Vinta Software

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Lastmile Retail

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Local pages and listings management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Vinta Software to accomplish?

• Software development
• Process improvement

SOLUTION

How did you find Vinta Software?

Speaking events

Why did you select Vinta Software over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Vinta Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Enhance digital advertising capabilities of an enterprise location management platform with a new UX and new content-driven features.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Delivered new set of forms and features on time. Improved performance by >50%

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their project management is first-rate. Vinta goes above and beyond to adapt to the culture and reporting cadences of their customers, and takes an active role in continuous improvement.

What was your primary form of communication with Vinta Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Plug-and-play. Vinta hit the ground running and started delivering value very quickly. Relatively low oversight is required and they can be trusted to plan and execute difficult projects independently.

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

No project is perfect; Vinta is extremely responsive to feedback and will come to the table with their own recommendations for improvement as well. Even after a year of working together we continuously re-assess what's working well and what can be improved (both internally to Vinta and across our org), resulting in a very strong team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Product of PlusPlus, Inc.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

PlusPlus provides an enterprise-wide learning platform that unlocks internal knowledge sharing at scale.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Vinta Software to accomplish?

• Launch our MVP
• Expand and iterate on our product offerings
• Operate/maintain our SaaS platform

SOLUTION

How did you find Vinta Software?

Other

Why did you select Vinta Software over others?

Great culture fit, Referred to me, Company values aligned

What was the size of Vinta Software’s team?

10-15

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Vinta partnered with us to launch our very first MVP for an enterprise client. This was more than 6 years ago. Since then, the Vinta team provided full-stack enterprise SaaS application development services, including: user research, problem discovery, prototyping, application development, testing, launch, customer support, validation, constant iteration, and ongoing site maintenance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Feature development velocity
• Site reliability
• Customer satisfaction

Thanks to our deep partnership with Vinta, we have been able to launch an operate an Enterprise-grade SaaS offering, that effectively competes with teams that are 100x our size.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The Vinta team managed our product development end-to-end. Most of the features have been delivered on time and within the scope of what was requested. The team has been able to respond to our ever-changing needs (as we are learning from the market) and adjust accordingly.

What was your primary form of communication with Vinta Software?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

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

Partnership and ownership. The team showed up eager to build great software and ensure it operated well in production. Furthermore, the team is constantly challenging themselves to improve our tooling, processes, frameworks, and general methodology for software development. They actively attend conferences, learn from (and share with) the industry, and apply those learning to our product development.

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

It would be easy to say "more of everything" (e.g. faster development, more responsive/reliable site, more ownership, etc), but that can be said for any team anywhere. What I really appreciate about Vinta is their mindset of constant improvement. They look for what's not working well and then go after it, whether it's swapping people, bringing new tools, or improving our practices.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the product manager and customer success director for a legal software as a service company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

When we first created our software, we used a concept for our softwares deadlines that required users to understand abstract concepts. Each type of deadline had a specific use case, and some were required in order to use others. Overall the concept failed to scale, and users complained about how unintuitive it is when trying to keep track of their deadlines.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online and found Vinta (among others). They had the necessary full-stack experience we would need, in addition to having in-house designers.

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

We had a kickoff meeting late in December to determine the overall goal for the project. The project requirement was to take the entire timeline and overhaul it into a user-friendly, easily understood, and quick interface. However, we couldn't lose any of the necessary complexity that users had come to rely on.

We used a series of tools over the course of this project, from Asana, Whimsical, Figma, Sketchup. We started in the design and discovery phase and gradually came to a design that allowed for folding complexity. Users could use the interface simply, but when they needed complexity they could expand out to adjust the functionality.

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

A project manager was the main point of contact, but we had at least 2 designers, and 5 full-stack engineers at points.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our users raved about the changes, and we were able to land several larger clients based solely on the ability to seem simple but allow complexity. The implementation also improved our processing times on a daily basis, so the software ran smoother overall.

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

We had weekly meetings to discuss progress, sometimes bi-weekly. We would often discuss async over Slack, Asana, Clickup. They were exceptionally easy to reach and work with over the course of the feature re-design.

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

They are willing to work with us when we were still getting our feet under us as a software, and provided top level designers and engineers to us. I appreciate how helpful, professional, and intelligent they are. They listen and adapt as we make adjustments.

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

There were bugs during the development that caused minor hiccups, but overall they were relatively minor, so there's not much I would change.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm Chief of Staff at a DTC home management startup. We were struggling to set up some of the back-end piping related to tracking customer acquisition, and engaged Flavio at Vinta to help.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We asked Flavio to set up UTM tracking for our website, automate pushes of data captured through our website lead form to Hubspot and Django, set up a Google Maps autofill so people didn't have to manually enter their addresses on the lead form, and a few other items.

