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Verified Profile
At Founders Approach, we understand startups and small businesses because we have built multiple ones ourselves. My co-founder and I quit our full-time jobs to build and launch a mobile app. We grew to 50k users and 7.5k businesses on the platform. We focused on the lean startup methodology where you build simple and iterate quickly. We understand what it takes to launch and scale a business and we have taken everything we learned to help startups and small businesses, who have tech needs such as apps, websites, or other platforms.
We know that every business has different needs and we are flexible to cater to yours. We know that people a tight budgets, strict deadlines, and needs for tech to scale their business. We work with you to narrow down your needs within your timeline and budget. We pride ourselves on communication and transparency, which is important to building a successul product. We want to partner with you to scale and grow your business.
Locations
United States
101 N Haven Street ,
Baltimore,
Maryland
21224
(443) 961-4624
United States
18 Taylor St. North ,
Providence,
Rhode Island
02911
4439614624
Focus Areas
Service Focus
- Mobile App Development
- Web Development
- Web Designing (UI/UX)
Client Focus
- Small Business
- Medium Business
Industry Focus
- Education
- Financial & Payments
- Healthcare & Medical
Founders Approach Executive Interview
Phil DiMuro
CEO
Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
My name is Phil DiMuro and I am the co-founder of Founders Approach. We build mobile apps and websites for startups and small businesses. I focus on working directly with founders or business owners to help them refine their development needs. We utilize the “lean startup” methodology to focus on what is most essential to scaling a business. Then I vet and manage our development team to deliver and bring the products to life for our customers.
What is the story behind starting this company?
Originally, I quit my full-time job to launch a mobile app called “Loople.” The idea was based on connecting users with bars/restaurants in their area based on specials and events around them. We scaled to 50k users and 7.5k businesses over the first year and a half. While technical, I wanted to focus on growing the businesses, so I spent a lot of time finding the right development team for us. We received quotes from US-based dev firms, but we couldn’t afford six-figure quotes while bootstrapping the project. We were struggling to find a technical CTO to join the team, so we looked into overseas options. We had heard reservations, so we conducted a lot of due diligence to find the right team for us. Eventually, we found that team and scaled our startup. We then had startups and businesses in our network come to us to help with their development needs. We started doing it on the side to make extra money and it eventually scaled into our full-time business. We have worked on over 200 products over the past 7 years.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We focus on US-based project managers, who are all entrepreneurs. We ensure we come at all of our projects if we were building this as our startup. Then we have a team of developers we have worked with for over the past 7 years. We vet our developers to ensure we can control the quality we expect for every client. We found our niche with clients who can’t afford US development or don’t know where to go when looking to outsource their development.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
We don’t just look to build apps and websites, we want to partner with our customers. Many times we are questioning whether you need an iOS or Android app for version 1 versus a website. Or we can work together to narrow down what features are most important for version 1. We want to understand your budget and timeline to help you make the best decision for your business when deciding how and what to build. We leverage talented overseas developers to ensure you can more affordably utilize technology for your company.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We work across all different industries and all different technologies. We pride ourselves on being flexible depending on the different client’s needs. We have worked a lot with startups that want to get an MVP version to market. We often fill in as a CTO when helping bring their product to life. We have worked with small businesses that haven’t dove into technology to help scale and automate their business. We have built products that tie into their business making them more efficient to save them time or increase their sales. We are always glad to talk to anyone about technology whether they will be a client or not. We like helping businesses and founders grow!
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
Our many development services focus on mobile applications web applications, or websites. For mobile applications, we specialize in cross-platform languages, such as react native or Flutter. We also provide native application development in Swift or Java. For websites, we build custom sites in Laravel, CodeIgnite, reachJS, etc. Also, we provide WordPress development and support. Our services can be turnkey from design to live or at other times we can take over a project from a client looking to switch development teams.
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
We focus on providing value above all else to our customers. We pride ourselves on top-notch communication and development quality to deliver a high-quality product. Our attention to detail has allowed us to maintain a 5-star rating with over 50 ratings between our Google, and GoodFirms accounts.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
We understand that every business has different development needs post-launch. Some want to continue regular development, while others only have part-time development. So we have flexible agreements that do not require a “lose it or lose it” style retainer. We can scale up and down depending on our client’s 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.)
