INTERVIEWED BY APPFUTURA ON APR 17, 2018
Please present yourself and your business.
I’m Andy, I’m CEO of MyBlender, we’re a mobile application for our consumers to create and share creative videos with their social networks.
Explain what your project was about.
We come out of the video/broadcast and production business so we had a good idea of what we wanted to create, but we had no experience with developing mobile applications. This was really a ground-up application that included not just the mobile app but also the backend hosting, serving, API, UI experience.
People are capturing video on their phones the whole time. We wanted to do something conceivable: how many have received a video from their friends which should’ve really been fifteen seconds but turns out to be 2 minutes? The idea is to try to make the content that you’re consuming as a receiver just as entertaining as it was in creating it.
We talked to major brands about how we could use their brand with a video theme on MyBlender to promote different events like a rock concert where they’re the sponsor, so we wanted to make sure that there were advertising opportunities.
Explain to what scope extend Hypersense was involved in your project.
All of this stuff had to be built by the backend so one of the things that attracted us to Hypersense was not only their ability to deliver the mobile application itself but their experience on the underlying code capability. We didn’t want to be in a position where we went to Andre to do the mobile application and had a different company trying to build the backend.
Another thing we really liked about Hypersense was that they were really involved in the project from start to finish. We didn’t just tell them: “code this”, they provided feedback and guidance throughout all the project. When we thought something might look good, Andre’s team would come back and tell us: “hey, this is good but our recommendation is to do this and this is the reason why”.
How did you get to meet the Hypersense team and what led you to hiring them?
I found Hypersense through what is now Upwork. Andre was one of the ones who responded there and that’s how we ended up hiring him.
How was their project management?
Andre has a tremendous amount of experience in running this kind of project management software. I can say with very little exception that he delivered when he said he was gonna be delivering, and that’s really an important part as well.
What we liked about Andre and his team is that they didn’t create meetings for the sake of making meetings, it’s not always necessary to have a meeting every Tuesday. I always felt like we were the only people they were actually working with. And clearly, we weren’t.
The style of project management that Hypersense has makes you feel really good as a client.
What was the budget range quoted for this project?
We set an initial budget of $25,000 and we said: we want to get a prototype for this. We did it in cooperation with them and asked them what they thought it would take. In the end, I think the project ended up at something like $75,000.
Was the project completed as expected?
Yeah, no surprises. You have to be realistic, sometimes there are unrealistic expectations where you hire someone.
Did you find their expertise up to what you expected? Did they require any kind of training from your end to understand your product?
Yes. When we were doing the interview process, we were very specific, we said: we only want you to bid if you have experience creating video-based apps on iOS that you can demonstrate.
Please highlight the best things of Hypersense
Their overall project management, they're easy to communicate, they have an uncanny way of making the client feel like they are the only work they’re working with, their ability to adapt and learn technologies in order to be able to deliver, and being able to deliver on time.
Is there anything you believe Hypersense could improve on?
That’s a tough one. I’m really struggling, I really can’t think of anything now.
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