SOLUTION

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

Honestly, availability - Vinta came highly recommended and they had the time, so we jumped on it

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

We asked Flavio to set up UTM tracking for our website, automate pushes of data captured through our website lead form to Hubspot and Django, set up a Google Maps autofill so people didn't have to manually enter their addresses on the lead form, and a few other items. Flavio worked for 15 hours and was highly responsive by Slack and email, going out of his way to talk us through issues and working with our dev team.

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

1 person - not sure official position

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All the tasks were completed correctly and on time

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

Flavio was proactive in his outreach, slacking me ahead of time to make sure he stayed unblocked. He used Slack, email, and google meet

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

They do good work, fast

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

N/A

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of a legal tech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta Software?

We needed additional developers to help us rebuild our product faster than we were able to internally. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vinta Software provided development services for an intellectual property software used to manage intellectual property filings, using Python, Django, and React. 

What is the team composition? 

We work with four developers from their team. 

How did you come to work with Vinta Software?

They came very highly recommended and had great references. They also seemed to have a good balance of both senior and junior-level developers. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for about two years and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Vinta Software sped up our rate of development by over 50%. They're a great outsourced development shop option overall and we continue to work with them based on many intangible reasons like their high level of professionalism, responsiveness, and fluency in English. 

How did Vinta Software perform from a project management standpoint?

They're very communicative and organized, using Asana and Trello to track projects. They always provide a debrief of their work and are quick to address any issues that arise. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their high level of communication, project management, and quality of work make them great outsourced partners to work with. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Just as with any developer, there are always some challenges in balancing the scope of projects when it comes to feature creeping and everything in between. Overall, however, they're good at addressing any issues as they come up.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the co-founder and head of engineering at Tesorio, an enterprise financial platform that helps B2B and B2C companies with cash flow forecasting and their B2B collections process.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta Software?

We had a very small team of engineers internally but wanted to augment that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vinta provided software development services to us by augmenting our team with their developers. They used our tech stack which is Python Django on the backend and modern React stack on the frontend.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a senior partner and a mid developer.

How did you come to work with Vinta Software?

I met one of their founders at a local Python conference in San Francisco. I was really impressed with his presentation and decided to chat with him more. When I learned he had a software company, I wanted to try to work with him and his team. I looked up more about them including their GitHub opensource reports. I was really impressed by the company as a whole.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January to May 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They really helped us a lot. They were able to really contribute heavily to the overall architecture and development of the product. We have a quite complex product. We also set a high bar for engineering quality while maintaining speed to meet aggressive goals. Their team was able to meet and even exceed our expectations, even while working remotely. They become part of our team and, when the project ended, we were sad to see them go. They did a good job and it was a great experience.

How did Vinta Software perform from a project management standpoint?

Our arrangement was an augmentation of our existing team with their staff. They were part of our daily stand-up and everything like that. They have their project managers and typically work in their own teams. Because their developers worked within our team, we ensured most of the project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We appreciated that they weren’t just contractors to us. It’s our company philosophy that we don’t just want to give them the specs and expect them to execute. We want to get feedback to see what’s difficult and what can be improved. They brought that to the table. They didn’t just accept the spec sheet as is, they questioned it—and ultimately made the product better as a result of their input. They were careful and thoughtful about the engineering aspects but also about the product itself. Their feedback on the product development made a huge difference.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn't feel there was much to improve. They exceeded a lot of our expectations in terms of how they collaborated with us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.
I was the founder of a coffee-trading startup platform. It unfortunately no longer exists, but this doesn’t lessen the relationship we’ve had with Vinta Software in working through much of it.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta Software?
We hacked together a platform, which would be shown to investors to obtain funding. We were getting more business than we initially thought we would, so we needed someone to go in and test everything, write scripts, and make sure all features functioned as intended. We also needed to build many of the feature-sets that didn’t previously exist. I had worked with several other developers and was shocked at how quickly Vinta’s developer was able to start the initial process.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?
We worked directly with Flávio Juvenal, one of Vinta’s developers. I believe he also used other coders for writing scripts, but I don’t know how many. He was a value-add developer and walked us through why we should prioritize one thing over another and what should be done sooner rather than later. He not only identified issues, but also showed us why certain elements weren’t working.

Instead of just working on what we assigned them blindly, Vinta worked on the consulting side of things as well. They really were focused on understanding what we were trying to accomplish and providing alternate ways to develop. Our CTO was also impressed by his collaboration with Vinta’s team.

I have a limited knowledge of the development side, whereas our CTO had experience in this area. We were using a newer dynamic frontend platform based on JavaScript with NoSQL and MongoDB. We had a client-side database in place and were able to run and update certain things in real-time on the user end without going back to our main database.

