, with your fancy wordy jargon. Daniel is amazing at communication and so is Yamini, they get back extremly fast. Sometimes I cant keep up with how fast Daniel gets back to me.

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

THEY DID THE DAMN JOB they communicate with me They continue to communicate with me even when the jobs is done

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

DD struggles to understand some things. I assume its a communication barrier

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Lotus is a social media platform where users can discover, experience, and share music with their friends between streaming platforms. I am the co-founder of Lotus.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Valere Labs to take on an existing project and get us on the market, an iOS application for sharing music recommendations across platforms.

SOLUTION

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

We went with Valere as we believed they had the right competency and culture to work with an early-stage startup like us that is working on a project that requires innovative solutions to the problem we are solving. We conducted several rounds of interviews with multiple firms, and we were most impressed with Valere.

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

This was an existing project that involved many different specialized development tools and third-party APIs such as Swift, Springboot, Spotify SDK, etc… With the mixture of all these different technologies Valere confidently took on this project and made it their own as if they have been working on it from the start.

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

We had a full dedicated development team work with us such as a PM, QA team, and lead backend/frontend. When the team required someone with a specialty they were able to bring on someone else from the Valere network to do a specific job which was done very efficiently as it kept the project going with many bottlenecks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As a result of this project, we have an app that is market ready, and we are overall satisfied with the quality of the app.

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

Samreen and the team were very communicative from the very start keeping us engaged with daily updates and answering our questions right away. They also were not afraid to ask us clarifying questions which were appreciated to avoid wasting time. We met once a week on Mondays to go over the progress of the previous week and goals for the upcoming week, and communicated via Slack the rest of the time.

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

Working with the Valere team felt like my co-founder and I were working with a development team of our own. All the developers took a high interest in the project and the work they were doing and you have no choice but to care for their well-being too.

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

The team sometimes needed to be told about the same fixes multiple times, as some issues were experienced on the user end but not on the developer's end.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Co-Founder of Totem: Concert Sharing, a social media application designed for live music fans to share their content at events and connect with the community.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We previously worked with a different company to develop our application, but we were not satisfied with the end result. We hired Valere Labs to give our app a new design and to provide new features/ bug fixes.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online for new companies to work with, and had an interview with Daniel from Valere. We told Daniel about our vision for Totem, and he promised they could get everything completed the way we need. We were very impressed with Daniel and after doing more research into Valere we decided to hire them.

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

We had a series of meetings with Daniel and the development team which went over our goals and road map. What impressed us the most was how organized their team is, and that they were great at communicating with us and understanding our vision. This was completely a 360 from our last company we worked with. They sent us an estimated amount of hours needed to complete the tasks, and we had daily interactions from all the team members, and weekly meetings.

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

A project manager was assigned to work with us, as well as a team of three front & backend developers, as well as a designer. We worked closely with the front and back end developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After working with Valere, we are now proud of our app. We have received tremendous feedback on the app, and are now confident in pitching to new investors. They made sure we were satisfied with everything and were very good with testing on multiple fronts to make sure the app is working seamlessly.

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

We worked closely with the project manager and developers and had daily interactions with them. If they had a question for us, they asked, vis versa. They provided us with a way to input new updates we have thought of, and updated the beta version often so we can see the progress.

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

There was not a task they could not do. Our app had some complicated tasks and updates, which our last development company could not handle. They have very experienced coders that can handle anything. They are great at communicating and were always punctual with meetings and deadlines.

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

Some of the estimated hours provided tended to run a little more than expected, but it was not due to a lack of effort. We kept adding new features which extended the amount of hours needed. I would suggest to other companies to have a detailed plan in place, and to let them work before submitting new tasks. They will get it done.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO. We are in the process of building a direct to consumer financial planning mobile application that caters to the majority of Americans. We focus on short term financial goals, education and providing our users with feedback to tackle their anxiety towards finance

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our CTO was the only one working on both the front end and back end development of the application. We were looking for a partnership that would turn into a long-term deal. We started with a full audit of the current application and wanted to get to a Minimum Viable Product within 6 months, which we accomplished.

SOLUTION

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

We interviewed several people/companies and ultimately chose Valere because of their transparency, organizational structure and communication skills.

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

We started with a UI/UX design phase which took about 4 weeks and then went into a full development cycle that included node.js, Flutter, and MongoDB. It was a full development team on the front and back end.

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

There were a total of 7 contacts at Valere: 

• a direct relationship manager
• a project manager
• two frontend developers
• two backend developers
• a UI/UX designer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to reach our Minimum Viable Product and already signed a new development contract to continuing working on our application. We will be launching to the public in the next few months and Valere was crucial in hitting our target dates.

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

We utilize slack, email, shared drive and now have moved towards a agile development phase. We now use Jira and Confluence to communicate and work through our sprints.

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

The customized team that was created and the communication is unrivaled. They answer immediately and very rarely do we not know what is going on behind the scenes. Our CTO is directly involved with all aspects and we feel like they understand our company and what we are building.

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

No, the communication has been great, and if there is ever a hiccup, we address it professionally and immediately.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of Trip Modern Media; we’ve developed a mobile application called The Vind.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Valere Labs?

