Distillery

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company that offers an iOS and web-based family scheduling app. The product is a shared family calendar organizer for both scheduling and sharing events. The app also offers shared grocery and to-do lists. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Distillery?

When we formed the company, 2 of my family members came up with the product idea. They asked me to partner with them to get the product developed. None of us are programmers or engineers, so we needed a third-party to build the first version of our platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were a brand-new startup and just had an idea. We met with Distillery to outline what we were trying to achieve as far as functionality. After that in-person session, they spent a couple of weeks laying out an MVP. We started working on the design, and they gave us a full series of different design choices. We tweaked our selection until we got the right look and feel. After finalizing our approach, we started the building process.

The product needed to have full calendar capabilities, with scheduling functionality for a family as well as shared grocery and to-do lists. Distillery shared their insight as far as which functions would add value to the calendar and scheduling platform. The app also allows a family to share scheduled events with others, such as a grandparent or babysitter. A key part of the platform is that we could keep the family up-to-date with regards to the details of upcoming events.

The app also includes a messaging function. Users can message inside an event, and that message streams live with the event. We didn’t integrate with other social media networks or payment services. We’re about to begin developing the Android version.

We had a 9-person team from Distillery and interacted with probably 5 of the team members—2 or 3 of them on a daily basis, and 5 on a regular basis. We’ve interacted with all the team members at some point. We have a steady project manager who handles all the high-level stuff.

How did you come to work with Distillery?

We did online searches for development companies and requested pitches. We interviewed about 7 different firms around the country to see if they’d be a good fit for the project, ultimately settling on Distillery. Since our idea was for a family-based product, we were looking for a firm that had a smaller, family atmosphere. We wanted to get to know the people involved in the project and work closely with them on our overall vision. Several of the groups we met with were really big firms with lots of people. Distillery is a mid-sized firm and has a lot of expertise in all the right pieces.

We’ve been working with Distillery every day for about 18 months, and they’ve become part of our family atmosphere. We talk every day and are involved in all the planning. It’s been a great relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in January of 2016, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

We don’t share the specific statistics, but we’re ahead of schedule and have performed better than expected.

How did Distillery perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve really stayed on schedule. As with any project, hurdles came up that either delayed the work or changed our direction. I’m impressed with their ability to identify and adapt to possible issues. They always communicate the reason for a delay or potential future issue.  

We had full access to JIRA, where we could monitor their daily activity. We were involved in the development team’s Slack channel. We also had weekly Skype calls and daily email and telephone conversations. We visited them in Santa Monica for meetings probably a dozen time over 18 months.

What did you find most impressive about Distillery?

I was impressed by their ability to respond to hurdles. They have a strong team atmosphere. I felt they really took our feedback, advice, and input seriously. They caught on to our vision and did a great job in fulfilling it. Distillery is the only firm I’ve dealt with, so I don’t have anything to compare, but I’ve been happy with their work.

Are there any areas Distillery could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. We’ll continue to work with them for the foreseeable future. Any problems and issues that arose were corrected, so I don’t have specific feedback about improvements. They’re fairly priced relative to the other groups we interviewed. They were timely in their output, and the product has performed as described.

Do you have any advice or suggestions for potential clients?

Don’t hire the first group you meet; instead, really invest in speaking to several different firms. They all have advantages and disadvantages, but it’s important to get to know a provider well before making a big commitment that could determine your success or failure. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We offer a video-on-demand platform specializing in film and video game trailers, as well as videos about lifestyle and tech product launches, and live events such as concerts. We offer a video-only experience for previews. I am the founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Distillery?

Each developer has different types of incentives and agendas in terms of nudging the client towards certain packages and development approaches. One firm may have a focus on HTML5, so they will steer towards hybrid development, while others may have good iOS or Java developers, and so on. I had done a smaller-scale project using a competitor of Distillery, who wanted to nudge me in a direction that I didn't care for. I searched for a better fit and found Distillery.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with Distillery to build our platform on iOS and the web, and they also provide occasional bug fixes. We don't have any in-house developers, so all the work is done by Distillery. Although they're not cheap, the advantage of choosing a premium development shop is the guarantee of working with good talent, instead of bringing in mediocre in-house resources. This is a good solution, depending on the circumstances. We've had an overall professional experience with Distillery.