We have different styles of projects. Our fixed-price projects are milestone-based. We typically have 4 milestones of payments spread throughout the project. This protects all parties involved by not having all the payment at the front or the end. When providing ongoing support, we bill in batches of hours that never expire. These hours never expire and we work with the client to understand how these hours fit into their development goals.
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?
We are willing to talk to anyone about a potential project. As we do a discovery call, we can narrow down the scope and budget requirements. If a budget is lower, we can work to simplify the idea to see if we can make the budget work. We do not have minimums, but we are upfront and honest if our team is the right fit for the budget and scope.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2022?
At the end of the day, the price always comes down to the features required in the scope of work. We don’t have minimum price requirements for any project. However, we have upfront budget conversations early in the sales process. We understand what the client is looking for and how much budget they have to spend. Many times the budget is realistic based on what they are looking to build. Other times it is too low, and we have a conversation about potentially cutting out features from version 1 or explaining why the budget is too low. It is important to have budget conversations early on for realistic expectations for both sides.
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
We can’t believe 7 years have already passed by! So much has changed in that time and we know that so much more will change over the next decade. We don't know exactly where the market will go but we do know that we will need to continue to pivot to survive. We are excited to keep learning, keep iterating, and keep growing!
Founders Approach Reviews
3 Reviews
- All Services
- Web Designing (UI/UX)
- Relevance
- Most Recent
- Rating: high to low
- Rating: low to high
Alison Yates
Posted on May 25, 2020
Third time's a charm
Review Summary
We discovered Founders Approach after firing our second off-short dev team. Founders Approach is all that we hoped they would be and more! Here's just some of what we love:
- Communication: Let's be honest. The reason most projects fails is because communication is hard, especially with what we call the three language barriers - actual language, development language, and subject matter/industry jargon. The project managers do an excellent job of actually listening to what you're trying to accomplish, exploring the boundaries of what's possible, and coming back with the best solutions. They take feedback well, and really treat their clients as a part of the team.
- Quality: We're not developers, but we've been exceedingly happy with the quality of the product. The team is quick to mark things off the list, and is willing to iterate when needed.
- Transparency: With shared trello boards and slack channels, we love that we always know what's going on. We never question what work is being done, because we can see it for ourselves.
- Honesty: I love that we can have honest conversations with the team. If something's bothering us, we can share it, and FA receives that feedback and responds from an appropriate place.
- Fun: We just really like the people we're working with. We kicked off our project with in person meetings (before COVID), which set a really nice tone and helped us get to know each other. And as two women founders, it's awesome to have other women on the team! The team at FA feel much more like coworkers than they do contractors.
We've just finished our first phase with FA, and plan to continue on with them until we can bring development in house.
- Communication: Let's be honest. The reason most projects fails is because communication is hard, especially with what we call the three language barriers - actual language, development language, and subject matter/industry jargon. The project managers do an excellent job of actually listening to what you're trying to accomplish, exploring the boundaries of what's possible, and coming back with the best solutions. They take feedback well, and really treat their clients as a part of the team.
- Quality: We're not developers, but we've been exceedingly happy with the quality of the product. The team is quick to mark things off the list, and is willing to iterate when needed.
- Transparency: With shared trello boards and slack channels, we love that we always know what's going on. We never question what work is being done, because we can see it for ourselves.
- Honesty: I love that we can have honest conversations with the team. If something's bothering us, we can share it, and FA receives that feedback and responds from an appropriate place.
- Fun: We just really like the people we're working with. We kicked off our project with in person meetings (before COVID), which set a really nice tone and helped us get to know each other. And as two women founders, it's awesome to have other women on the team! The team at FA feel much more like coworkers than they do contractors.
We've just finished our first phase with FA, and plan to continue on with them until we can bring development in house.
What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?
communication, honesty, competency
Shawn Mills
Posted on Apr 10, 2020
These gus are awesome!
Review Summary
I couldn't be happier! FA was very much on top of everything I needed and, truthfully, they knew things I needed way before I knew I needed it. They hit every milestone on time and communicated with me very well. I will definitely use them again.
What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?
Phil and Dave! The personal touch and attentiveness to my project was spectacular!
What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?
Actually, they spent so much time on my project I don't know how they got other things done. I can't really complain about that.
Cole Barger
Posted on Apr 14, 2020
Working with them was great experience. Highly recommended to everyone...
Review Summary
What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?
Low commitment billing process, super competitive cost, and transparency w/ their team & timeline.
What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?
Opportunity for Design & SEO expertise