How did you come to work with Vinta Software?
I looked through the top listings and reached out to Vinta Software based on their position. Their price and knowledge of our tech stack were good.

How much have you invested with Vinta Software?
The cost of their work was between $10,000­–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?
We initially reached out to Vinta Software in April 2015 and worked together for 5-6 months. We had a lot of ongoing work along the way, which Vinta tested for us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?
The most important reflection on Vinta’s group is that we continued to use them after the initial work. We occupied the WeWork coworking space, and there were other dev shops there that engaged with Vinta Software based on the work they did for us.

Flávio Juvenal flew out to San Francisco to meet and work with our team, but we also introduced him to several other partners. My understanding is that Vinta got business from this.

How did Vinta Software perform from a project management standpoint?
What really stood out to me was Vinta’s flexibility and responsiveness. If something happened, even if it was during late hours at their location in Recife, Brazil, I could send them a message and get a reply immediately. Usually, I’d have to tell them that it could wait until the next day. Vinta was more responsive than we needed them to be. I don’t remember what was used as a bug-tracking platform.

What did you find most impressive about Vinta Software?
The most important aspect was that they didn’t jump into any work without understanding it first. Sometimes, things can be complicated between 2 different cultures and languages, but not only is Vinta’s team proficient in English, they also made sure they understood what we were trying to accomplish without a lot of direction. This made me a lot more comfortable working with them compared to some other developers I’ve used. We never had to recode anything Vinta did.

Are there any areas Vinta Software could improve?
They could have moved to San Francisco. Had we closed our funding, we were hoping to convince Vinta to open an office in our city since that’s how closely we wanted to work together, going forward.

I am working on another project on which I hoped I could use Vinta, but they’re pretty booked. I would like them to grow substantially so that we could continue collaborating. Even though they don’t have the availability to take on certain projects, they’re still advising us without even charging us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of PlusPlus, which is an enterprise web app that simplifies internal learning event management for medium-sized to large technology companies. We offer assistance in areas like internal classes, tech talks, and tech-a-thons.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta?

Initially, we wanted to develop our MVP. Vinta came highly recommended to me.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vinta is my engineering team, and I act as the project manager. I have a UX designer, but Vinta also contributes to the design. I use them primarily for development and engineering. We are using the Django stack with Django Python, deploying on Heroku, and using React for the frontend.

How did you come to work with Vinta?

I wanted a stack that was great for enterprises and has a community around it. I evaluated everything from Java to Ruby on Rails and settled for Django because it met my criteria. My background is in Enterprise Java, so I would normally be much more comfortable with that, but Java did not have some other qualities that I liked about Python and Django. Then, I looked at Django, thinking that I would do some of the early engineering tasks myself. I contacted the authors of what I thought was the best book on the topic, asking if they would do some pair programming with me so I could pick up the skills faster. They were busy but recommended Vinta. By having an outside team, I can scale the work depending on customer feedback.

How much have you invested with Vinta?

I’ve been spending between $5,000 and $10,000 per month and between $70,000 and $80,000 per year. If we’re waiting for a customer to do a security review, we may not be developing that fast. Once we have a backlog, I can scale.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May if 2016. The product took 6 months to develop, and we launched in January of 2017 to power users of Salesforce. We launched to general Salesforce users in February of 2017. The project is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

We have great results and happy customers. We have thousands of users internally. I’m happy with the velocity. I’ve managed multiple engineering teams before when I worked at Twitter. Initially, I selected Vinta because of their Django Python skills, but I found that they have a Silicon Valley approach to software. We have a pretty good workflow in terms of how we create features and release them.

For my customers, the key metric is engagement. It’s not so much the number of users because that’s a finite amount. So far, those metrics have been really good. For me, what’s important is being able to build an attractive product that can serve many different companies. We’re looking for a perfect market fit that we can iterate fast, and we try to keep the product relatively lean in case we need to make changes. At the same time, we wanted to release enterprise-grade solutions that meet the needs and security concerns of large tech organizations.

How did Vinta perform from a project management standpoint?

I really admire their social conduct around work. The team has a shared understanding that the work is going to get done at a certain level of quality. They’re my engineers and my technical leads. They also protect the quality of the code and make sure that we’re not accumulating technical debt. I want features released quickly. Vinta recognizes that, but they also push the quality of their underlying code so that we don’t end up with something that falls apart.

Are there any areas Vinta could improve?

I don’t have any suggestions. It would be nice if their rate cheaper, but I wouldn’t get the same quality for that. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the chief marketing officer of the business. We offer a subscription mail delivery program.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta Software?

