Zoolatech

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of CognitOps, a B2B SaaS company headquartered in Austin, Texas. We provide supply chain software to Fortune 500 companies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zoolatech?

We wanted to accelerate our product roadmap and the development of features and functions in our software. As a result, we partnered with Zoolatech to add software engineering capacity to our internal team at a lower price point than here in North America.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started to engage with Zoolatech around March 2021 and have been growing their team steadily. From one software engineer, we’re now working with seven software engineers from their team. They primarily use technologies such as Scala, Java, and more — and the team has shown proficiency in our entire technology stack.

They strictly provide staff augmentation and they augment 30% of our internal software engineering team — they’re not dedicated to any specific product or custom development. Instead, they work shoulder to shoulder with our software engineering team in Austin, Texas and throughout North America.

Their main goal is to help us build the backend product that sits inside the cloud to provide services to Fortune 500 clients. We expect our relationship to grow materially in the remainder of the year as well as in 2022. 

What is the team composition?

We’re working with seven software engineers from Zoolatech.

How did you come to work with Zoolatech?

A company recommended Zoolatech to us. As a result, I reached out to Roman (CEO). Prior to starting our engagement, we asked them if they had any experience using Scala and they said no. However, they said they’d be able to ramp up their team quickly and find talented individuals that could contribute to our project. In the end, we found them to be someone worth partnering with.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $500,000 in eight months, and we expect to spend over $1 million in 2022.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing collaboration started in March 2021.

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

We took a bet when we decided to partner with Zoolatech and it’s been paying off in spades. In particular, we’ve been impressed with the quality of teammates they’ve given us and the speed at which they've been able to source and land team members that could help our internal team. On top of that, they’ve ensured that they choose teammates that have experience with the technology stack we’re dealing with. Due to that, we have a great relationship with them.

Essentially, we measure their success based on customer activations — specifically the ability of our business to take on new work and activate customers because of their software engineering team. In connection with that, if we compare our year-over-year (YoY), we’ve been able to onboard ten times more clients because of Zoolatech.

How did Zoolatech perform from a project management standpoint?

They participate in our morning rituals such as our standups and scrum sessions. We use Slack, Google, and Zoom as our communication tools. Then, we use Atlassian and GitHub as our software development tools. In relation to that, we have no language barrier or timezone issues because they're willing to work late to make sure that they stay connected with us.

Their team has also done a great job of introducing a lead or director of software engineering to us who serves as our eyes and ears in Ukraine. Due to that, we don’t have to micromanage them since we could lean on their lead to guide the Ukraine team. On our side, our CTO and our management team in North America ensure that we coach individuals in the way we expect them to behave and perform — and ensure that they live out our core values.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our company has modeled a six-month ramp-up for Zoolatech’s software engineering resources — to ensure that they could be productive and impactful in our roadmap and projects. In connection with that, we’ve been impressed by how fast they’ve been able to learn what we've prepared for them. Despite the six-month ramp-up, we’ve seen them productive since day one.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Zoolatech needs to grow even faster so that they can support us more because we’re rapidly growing. However, I don’t have any negative feedback about them. Overall, our relationship has been extremely positive and it’s been a pleasure to work with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Lean on their expertise and don’t try to micromanage them or be biased with your past outsourcing experiences. A lot of people have horror stories so they try to implement way too many protocols and red tape in the process.

If you do that, you’re only going to slow them down. See them as a trusted partner and allow them to source the best candidates for your project. In the end, you only need to let them do what they’re great at, which is to develop great products.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of software engineering at Complete Solar. We provide solar design for residential installations and have two main applications. The first one is for creating solar designs and proposals for customers. After the sale is done, we use the second application to take the project through all its phases: getting permits, ordering equipment, and doing the installation and inspection.

After generating a proposal, it can end there. The client can go to someone else for the installation. We can also take on projects scoped by someone else and handle all the phases of the installation.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zoolatech?

We brought them on for their app development services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Zoolatech is developing our apps. One functionality is for getting information about electricity usage, the location of the user, the pitch and direction of the roof, shading, and so on. The apps connect to certain APIs to assess the production of the solar panels for the home, in terms of how many panels we need to put in and what their design should be.

