Bubble Web Development for Early-Stage Internet Startup
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Web Development
- $10,000 to $49,999
- Aug. 2017 - Ongoing
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 4.5
- Cost
- 4.5
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"They a good job of understanding what our business needs are and what we're trying to solve for."
- Other industries
- Boston, Massachusetts
- 1-10 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
After contributing to the UI of a web app MVP, they built out the full solution using visual programming technology. Now, they provide web support and additional feature development.
The web app has performed well, and AirDev has been a valuable partner in delivering continuous improvements. Beyond fulfilling constantly changing end-user requests, they’ve been responsive to the client’s project management requests and focused on building a positive ongoing relationship.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I'm the cofounder and CEO of an early-stage startup that’s building a skill-based job application platform.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with AirDev?
We’re a non-technical founding team, and we decided to build the MVP of our product on Bubble, a visual programming service. As we scaled and brought on paying customers, we realized that working with experts in Bubble would allow us to be a lot more efficient and build better than we could be if we did it ourselves.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
The first time we ever worked with AirDev was a sprint engagement. Basically, they made the UI of our product look a little bit better right before we launched the first MVP. We had built all the workflows and logic, but seeing how they were able to execute what we were looking for in a pretty fast timeframe gave us some confidence. Down the road, when we wanted to build out more features and functionality into the product, we went directly to them.
That progressed into a more formal relationship where they’re our primary developers. We scope projects and figure out what we want to build and how we're looking to developing the product. Then, they'll tell us how much it will cost and build it for us. On an ongoing basis, they’re the people we go to to resolve bumps or issues in the product.
When things are more open-ended, we explain to Andrew (Co-Founder, AirDev) what we would like to achieve and he comes back with examples of what we could do or a mockup of what it would look like in Bubble using our standard templates. There are other times when we've done more extensive wireframing and designing on our own and then come to them with exactly what we want to build. They’ve replicated our work in those cases.
What is the team composition?
We don’t have any full-time engineers on our staff. There have been periods of time where we've had contract developers on our team building Bubble things, but, by and large, it's been all of us non-technical folks in-house and AirDev helping us build.
We've interacted with four or five people from AirDev over the course of our two years of working together, but by and large, Andrew is our main point of contact. There are a couple of team members who have gotten to know our product pretty intimately as well. One is a little bit more design and frontend focused, another is more of a project manager, and then there’s one who's more of a backend and workload builder.
How did you come to work with AirDev?
Bubble credits were being offered as a benefit of one of the coworking spaces or accelerator programs we were in when we first started, and so we decided to try learning Bubble. Then, as we were familiarizing ourselves with Bubble, we were offered a free consultation call with AirDev as a part of the associated credit package.
We had one call with Andrew, which was really just him advising us on how to use Bubble to build the MVP ourselves. We hadn't paid him anything or worked with him at all. As we were getting closer to launch, it didn't quite look the way we wanted it to, so we reached out to Andrew and asked if he would be able to help us. That was the starting point of us realizing we could go to them for a lot more.
How much have you invested with them?
We pay them a monthly support fee for bug resolution and everything else. But, we’ll also pay scoped contracts for new features when we reserve capacity to execute on specific things. To this point, we've spent between $30,000–$40,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
That first sprint engagement was August 2017, and we’re still working with them. The full commercial solution launched in April 2018, and it’s been support and continuing feature builds since then.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
As a non-technical team, the fact that we’ve been able to create a commercially viable product on Bubble that enterprise customers are using is a testament to AirDev’s help and reliability. We've had very few bugs or crashes of downtime issues since the launch, and customers are certainly happy every time we roll out a new feature. AirDev has helped us be responsive and integrate requested features from customers.
They are some technical limitations of Bubble as a platform, but that's not a reflection of AirDev's development capability. They’ve done a good job of helping us understand what's feasible in Bubble versus not. I'm very happy with what they've done.
How did AirDev perform from a project management standpoint?
One of the nicest things about having a longer-term relationship is the iteration of communication. I feel like Andrew, in particular, is very responsive. When I've needed things, if I haven't always heard from the team or anything like that, I can reach out to him and he will be very quick to respond and get on top of it.
There are sometimes challenges or complexities in using their project management portal as opposed to email or other tools, but they’ve invested a lot in making that better and smoother. Not that our team has gotten used to their way of work, it's all worked well. They have a project management portal that all customers under a certain tier should use. If you pay them above a certain tier, they'll work within your Asana or other things like that. But otherwise, you log, request, and track the project in the area of the portal. I totally understand why they do that, and our team has adjusted to that. They've continued to invest in that as well, to the point where they rolled out a feature where we could easily go into test mode and screenshot and comment on issues or bugs that we find. Those are automatically dropped into the portal on our behalf so we don't have to screenshot and copy and paste and all these things that we had to do initially.
When they say something will take a certain amount of time, it’s generally on time. I think the things that are more unpredictable are those that required testing when iteration and feedback can stretch out. Their initial estimates for the first versions are always very accurate, and any delays are normally because of business considerations on our side. Overall, they’re responsive in meeting our needs.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They a good job of understanding what our business needs are and what we're trying to solve for. This helps them be a proactive partner in our work. Andrew actually understands my company and my business well enough to offer suggestions on how some things could work. Along with junior members who have joined the team, they keep senior members on as well to maintain the relationship support. This is a strong value-add for an early startup.
Are there any areas they could improve?
Overall, they’ve been great partners. I think they are still iterating a bit on their business model, in terms of how things are priced though. It’s ranged from one-off project budgets to purchasing capacity on a dedicated team for a specific amount of time. Therefore, more predictability on pricing would be nice, but we understand that, as an early company, they’re always iterating.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I think there are two ways you can work with AirDev. One way is going to them with just an idea and asking them to help you build an MVP. I feel confident that they can do that, based on what I've seen. If you’re doing that, make sure you know what you want to get out of the MVP.
If you then evolve into a long-term development relationship like we now have, it’s important to set clear expectations around deadlines and prioritizations. If you ask for 50 things, be clear about what the most important five are. This will help them balance their capacity.
RATINGS
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Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
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Schedule
4.5On time / deadlines
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Cost
4.5Value / within estimates
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Willing to Refer
5.0NPS