Our region has about 1.7 million visitors annually and is known as Texas’ wine country. It’s the third most visited wine destination in the country. We’re a collection of small towns, and growth has happened very fast. 

All of the visitors were looking for places to go, stay, and eat. We were trying to address the issue with the app — we wanted to have one place that housed local information and could provide curated itineraries.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Valere Labs developed our mobile application; they guided us from concept to launch. They took the business requirements we provided and framed out what the app would look like. We ended up hiring their UI designer to work alongside my partner, who is very skilled at branding. Valere Labs helped with everything from defining our project to setting up project steps and milestones. 

They also did troubleshooting and made recommendations on how to transform our business needs into app functionalities. Everything they presented was clean and reasonably priced. Once the app was done, they helped with testing and our launch on the App Store. 

We’re currently in our launch cycle; we’re trying to solidify our iOS app on the App Store before we begin phase two of development or develop the app in Android. Valere Labs is still around, working on fixing bugs and troubleshooting. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with at least six teammates from Valere Labs, including their project manager, who worked with us daily. Teammates funneled in and out of the project depending on which stage we were in. 

How did you come to work with Valere Labs?

Our internal team is made up of four teammates, and I was the product manager, managing the technology build from the business perspective. We needed a company that could build a beautiful, functional app. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $50,000 with Valere Labs.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started talks with Valere Labs in January 2021, but I believe our ongoing partnership began in May 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve closed out phase one of the project, which allowed us to launch the app in April 2021; the app has over 300 businesses listed. We have over 429 app downloads, and about 335 individuals have created accounts on the app. The UI turned out even better than we expected, and it was great that Valere Labs could provide their own UI designer. 

How did Valere Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

During the development stage, we had biweekly calls with Valere Labs to discuss the project’s status. We used Slack and Google Meet to communicate with their teammates, who were committed to our Monday morning meetings. We also used Google Drive and Excel to communicate project pieces. They were very responsive during our testing phases, working through the list of bugs we needed to resolve before launch. 

I’ve worked closely with Valere Labs’ project manager. He is very good to work with because he’s calm, responsive, and detail-oriented. I have had a great experience working with him. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Valere Labs wasn’t the first company we interviewed. Before them, we met with a WordPress developer whom we almost worked with. However, he was very abrasive and unprofessional when I requested a Zoom meeting. In contrast, Valere Labs has been very professional. Outside of that, I don’t have a benchmark to measure them against because we haven’t worked with anyone else on a project like this. 

We are new to the app development process, so we’ve been unsure what to ask. However, Valere Labs is very skilled and manages our expectations well. They’ve also educated us on what we don’t know. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything specific for them to improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d recommend Valere Labs to anyone, especially to technological novices. When you sign a contract with them and take a leap of faith, I’d send any colleague to Valere Labs because I know they’ll be treated fairly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the cofounder of a Solana Based P2E gaming company. I manage and coordinate the overall trajectory of the company along with handling direct Blockchain NFT metadata and contracts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Valere to create of vision of our 2D play to earn game with Solana Blockchain integration. Our goal was launch the MVP of the game which includes being able to use our NFT Characters as game assets.

SOLUTION

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

Valere had the most professional project management and they quickly demonstrated their ability to understand our vision with the requirements to deliver it.

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

We hand multiple meets to coordinate the mock design in a rudimentary fashion. After there was a clear understanding on what the MVP requirements were, the Valere team delivered an advanced UI mock up within Figma which really showed they understood our vision. After a meeting to ensure nothing was missing from the Figma mockup we moved on to working on the key MVP milestones. We requested our game be a browser based game built with react so it can be easily ported to be mobile compatible. Mongo, Heroku, GitHub, Redis, React, JS, and TS were all used to create the MVP.

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

A project manager for the developers was our primary POC. We also had direct contact with one of the companies onboarding officers who helped ensure our needs were being met throughout the development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our MVP was well received by our community, although the game is quite basic at this point we are continuing to work with Valere in ongoing development to introduce more features. As of now we are hosting regular tournament battles and gaining social media followers which was our key objectives with the MVP.

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

Valere was flexible with how we wanted to communicate, if we wanted to have a meeting it would be coordinated. Otherwise we regularly communicated via Slack and used Trello to manage/track progress through the milestones.

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

They were able to deliver a robust MVP game in a very short timeframe. I'm quite confident anyone else would not have been able to achieve what they have. From mockup to MVP game launch on roughly 1.5 months.

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

There was one point in which there was confusion on progress being made around the holidays. We quickly discuss and moved forward. This could have been solved by letting us know before hand.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there? 

I’m the CEO of Curated Logistics. We’re basically a middleman, bringing clients and providers together through a free-market platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Valere Labs?

We needed to have a mobile app developed.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I provided an outline of what we wanted in the app. After that, Valere Labs developed and designed our iOS and Android app. One of the features is a geolocator that clients can use to see a provider's online status and where they’re located. They can chat with the provider of their choosing.

