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Y Media Labs

Digital products & experiences with lasting impact

4.8 2 Reviews
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YML is a leading company that makes digital products and designs. We create cool stuff from Silicon Valley and share it with the world. Since 2009, we've helped startups and big brands impress their customers with excellent digital products and experiences. Our work has made popular brands in retail (The Home Depot) and insurance (State Farm) and set the stage for the next generation of big companies like Credit Karma, PayPal, Mercari, and more.

Our primary focus is digital products, prototypes, customer experience, service design, and moment mapping. Our work has even caught the attention of Steve Jobs (yes, the Steve Jobs!) and has been featured in TED Talks, The Wall Street Journal ("YML is one of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley"), Forbes, Ad Age, ABC, CNBC, and other places.

We're not a marketing company. We don't do advertising campaigns or media buying. Instead, we create products and experiences that leave a lasting impact. From creating the Molekule (named the 2016 Time Invention of the Year), making an award-winning app for Universal Music Artists, and even working on the future of Google's AI with Tensorflow (yes, really!).

We started with just two people; now, we're a team of 350 talented individuals. We have offices in six locations across three continents, and our main headquarters is in Silicon Valley.

$150 - $199/hr
250 - 999
2008
Locations
United States
255 Shoreline Dr., 6th floor, Redwood City, California 94065
415.839.8584
United States
745 5th Ave, 19th Floor, NYC, New York 10151
46204-3593
United States
626 N. Illinois St.,Suite 400, Indianapolis, Indiana 46218
415-839-8584

Focus Areas

Service Focus

20%
20%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
  • Mobile App Development
  • App Designing (UI/UX)
  • Web Designing (UI/UX)
  • E-commerce Development
  • Digital Marketing

Client Focus

100%
  • Large Business

Industry Focus

50%
50%
  • Advertising & Marketing
  • Information Technology

Y Media Labs Executive Interview

Ashish Toshniwal
Ashish Toshniwal
CEO & Co-Founder
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Kindly share your feedback on how GoodFirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
We appreciate the GoodFirms brand. While we have not noticed a significant impact from GoodFirms on the lead generation or traffic fronts, we are eager to partner more directly and find ways to help each other.
Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
YML is a digital product and design agency. We create innovative products that export Silicon Valley to the world. Our work has created category leaders in retail (The Home Depot) and insurance (State Farm), as well as laid the digital foundation for the next generation of Fortune 500 companies (Credit Karma, PayPal, Mercari, and more). Our bread and butter are in digital products, prototypes, customer experience, service design, and moment mapping. Our work has been recognized by Steve Jobs (ya, that Steve Jobs) and featured by TED Talks, in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Ad Age, ABC, and CNBC (to name a few). We are not a marketing agency. No campaigns. No media buying. We create products and experiences that make a lasting impact, ranging from Molekule (the 2016 Time Invention of the Year) to Universal Music Artists (an App we built with Universal Music Group and is disrupting the music industry) to building the future of Google's AI with Tensorflow (really).  We started as a team of two, now we're 250 strong. We have six offices on three continents and are headquartered in Silicon Valley.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
Nobody starts a company at the bottom of a recession. Well, nobody smart that is. But in 2009, about the time real GDP and industrial production hit bottom, we (my co-founder, Sumit Mehra, and I) had a big idea — a belief that this device called the “iPhone” would change the world.  We sensed Apple's App Store was about to change the customer experience in ways never seen before.  More brands were investing in digital work. CMOs were shifting from ads to apps. The App Store carried the untapped potential for digital-first campaigns and very few agencies were doubling down on mobile. Mobile presented a new stack of technology and a brand new form factor, which was a challenge for the big agencies to adopt. We were resolved to build an agency with mobile at its foundation.
What are your company’s business model– inhouse team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
Our team is completely in-house and built around design, technology, and strategy.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
We create value for our clients by creating impactful products and experiences for their customers. That has been the common thread of our business, team, and work ethic since our founding. Today we have worked with over 30 Fortune 500 companies, and also build the digital foundations for start-ups that are the future Fortune 500, such as PayPal, Credit Karma (recently acquired by Intuit for $7.1B ), Mercari, Health Equity, Deserve, dosist, and Latch.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We build digital products across an array of industries, but the majority of our business consistently comes from clients in healthcare, financial services/fintech, and retail.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
A great deal depends on factors that are specific to each client. In the early stages of the partnership, our job is first and foremost to listen and ask questions, so we can empathize with the problem the client is facing and provide the most impactful recommendation for how we can create value for them.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
We work in rapid, iterative, 2-week development sprints. Depending on the size of the project, it can take us anywhere between 12 - 20 weeks to develop the front end and back end for a mobile app.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
Determining the approach depends on the objectives and goals of the client as well as the composition of the audience and their needs.
Which platform do you suggest your clients to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
Determining the approach depends on the objectives and goals of the client as well as the composition of the audience and their needs.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
Anyone building for one and not for the other is ignoring a huge share of the market and billions of users. No one should want to pick one or the other unless there is some very special circumstance or exception.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
The complexity of the mobile app, number of platforms, level of support required (design, dev (front end vs back end vs both), necessary ongoing support).
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.)
Payment is unique to each client, but typically we require 50% of our fees to be paid upon signature of the contract with the remaining 50% to be paid at regular intervals throughout the project. We also have a metrics-based compensation model, which has been incredibly appealing for clients because it’s results-driven and allows YML to truly have a stake in the work.
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 initiatives typically begin at $300K for product definition and design with many of our clients spending $800K+ to fully develop and launch their experiences. However, we are open to working with clients with smaller budgets on a case by case basis. Depending on the type of project and engagement with the client, we sometimes offer a pay-for-performance model or are able to accept equity as compensation. Again, this is on a case by case basis.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2019?
Unfortunately, we can’t share due to restrictions from our holding company, MDC Partners.
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
If there was a one size fits all solution, my job would be very boring. We consistently, though, focus on one of Silicon Valley’s greatest assets—the mentality of rapid learning and innovation. Startup culture has helped society optimize and expedite a collective understanding of how technology products can impact the world. As we enter a new era where companies will need to pivot quickly to meet new customer needs and demands, we emphasize and want to be a champion for how to follow the change, not the plan.

Y Media Labs Reviews

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William Anderson

Professional & smart team of skilled developers.

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Project Detail

$50001 to $200000
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Review Summary

We consistently turn to Y-Media for any/all matters digital. Our partnership with Ashish and his team goes from basic hosting and updating to complex web app development for our company's suite of apps (in iOS and Android). They go to scale immediately and can get things done promptly and well. The team of project managers and developers are professional, smart, and timely. Y-Media moves like a well-oiled machine for us and we find ourselves, again and again, asking for quotes and doing work with these folks.


What was the project name that you have worked with Y Media Labs?

iOS & Android Apps Development For BrightPlanet

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

<p>Speed, quality, pricing, attentiveness, and connection with our team.</p>

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

<p>Minor issues at time around design and conveying what our team wants in-app.</p>