I brought some work done through my previous engagement with another firm, thinking that it could help save time, but Distillery pretty much started from scratch, redoing everything. The final product was much better, especially given that the previous engagement was much smaller in scope and had to be rushed. Distillery has a very high in-house standard.

I worked with 2 product managers, one product owner, one UX [user experience] and one UI [user interface] designer, a full-stack developer, and a number of backend developers who were probably offshore. In terms of senior, decision-making personnel, Distillery assigned 6-7 people to my project, on top of the main resources writing the code. I met with Distillery's team every 2 weeks, which is how long our sprints were. We would set milestones, have reviews (usually at their office), write detailed critiques, and go from there. Everything went through Distillery's project manager and product owner, but I also interacted with the UI and UX designers.

How did you come to work with Distillery?

I looked up some of the best firms in LA through Google, looked at portfolios, and spoke with them, talking about budgets and types of development. Reputation was a factor. Some firms are known to outsource much of their work to certain countries with a less-than-great reputation, while others made promises which they couldn't likely keep. Since I couldn't just use places like Yelp, much of the process consisted of going to meetings, feeling them out, and moving on from there.

How much have you invested with Distillery?

The cost of Distillery's services has been around $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Distillery in November 2015. Our main engagement ended in April 2016, but we had another minor project in the fall of this year, for a couple of weeks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Distillery has an emphasis on hiring talented people, who aren't afraid to suggest things that push back against the client's wishes. Many of these turned out to be much wiser decisions, mainly because, as a client, I lacked industry insight. I was often pleasantly surprised by the deliverables.

How did Distillery perform from a project management standpoint?

There was a bit of a communication issue with our first project manager. Distillery nipped this in the bud, terminating that person. He was probably a recent hire being tested out, and Distillery let him go when it was discovered that he wasn't communicating properly. From there, everything was smooth.

Distillery isn't the right firm for people with a tendency to micromanage. Other shops encourage active daily client involvement for every step of the process. In the case of Distillery, I trusted that they have talented people, and only gave broad strokes, empowering them to fill in the rest. Critique can be done afterward, changing things in the next sprint, but the overall experience isn't as hands-on as some clients would want.

What did you find most impressive about Distillery?

I can't think of anything in particular for Distillery. Many shops have gimmicky marketing products, but it all comes down to how talented their people are.

Are there any areas Distillery could improve?

In terms of communication, there could be more expedient processes than email. Distillery could use Slack or something else which could prompt immediate responses. It's understandable wanting to favor using email, given that there will always be times when they won't want to get back to the client right away.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Sixgill provides proximity data services to enterprises operating mobile applications on their employees' phones and other devices. We also allow clients to track assets in their IoT [Internet of Things] infrastructures, detecting when proximity conditions exist and triggering a response. We're based in Santa Monica, California. I am the chief executive officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Distillery?

After acquiring the company and rebranding it, I came to act as the founder of the business that exists today. We were getting started on a redirection of our business from consumer end-play to enterprise B2B [business-to-business] and had to create all-new digital assets. I needed an app-building partner to provide initial and ongoing code development for our website, given that we only have back-end expertise. Out of all companies within our time zone, Distillery had the best combination of software development, data science, design, and product management skills.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We've used Distillery on multiple projects, and have had 4–6 open ones at any given time. Our open-ended projects have been the most challenging, given that we never know when they're done.

Distillery provided crash development for a website with a mixed codebase, migrating the old version to WordPress, optimizing its SEO [search engine optimization], and performing graphic design. We continue with monthly evolution projects for it on an open-ended basis.

We had a large repository of migration data collected from 4 million people during the course of 5 months. From a software standpoint, we have a process-oriented and transactional approach. In the long run, the work will have strong analytical implications, and provide a revenue opportunity in this sense. To get started on understanding on what we could offer analytically, I needed to have a data science view of the information that we collect. Distillery has a highly qualified and affordable data science team that has provided the analytic possibilities for the data that we've collected on the migratory patterns of a population as well as their proximity instances.

Our data science project involves 5 people at any given time. The ongoing development project has had a fluctuating team of graphics, UX [user experience] and UI [user interface] designers, coders, a project manager, and a product manager from Distillery. It ranged from 3 to 10 people. We use the project manager on our side to interact with the one from Distillery. Most firms like theirs don't have product managers, but Distillery has a primary software vendor-grade resource onboard.