Zoolatech is working on what we call a “smart layout”, which allows us to place panels on the sunniest areas of a roof. We’re constantly improving functionalities and adding completely new ones.

What is the team composition?

We have one frontend developer and three backend developers from Zoolatech, and we’re adding two more.

How did you come to work with Zoolatech?

Our CEO knew their CEO.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost is around $30,000 per month. We pay them on a monthly basis per full-time engineer.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Zoolatech around October 2020, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

We assess them based on how solid the solution is and how many times we send it to QA after a release. The apps they’ve developed give us the opportunity to get more customers. We’re providing more services to target big customers, namely companies in the solar industry that’ll use our apps to create proposals. We can install jobs faster and identify reduce bottlenecks, so we’re providing a better customer experience.

How did Zoolatech perform from a project management standpoint?

Their engineers are outside the US, but they make themselves available at night in case something comes up. That commitment is important because all the problems happen during the day when people are using the product. They’re available to jump in and address any problems, especially when we have a big release.

We have meetings once a month to give them feedback and address any concerns. I manage their people as though they were my team. Our teams set up timelines and follow them. We’ve had some very challenging features that they weren’t able to deliver on time, but we haven’t had any issues overall.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s definitely the quality of the candidates so far. Zoolatech has a good screening process. Not everybody was super solid, but we have at least one person on the team that’s extremely good and whom I can rely on. It’s not easy to find resources with that level of expertise.

We’ve had experience with a lot of engineers over the years, and it isn’t always easy to find the right person who’s going to be committed to a project and has the right skills. I don’t know if it’s just chance that Zoolatech found this person, but I give them credit for it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We pressured them to hire someone very fast at one point so they didn’t do the screenings they’d normally do. The new person ended up not being a good fit and ended up wasting everyone’s time and money. Zoolatech canceled all their fees and told us they wouldn’t rush their screening process again.

If they feel like they’re not performing to the level of their own rules or standards, they’ll acknowledge that they’ve made a mistake, even though it was done on our request in that instance. They learned from the mistake and didn’t repeat it.

We’ve worked with another company before Zoolatech, which provided 10 hours per month free of charge for server administrative support. Something like that would be a really good addition for Zoolatech.

The other company also set up a QA server for their people to test our stuff. They had a whole solution for hosting our app on their servers, and that was an important part of delivering. Zoolatech should also look into this.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

We prefer to assess how long something is going to take and push it on them, rather than letting the engineers take their sweet time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a fintech company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zoolatech?

We were looking to rapidly increase the size of our development capacity.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They used Ruby on Rails, MySQL, and React. They essentially own the entire projects for us. At our direction, they organize the teams and collaborate with our product owners to work on the backlog and deliver features.

What is the team composition?

At this time, we’re working with 30 people from their side.

How did you come to work with Zoolatech?

I used to work with one of the founders. They reached out to me. When we talked it through, it seemed like they would be able to deliver on their promises. Because of this, we gave them a shot.

How much have you invested with them?

It’s been seven figures over the years.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement started about three years ago.

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

We’ve been very happy with Zoolatech’s work. We primarily focus on the quality of the deliverables, and if they’re getting stable products out. They’ve had challenging products to deliver, and they’ve even dug into new technologies, like Salesforce, when we needed them. It’s been mostly positive feedback from our product team. That’s why we continue working with them.

How did Zoolatech perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s gone quite well. We have them mimic the same structures we have with our internal teams. They follow those procedures and communicate very well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to customize their offerings to meet our needs stands out. They structure work in the way we want and work in the way we like. Their quality service is dependable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing really comes to mind. It’s been a smooth engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very open with them about what you’re looking for. If they know what you’re looking for, they can understand your needs and customize what they do to fit what you’re looking to do. They’re flexible and open.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former CTO of a boutique hotel company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zoolatech?

It was a tough recruiting market at the time in the Bay Area, so we were looking to scale our engineering team rapidly.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided engineers to us. We had a product roadmap that we needed to get through and they supplied resources for us to get through it quickly. 

What is the team composition?

We dealt with one person.

How did you come to work with Zoolatech?

