Vivify Ideas

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an online cosmetic procedure consultation platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vivify Ideas?

We’ve had a lot of SEO challenges as we try to scale. The most recent challenge was switching the entire platform to Angular Universal without making mistakes that would limit the amount of traffic coming to the website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They do a lot of the back- and frontend engineering for our site. We do the designs and they make the whole thing come together. For example, they recently managed the switch to Angular Universal, which went pretty smoothly.

Even as we build up our internal team, as long as we continue to have a big team working alongside ours, we’ll have 24-hour coverage. As the site gets busier, we really can't let it ever be down.

What is the team composition?

We have a team of five colleagues from Vivify that work for us full time every week, but our primary contact is our project manager. Between their team and ours, we have a combination of different types of engineers and tech analysts to figure out how to take this to scale.

How did you come to work with Vivify Ideas?

We were looking for a group of good engineers and were referred to them. We had an initial phone call with them, after which we asked them for some of their work and for them to code a little project. They passed all the tests. Plus, their reviews on a platform I searched were top-notch. All the signs were positive, so we gave them a try.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent a little over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for over three years now and continue to do so.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They've always been able to accomplish every challenge we've ever presented them. It's never been an issue of whether we can build something; they can always build what we want to be done and get it out in time. They’ve never let us down.

Unlike many other engineers, the first version of a Vivify solution is always usable, with a minimal number of bugs, as can be expected in a first iteration. We work those things out and get a really good system.

How did Vivify Ideas perform from a project management standpoint?

When we started working with Vivify, they were a brand-new company. We worked directly with one of the co-founders, who is a fantastic engineer. One of their first hires was an outstanding engineer who is still our manager. He oversees everything and is critical to what we do.

We’ve never had any language barriers or issues with the time difference. We set up a system wherein, if there’s a problem late at night our time when they’re asleep, we can send a special urgent email, but we haven’t had any problems since they work late.

We use various tools for communication and project management (e.g., Slack, Google Drive). In the very early days, we used GitHub. They also have their own tools—specifically one called Vivify Scrum, a scrum board that we use to manage issues. We were able to give them feedback on it and they customized it based on our needs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They've been able to maintain the quality of engineers as they have scaled up, from three or four to close to 70. They’re very good at identifying talent and have been able to find very strong engineers—, both those with extensive experience and new talent. That’s extremely difficult to do, especially if you're doing development for other people, it's not in-house, and you're not a giant company. They’ve somehow been able to balance growth with keeping people very motivated.

There aren’t any weak points. We’ve had to substitute engineers on occasion for various things. For example, as we built an ad platform, we had to swap in one of their engineers that had a lot of specialized knowledge in that; he didn’t miss a beat. I've always found that to be the case too if an engineer is on vacation and somebody else fills in. There are never any issues with the people they have working on the projects. I think as long as they can maintain that moving forward as they continue to scale, a lot of companies will be looking for people like them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything right now. I hope they don’t switch their focus from engineering for outside firms to building their own software.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It might be useful to have a U.S.-based designer work with them if you anticipate cultural differences.