How did you come to work with Distillery?

I met one of the senior staff members at a networking dinner in Los Angeles three years ago.

How much have you invested with Distillery?

The total cost of Distillery's services has been more than $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I began referring people to Distillery 2 years ago [2014], but our own engagement with them only started in January 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Our involvement with Distillery is somewhat different than their projects with more traditional customers. There is no measure of whether or not our website is successful because we're still a startup. Distillery did a great job of packaging our use cases, brand marketing, and product marketing, giving us a coherent design language, packaging our offering in a website that showcases our digital assets to potential customers.

On the data science aspect, Distillery was tasked with telling me what I didn't already know. I can't say what that entails, prior to receiving Distillery's reports.

One of the business offerings from Distillery is a rent-a-developer service with a staff of engineers in the United States and Russia, available to companies on a monthly basis. They're high-quality coders that are affordable and readily available. They can be secured for either long- or short-term engagements for companies having trouble finding or can't afford local talent. Distillery's other offering is referred to as app-enabled business services. A founder can have an idea for a mobile or web app-based business, but they don't have the engineering team to build it. Distillery can take that person's idea and work with them in order to develop a product spec, engineering schedule, and full agile development sequencing. They manage those and go from an idea to a post-beta deployed product, typically in around 13 weeks, unless the project is larger, and needs more development cycles. Distillery offers full product-managed projects, with the same engineering resources and project management available from a primary software vendor, at a price that someone with seed funding can afford.

I haven't used Distillery for this, but I've seen the results that it can bring, and they are outstanding. We partner with clients who don't have the means to build a solution themselves. We supervise the process and use Distillery as a development partner. I've seen the quality of work that Distillery can give to people I've referred to them, and this tells me that I can use them for Fortune 10 companies that need an application for connecting to our proximity services back-end. This work will be fully credible and accepted.

How did Distillery perform from a project management standpoint?

I am a bit removed from the project management process, but I know that Distillery uses JIRA and GitHub. They also use Flowdock for light project communication.

What did you find most impressive about Distillery?

I appreciate the scope and combination of services provided by Distillery. They offer uniform quality across the board. Vendors like Distillery will usually be mediocre in terms of coding if they're great at design, and vice versa. The project management may also be a little loose. Most agency businesses like Distillery also don't have the same level of quality and conduct management. Distillery's work is not sharply differentiated with respect to individual components, but the combination that they offer, with a uniform quality level and accountability, makes them especially recommended.

Are there any areas Distillery could improve?

From what I know about Distillery's business and market, I would say that they could make further progress on recruiting a broader scope of engineering skills. If someone wanted to develop a project using the Go technology, Distillery would need to find those developers before taking the job. It can be done, but it takes a bit of time. For what Distillery's business is, and how they define it, the opportunity for growth would come from expanding the capacity for the same work and keeping the quality level at the same degree. Small companies can offer a uniform level of quality but, as they get bigger and need to expand the talent pool, the quality of individuals available starts to decline. Distillery has to demonstrate that they can navigate that challenge.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Distillery?

Nothing comes to mind, but Distillery has the ability to make these recommendations through their sales pipeline.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of an IT company that creates AI video avatars called Confidants. These avatars replicate users’ appearance and voice to help professionals scale interactions, build trust, and improve messaging with customers and stakeholders.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Distillery?

We needed an experienced developer to help us with critical parts of our platform, including billing and email notifications. We also needed help executing strategic customer demos, such as those for the NBA.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

German (Partner) completed our end-to-end Stripe and billing integration, as well as our email notifications. Regarding the NBA, he completed a Ticketmaster integration with our avatar, allowing us to present a complete product demo to a potential customer. Additionally, German helped us with debugging, such as solving a persistent memory leak problem within our avatars.

What is the team composition?

We worked with German.

How did you come to work with Distillery?

Someone referred Distillery to me. I chose them because their pricing fit our budget, and their company values aligned with ours.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from May 2025–December 2025.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Distillery delivered a complete billing system, a complete email notification system, and resolved tickets. Moreover, they were very professional in delivering timely features.

How did Distillery perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via virtual meetings, emails, and messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The code was always high-quality, requiring very little rework.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there weren’t any.