I had worked with Roman (CEO & Co-Founder) before. I was familiar with his skills and recruiting capabilities.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from April 2013–2017.

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

Zoolatech gave us the ability to scale our engineering team up rapidly without a huge investment in time and money spent recruiting here in the Bay Area. By using them, we were able to get a lot of our time back.  

How did Zoolatech perform from a project management standpoint?

I managed the project since they were embedded in our team. Everything was very seamless.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their developers are production-ready. We didn’t have to spend a lot of time bringing them up to speed on the technology or the way our organization works. They worked better than most companies out there because they’re very picky about who they recruit.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At the time we started with them, they didn’t have UX designers and digital designers on staff, so we had to go and recruit those from other agencies. If they had a consolidated offering where they had both engineers and UX/UI designers, that would have been even better for us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You have to treat them as full partners. It’s important that you treat their team as embedded within yours and not as an outside firm that you’re throwing things over the wall to. Spend some time at their office or have them come to yours to help you bond quicker because that in-person time helps a lot. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a director of mobile apps at with a major retail company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zoolatech?

In our specific area, finding high-skill engineers is really difficult. We were trying to increase our development resources and turned to Zoolatech to help us scale up.

What was the scope of their involvement?

There’s really no specific scope to our work with them because they are as much a part of our team at this point as our in-house developers. They help us with all of our operations, including iOS and Android mobile app development, testing, and QA alongside our fulltime employees.

What is the team composition?

I think we have about 30 people from their team working on our products.

How did you come to work with Zoolatech?

Someone at our company knew of their founder, and we requested a proposal from them and another company. Their technical expertise really won out, so we decided to go with them.

 What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in January 2018 and we are continuing to work together.

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

Their throughput as a non-employee vendor is pretty much equal to our full-time employees’, which we are really pleased with. The quality of their work has been absolutely excellent.

How did Zoolatech perform from a project management standpoint?

The program management resources have been outstanding. They coordinate with our internal program management resources to make sure that stakeholders are communicated to and that we are always aware of the dates that they set for delivering on specific milestones.

We have regular video conference calls with their team and coordinate over email many times a day on top of that. Now that we’re all remote, it’s almost perfectly integrated into our communication as an internal company.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What really differentiates Zoolatech is the level of ownership they take over the work they do. They care as much about our company and product as our employees do, and they really go above and beyond to satisfy a deep curiosity and make sure they are proud of their work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, this is definitely the best relationship I have ever had with a third-party vendor.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Really trust their resources. They hire good people and do a good job of understanding your culture, so the worst thing you can do is micromanage those resources. Just give them responsibility and a chance to succeed and you will be very successful with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Senior Director of Product at Ten-X, a commercial real estate marketplace. We provide a platform for brokers to put their inventory to sell.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zoolatech?

We support the tools that work with real estate transaction lifecycles. There are tools on the platform that interact with the bottom of the funnel where the transaction and paperwork happens.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve worked with several offshore developers to provide development support, including Zoolatech. They provided frontend, backend, and data science work.

On the frontend, they designed the navigation and search results page. They redesigned the page. Their team also supplied backend design to manage different types of marketing material.

What is the team composition?

We had around 15 people, spread between the frontend team and the backend marketing tool.

How did you come to work with Zoolatech?

Their pricing was good, we knew they had engineers that could ramp up quickly.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $1 million in 2019.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work started in summer of 2019 and is ongoing.

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

They had low numbers of bugs and hit all KPIs. They were very enthusiastic and got everything done that we asked. They delivered quickly and had a quick turnaround. Everything was great.

How did Zoolatech perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a strong project management team that is flexible. We have an up-to-date version of Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Things got done very quickly. They were always up to speed on our methods.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are no issues outside of minor time zone issues with them in Ukraine.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Stay in touch with their engagement manager.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work with the Stanford Alumni Association, and I’m the technical product manager for Stanford Magazine.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zoolatech?

We realized that we needed to redevelop our CMS for the magazine. It was pretty outdated, so we brought in Zoolatech to redefine that workflow and deploy newer technologies for the publishing platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Zolatech was essentially our technical development team. They provided front- and backend development services. We had a designer on our internal staff that provided mockups and Zoolatech handled the development.

