“As a growing company, we value this flexible and supporting relationship.” - Founder, Automated Customer Retention Platform
I’m the CTO and founder of a customer retention startup. We specialize in helping subscription-based businesses and software as a service (SaaS) companies grow.
Project Background and Scope
I had worked with one of their founders prior to him creating Shrine Development. I knew that he produced high-quality work and had a good eye for recruiting and training talent. I had a short timeframe to make a decision, so I relied upon my history and experience when considering potential firms. That process resulted in us hiring Shrine Development.
Shrine Development collaborated with me to build the prototype application. We requested them to use Java on the backend and React on the frontend. They created the operational infrastructure on AWS using tools like EC2 and S3. They’ve developed a Kubernetes cluster in addition to the initial prototype. Their team also provided some monitoring and alerting work for us using Grafana and Prometheus.
We began working together in March 2018 and the engagement is ongoing. The original agreement was around the creation of the prototype and subsequent support services. Once we completed that initial phase, we established an ongoing contract with them for a minimum number of hours each month.
So far, we’ve worked five different resources throughout the engagement. We’ve spent roughly $100,000–$150,000 thus far.
Highlights from working with Shrine Development
Because of their exceptional development and project management skills, they’re more of a partner to us than an outsourced firm. We don’t have to watch over them closely or do a lot of the management work. They’ve built complex systems for a lot of different customers and have done so by utilizing a variety of engineering and product inputs. I’m most impressed with their ability to take rough ideas and build them to completion. Most outsourcing firms require clients to have polished and detailed specifications before even considering doing business. Shrine Development offers a more full-service experience. They’ve demonstrated the capacity to deliver every aspect of a project successfully.
They correctly itemized everything and delivered the outcomes we wanted on time. As a result, we were able to vet the idea and raise additional capital based on the prototype. We now have several customers using the app. We’ve since engaged their services further so they can perform multiple functions such as frontend engineering, backend engineering, and DevOps. We’ve begun to grow the engineering side of our company but still use them as a resource buffer of sorts. As a growing company, we value this flexible and supporting relationship.
They use Basecamp and we’re fairly happy with that as a software. One of their engineers holds regular meetings to communicate the priorities of each development cycle and evaluate how their performance matches up with said priorities. Shrine Development uses tools effectively, communicates frequently, and gives us a lot of confidence in their ability to drive development forward. They do a good job of hitting milestones and providing information if anything changes.
I don’t have any substantial recommendations at this time.
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