We needed to build a software that would allow us to create menus and set delivery dates in a flexible manner. There were no off-the-shelf options, so we started looking at a custom Python Django solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vinta Software developed our Python solution. There was some JavaScript involved, and we used Heroku for hosting. We used five developers across the run of our project and communicated regularly with three of them.

How did you come to work with Vinta Software?

After searching domestically and abroad, we found Vinta Software on Angel List. Vinta Software specialized in Python Django, which was important to us. The time zone was important as well. Vinta Software is close to Eastern Time, and the team is proficient in English. They offered a good price, much better than what we could find in the States. Because their team is part of a shop, we were confident that we could always add more hours and developers as we grew.

Initially, I spoke to one of Vinta’s developers. He seemed very confident and competent when it came to building what we needed. One of my colleagues also vetted their engineering and programming skills. He also checked if they were implementing best practices. He said that they were very good on all counts.

How much have you invested with Vinta Software?

The cost of Vinta Software’s services is $55 per hour. We use 80 hours per week with an open-ended agreement.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Vinta Software in August 2016. We expect that the collaboration will continue indefinitely.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Thanks to Vinta’s work, we managed to give our customers the ability to pause and skip more easily. We also provided customized menus. These improvements have helped decrease churn significantly. Users can take control of what they’re getting every week, so the process is more efficient. Our revenue has increased as well as the number of active customers. The general feedback about the ordering process has been extremely positive.

My team members are extremely happy with the work, especially since they aren’t always available for troubleshooting issues. Vinta Software is always helpful. Even though they work remotely, they feel like a part of our team.

How did Vinta Software perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Trello for project management. Vinta Software’s team is more active on it than myself, but I do check it from time to time. We also use Google Drive for keeping everything organized. Project management has been good. We have weekly check-ins. Everyone’s available on Slack, which is where we do most of our communication.

What did you find most impressive about Vinta Software?

Their ability to scale has been great. We’re able to add developers when we need to. The flexibility is also important, and Vinta Software is available on weekends. They had the ability to bring our vision to life without any difficulties. It was a challenging project, but we had no major issues.

Are there any areas Vinta Software could improve?

No. We’re happy with everything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of E.life, a Brazilian company. We do business in Brazil, Latin America, Portugal, and Spain. We provide software and services in social media data analysis, like social media monitoring. We also outsource people for CRMS [customer relationship management software]. We have customers like Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Nestle, but we’re always in the Spanish and Portuguese languages. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta Software?

Many customers now want to have customized dashboards. We have a solution internally, but many clients want to have data visualization that’s very customized for them. That’s why we hired Vinta Software. They did two dashboards for a big meat-exporting company in Brazil and for a mall chain that’s also in Brazil. They worked with Ruby and Angular JS, and they connected the dashboard to our database through APIs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I’m not really into coding anymore, so I only know Ruby and Angular JS. I talked to three people: Felipe [Founder & Frontend Developer, Vinta Software] and two more. It wasn’t a very big project; I think it took about three or four months. They did both dashboards in the same year, two years ago.

How did you come to work with Vinta Software?

I come from the same city in the northeast of Brazil, so I have a lot of contacts there. I tend to hire smaller companies there because I know the environment and I have a lot of contacts. I look on Facebook, Twitter, or GitHub at the new startups to see if they can provide services for us. Basically, I just browse around. I found them that way.

How much have you invested with Vinta Software?

I would say $20,000–$30,000. That’s the average fee for a small dashboard project.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our project has been completed. We are in contact. For now, they haven’t done anything else, but that’s just because we don’t have any demands that they could help with. We started in 2015. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

It was a small project, and we didn’t actually measure anything. The customer still uses the dashboard. It’s just frontend and connected to the API, so there wasn’t a ton of complexity involved. But, as far as I know, there were no complaints from my IT team.

How did Vinta Software perform from a project management standpoint?

We just used Trello and Slack, plus a lot of emails. I did a very rapid prototype because we already knew what we wanted based on the customer’s needs. It was a very small project, so the management wasn’t that challenging.

We communicate in Portuguese, but we all tend to write comments in English. Normally, we do coding in English. I haven’t heard from them in English, but a lot of small startups work overseas, and I don’t see English as a problem.

What did you find most impressive about Vinta Software?

If I compare them, I think they’re more flexible and more up-to-date with software quality procedures and software development management. That’s why I like to hire younger companies, so our company can learn the latest ideas. Vinta Software is pretty up-to-date with software development standards, whereas I stopped coding nine years ago and don’t have any idea what the best practices are today.

Are there any areas Vinta Software could improve?

I really can’t say much since it was such a small project. If it was a one-year project, I might have something to complain about, but this quick project was very smooth and unproblematic.