What is the team composition?

At most, we had three key members working on the project. They provided a number of different developers that we interviewed and selected each developer for our team. We assembled a team consisting of a lead developer, a frontend engineer, and a project manager.

How did you come to work with Zoolatech?

It was through a colleague who provided a contact. We were looking at other development services in our area, but Zoolatch was more affordable and provided the flexibility that we wanted. We were able to scale up and down based on the needs of the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the engagement in May of 2018 ad it ran through April 2019.

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

It has been transformational. Our workflow and publishing process is completely different. We were able to integrate a number of new interface elements that allow us to tell stories in new ways. We’ve been able to invest in the platform so it can adapt to our editor’s changing needs.  Having direct control has completely shifted how we think about the digital services offered by the magazine.

How did Zoolatech perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great from a project management standpoint. We had a project manager who was the person I could talk with if we were having any issues or just to communicate on a daily basis. We ran the project using an agile methodology, so we had daily standups and retrospective meetings to discuss sprints. Having that project manager gave me a really easy point of contact if there were any concerns or if I was thinking about where the project was going.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They became a part of our integrated team. We didn’t see them as service providers—they were core team members. Having a daily conversation with them and getting to know their personalities was a great benefit. It was wonderful to see the investment they had in our project made when challenges arose. They were willing to work outside of normal hours. They’re also ten hours ahead of us, which we were concerned about at first, but they were extremely accommodating to our schedule.

They were very flexible as well. We weren’t exactly sure what we needed going into the project, and they were willing to work with that ambiguity. And still, they delivered everything on time and on budget.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they were great partners throughout the project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take the time to interview a number of different candidates that they provide. That way, you can find the right fit in terms of personality.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are HDS Global, and I am the CTO of the company

What challenge were you trying to address with Zoolatech?

Bringing in talent to the company at speed was the biggest objective. We’re based in the Bay Area, so competing with companies like Google and Facebook for developers can often be incredibly difficult, and we reached out to Zoolatech for help.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were able to access the talent market in Ukraine through their services. They provided both recruiting capabilities and strategy, helping us to understand how to best attract talent and then putting our materials in front of a big enough pool to build the team that we wanted.

What is the team composition?

They have brought about 12 people onto our team so far.

How did you come to work with Zoolatech?

Our company interviewed about five different firms for the engagement, meeting each of them and evaluating their capabilities. Our selection process was focused on making sure they were both able to meet our requirements and also a cultural fit in terms of the values we have as a company. Zoolatech was by far the strongest and made a really good impression with us, so we decided to work with them.

How much have you invested with them?

The total project cost has been a little over $2,000,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked together for a little over a year, starting in January 2019, and the partnership is ongoing.

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

Our biggest success metric is really the ability to execute on the product. The resources we have engaged through Zoolatech work in conjunction with our team in the US, so we don’t have a way to isolate their team and just evaluate them completely independently, but we can measure their contribution through our ability to follow the roadmap that we’ve laid out, as well as the quality of the product we are ultimately able to produce. All of that has been substantially higher than we expected.

The other aspect of the work is in the rate of attrition from their side, and how well they are able to acquire developers that want to stay with us for the duration of the work. We don’t have any attrition so far, which is really spectacular for the outsourcing model.

How did Zoolatech perform from a project management standpoint?

We don’t have project management in the traditional sense since we are running an agile style development process with their team fully integrated into ours, but we do have an account manager on their side. That person has been exceptionally involved in the process, and they do an excellent job of keeping tabs on both the progress and happiness of the members of their team.

In terms of communication, we are in touch closely every single day. We make use of Microsoft teams as a communication channel and for video conferencing, we’re using Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

As we mentioned, culture is a big deal for us, and we run a culture survey twice a year that includes their team as well. They run a culture survey internally as well, which provides us with a lot of valuable feedback as well and is, in my opinion, a big part of the reason we haven’t experienced any attrition.

On a more fundamental level, that culture match has been the key to attracting talent that fits our company’s style and needs. When you’re hiring and interview a bunch of candidates that don’t work out, it can become a very negative experience, so having a process in place that works well is incredibly valuable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really don’t think there’s anything I would suggest they improve.