Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
Echo is a custom software development company with a focus on building world-class remote engineering teams in Ukraine. We help tech companies scale their engineering capacity and deliver innovative software products. Being located in Lviv, which is one of the most attractive IT hubs in Eastern Europe, we have access to a 200k+ talent pool of skilled software engineers. For each of our customers, we provide hand-picked expertise to make sure it matches their staffing needs.
As the CEO of Echo, I wear many hats. Despite having more than 50 people in the office, I am still responsible for many core activities like Sales, Marketing, Recruiting, Finance, Administration, etc.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
I founded Echo based on my three passions: programming, marketing, and headhunting. I believe that this unique combination of skills and experience make my company the ideal partner for any IT outsourcing or staffing needs in Ukraine.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
Our model is hybrid at the moment. We used to hire only in-house developers, but the trends in the world are relentless. Remote work will be dominating more and more and we can’t ignore it. Currently, we are exploring effective ways of such type of collaboration with no compromise on quality.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
As each client’s company has a unique atmosphere, all technical specialists are not the same. It is really an everyday challenge to find a perfect match.
We differentiate ourselves by ensuring a cultural fit throughout our recruitment process and every candidate is double-tested for senior-level proficiency.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?
Despite many businesses knocking at our doors, we give special attention to well-funded start-ups to enterprise size clients. However, we focus mainly on Retail, Travel, IoT, Marketing, and Telecom industries.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing software.
Efficient communication is crucial.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of software?
There is no simple answer and highly depends on different conditions. However, in the majority of the projects we have participated in, a back-end part usually takes much more time and effort.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right framework for developing software?
- Project need
- Scalability
- Security
- Documentation and community support
Which languages & frameworks do you prefer to use in the development of software?
Over the last few years, we’ve got hands-on experience with various modern web and mobile technologies like Java, .NET., PHP, Javascript, Golang. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages, but Python is the most preferable if we have a choice.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of software?
All functional and non-functional requirements, timeline and budget overall as well as the client’s business goals.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
The majority of our clients stick to the flat monthly fee payment structure.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
Our preferable budget starts at $25,000.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
The price range of the projects we catered in 2018 was from $20.000 to $600.000.