They have completed the first phase and are currently working to add new features. They’re also fixing all the bugs as we go through the testing process.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with a team of four people, including one main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Valere Labs?

We found Valere Labs on Upwork. Of the three companies that made our shortlist, this team offered the most agreeable timeline and price. Overall, we felt like they were the best fit for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $57,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around June 2021, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The team has done well at designing and developing the app, and they give timely estimates for additional work when requested. Overall, we’re satisfied with the engagement.

How did Valere Labs perform from a project management perspective?

They update us daily, and they’re punctual during meetings. We communicate via Slack and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are respectful of our time, and they let us know if they need to cut meetings short.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were supposed to launch in October, so the project’s taking longer than I anticipated. However, I’m new to app development.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set a reasonable timeline, and make sure they clearly understand your vision.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-founder of a sports betting platform headquartered in Philadelphia

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to develop a mobile app for our users to access our content from their phones. Our. goal was to have a user-friendly platform that was easy to update from an admin perspective.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online for app developers in our area and shortlisted a few. After interviewing Valere, we chose them based on their past experience, design skills, and affordable prices.

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

We had a series of discovery meetings to discuss our goals and objectives. We provided their team with wireframes and designs. Within a few months, they delivered the first round of our app. They incorporated our feedback and delivered the revised version. Before launching, we ran it through beta testing

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

A project manager was assigned to be our main point of contact throughout the project. Additionally, I mostly interacted with the developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Within 3 months after our app was launched, we saw over 1,000 downloads and achieved a 5-star rating in app stores. We've seen a tremendous boost in traffic since launching.

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

The project manager was easy to communicate with and provided frequent updates. We spoke via email and phone calls all in a timely and professional manner.

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

Their mobile app development skills blew me away — they knew everything about UX and execution. Since this was our first mobile app. they were also patient, adaptive, and willing to walk us through their process while we learned.

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

Status reports on each stage of the project could have been helpful to limit misunderstandings

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of an emotional and mental health services organization that works with corporations and colleges. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Valere Labs?

We were looking for a development partner to work with us on a mobile platform so we can offer our services in a SaaS, subscription-based model. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Valere Labs developed our cross-platform mobile app. Our goal was to help corporate employees and college students get the help they need, whether in dealing with anxiety, stress, or needing help with their nutrition or sleep habits. The Valere Labs team did the initial analysis of the mockups and designs we provided them. 

They then took their understanding of our requirements for the platform and built the mobile app — their teammates also helped us define our user stories. 

Valere Labs then built out an administrative portal for the platform so that my company could manage the content. Valere Labs used a PHP Laravel framework on the backend and the administrative portal and used React for the rest of the development. The entire platform is hosted on AWS.

The application provides a month-long user journey, where users can participate in live workshops and daily mindfulness missions and access microlearning videos. The app also tracks surveys users take that record their emotional and mental health. 

What is the team composition?

We generally worked with 6–8 teammates from Valere Labs, but Ayush (Project Manager) was our main point of contact. We also worked with a development lead, a UX/UI developer, and a tester.

How did you come to work with Valere Labs?

I found Valere Labs through Upwork. Based on their reviews and portfolio, I decided to meet with them. I found Valere Labs to be passionate about our industry, and their skills and knowledge were great. The cost was also reasonable, especially because we are a small startup. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $50,000 with Valere Labs so far. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in April 2021 and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to launch our platform within our desired time frame. Valere Labs exceeded our expectations, especially because we didn’t have any plans to develop an administrative portal when we went into the partnership, but they were able to step up and offer that solution. 

Their team stepped up and led the administrative portal development — now, we can manage and maintain our user journeys.  

How did Valere Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

I would rate them pretty highly for their project management skills. We regularly communicate over Slack, and if there are any development issues, they’ll work overtime to fix them. The Valere Labs team is very responsive.

We have weekly sprint planning and status update meetings to coordinate and ensure our requirements are clearly defined and met. We use Jira for more official communication: they update us on what will be delivered. We also use the Jira board to determine which items need to be completed before the next sprint and need to be prioritized. 

Occasionally, we have in-person meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Valere Labs was able to work around our changing requirements and accommodate our workflows to meet our soft launch date. They are very flexible, which is a unique skill for them to have. 

I’m very glad we have the opportunity to work with a company as adaptable and flexible as Valere Labs — we didn’t have all of the specs laid out exactly when we began the partnership. They were able to work and make progress within our changing project requirements. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We experienced some bugs, which brought the platform down for a day, and we lost data for 10 days. A lot of that was due to us having the entire infrastructure hosted on one server. The team doesn’t have a lot of AWS experience, but we’re currently looking into fixing that issue. 

Valere Labs will put a person on our team with a better knowledge of our needs and rebuild some of our architecture and split the platform between servers. That way, something detrimental like that doesn’t happen again. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients need to spend time discussing the design and architecture of their platform with Valere Labs before jumping into development. 

Also, clients need to ensure that Valere Labs’ team has the development skills they need, and the client would benefit from having internal teammates with UX/UI skills to complement Valere Labs’ team. It’s then essential to ensure that the team integration is clearly defined to ensure success.