Hivekind

We were working with Hivekind at one of our sister companies for many years prior to their engagement with us. I was familiar with the systems they worked on and have had discussions with their stakeholders. Their development process was rigorous and we found that they took interest and care in improving the system. They were successful delivering non-trivial projects and constantly improving system health. My boss was also impressed with their work and introduced them to me. The project that I had needed help with required strong full-stack engineering skills and owning a project end-to-end. Hivekind team had that skillset.

The project we began with was to re-platform a Forms builder tool that allows building complex forms not possible in the current platform. We pivoted to build complex forms for Willmaker Online and then extract a platform from it. We had a Willmaker desktop product that we want to move to an Online Service. The Hivekind team was introduced to the SMEs on Willmaker to learn about the desktop product, the business logic and product flow. The team then captured and documented the knowledge and implemented a proof-of-concept of the new platform. The new platform was built using a React.js and PHP stack (Next.js, Typescript, PHP, GraphQL, Postgres). Willmaker Online is a suite of DIY Legal products. It consisted of 6 forms three of which are complex in different ways. The strategy was to first deliver one of the complex forms which will then prove the new platform and significantly reduce the risk of introducing a new platform and building out the remaining forms.

The Hivekind team built the Willmaker Online product from start to finish. The project had thousands of screens and on delivery there were no major issues. The business team was very happy with the quality at launch. The online version now enables our business team to apply different business models and pricing strategies. The conversion rate is up 70% since the launch.

Project was effectively managed and delivered via 2-week sprints with regular status updates and additional feedback from the vendor. The vendor has undertaken the project with a collaborative approach that has yielded immediate and tangible benefits to the speed and quality of deliverables.

We hired Hivekind in January 2016 when we had a beta product that had moved beyond our MVP and was in the market getting paying users. That said, we had no in house tech team, and we turned to Hivekind at first to run a code review to identify what we had that was right/wrong to date and to make remediations. On the back of that first, short contract (approx $5k) we then sourced them as the IT provider to work with us to both remediate some of our code deficiencies, but also to build the institutional and group functionality that our technology required in order to secure B2B licenses with the schools, colleges, and universities we sought partnerships with.

Ultimately, however, the main problem that we had was that we had developed an excellent beta/proof-of-concept for our academic writing idea, but as non-technical cofounders, we needed a development team who we could work well with and that could scale up or down as our needs changed over time. Could we rely on Hivekind to be that team? They saw us from beta (2016) through an acquisition (2021), so I would have to say that, yes, they were the team for us!

Throughout our time with Hivekind, the EssayJack platform: grew to support over 30,000 users (from zero to 30,000), secured external financing, won global awards, and was acquired by a larger EdTech company, Wizeprep. Throughout the acquisition process, the EssayJack platform had to go through technical due diligence, and Hivekind had to be available to provide information on technical architecture, etc. Probably the most obvious indication of their successful work was the fact that the technical due diligence as part of the acquisition process sailed through without a hitch.

Once we hit our groove with a well oiled SCRUM methodology, our time was very well spent. We worked on 2 week sprints, with sprint planning, retros, and demos, and once we onboarded the Product Owner within Hivekind, he was able to run the daily standups, freeing me from that daily obligation with the dev team so that I could focus on other aspects of the business. The Product Owner and I then organized our own time to work through dev priorities that he then organized for the dev team as a whole. It was a seamless way of working.

Mostly we worked remotely - google meet and slack - but when I was in the same city as the majority of the team, I would make an effort to be there in person, especially for our sprint retro and demo meetings, and even our planning meetings, where I could add value. Also, importantly, with Hivekind we set up protocols for product alerts or other problems so that we could be compliant with some of the SLAs we developed with institutional partners. So if there was a technical hiccup, Hivekind would be alerted, and whoever was ""on call"" would be able to respond to the hiccup. We paid a small monthly premium in order to have this service, which made us compliant with the expectations of our clients, and helped me not have panicked midnight calls if something went wrong.