Software advisor Andrew Drach’s two firms Callentis and Solwey show his entrepreneurial expertise, however his purchasers additionally worth his instructional background, as we realized by TechCrunch’s survey to establish the most effective software program consultants for startups.
Telling us why her firm picked Solwey, eDiscovery Assistant’s Kelly Twigger cited “Andrew’s Ph.D. and analytical background associated to information,” in addition to the consulting experience for startups that he offers.
Expertise is just helpful when it’s carried out, although — and Solwey does this too, Twigger mentioned. “We don’t simply add duties to a Trello board for them to finish, we talk about the objectives, why and the way finest to realize them with value/profit evaluation in thoughts.” This level was seconded by different survey respondents, so we reached out to Drach and his staff to be taught extra.
Editor’s notice: This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Can you inform us a bit about your current background and present firms?
Andrew Drach: I’ve been doing consulting in engineering and software program on and off just about ever since I began coding. And after just a few years working in academia, I spotted that I didn’t wish to go the tenure-track school route. I advised my spouse [Monika Jociunaite] that as a lot as I used to be keen about science, I had determined to depart academia and develop freelance consulting into an company and that she ought to be a part of me.
Monika was an ideal co-founder with complementary expertise and talent set. Her background consists of two grasp’s levels — in worldwide enterprise and advertising and marketing — and she or he spent 5+ years working in giant worldwide companies. She was curious to discover a extra artistic facet of selling as she loved engaged on UX/UI tasks up to now; and I knew firsthand that for the tip customers, high-quality code with out good UX/UI is not any completely different from damaged code.
In December of 2016, Monika and I established two sister firms: Solwey Consulting, targeted on know-how technique and execution, UX/UI design and enterprise intelligence; and Callentis Consulting Group, a analysis and growth enterprise targeted on translational analysis and know-how switch from academia to trade observe.
More particularly, Solwey offers consulting in all levels of software program design and growth technique and execution. We work with our purchasers on structure and infrastructure design, optimization of UX/UI design and person flows, back-end and front-end software program growth for internet and cellular, and enterprise intelligence/information analytics to allow our purchasers to quickly develop and transfer ahead.
Why did you select the boutique consultancy mannequin?
We each had strained experiences working with giant companies and staffing companies and feeling deserted or not necessary sufficient to have the total consideration of the managers or undertaking homeowners. Furthermore, we each had seen firsthand how terrifyingly crippling waterfall and damaged agile could possibly be for the progress of a undertaking. So we got down to construct Solwey and Callentis as small-by-design companies. We immediately have interaction with our purchasers, and Monika and I take private duty for each single deliverable from our staff.
How is your staff structured?
We needed to construct a virtual-first, remote-first company from day one. While it appeared unconventional in pre-pandemic days, this allowed us to remain as lean as the most effective startups on the market, whereas drastically enhancing our hiring prospects. We have been extremely fortunate with the expertise that joined our staff and to have fun a number of of our staff’ fourth anniversary whereas being only a five-year-old company.
Currently, we’ve eight full-time builders, a DevOps supervisor and our Chief Operating Officer Nima [Kargah-Ostadi] who has a Ph.D. in engineering with a decade of expertise main engineering and analysis groups and is an authorized Project Management Professional (PMP).
How have you ever been discovering purchasers?
When we began, I simply googled platforms for distant contracts for software program builders and registered on just a few of them. In a few days, we had already obtained a contract, so we instantly obtained hooked on the freelancing platforms; Upwork was a main supply of tasks as a result of it was so fast to discover a contract there. But over time as we grew and elevated the charges and staff measurement, Upwork grew to become much less of a match for us. Nowadays, we get referrals from former purchasers, new contracts from returning purchasers, fairly just a few requests from natural and paid search, and listings on B2B platforms like Clutch.
My focus in 2021 has been on diversifying our supply of leads and we’ve been experimenting with many alternative approaches. So far, the least profitable has been hiring enterprise growth reps and making an attempt out chilly outreach (emails and LinkedIn) however perhaps we have been simply doing it flawed. On the opposite facet of the spectrum, we’ve had nice success establishing partnerships with VC funds and advertising and marketing companies. Other approaches (social media, paid advertisements, content material advertising and marketing, networking) additionally offered attention-grabbing outcomes.
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Are startups your predominant purchasers, and what do they require?
60% to 70% of our purchasers are startups or small firms at varied levels. We have helped startups at pre-seed stage to create prototypes and information their know-how growth plans. At seed stage, we work with them to develop their minimal viable product (MVP), and in subsequent levels, we get to assist them with a few of their many newly fashioned initiatives.
Some of those firms strategy us earlier than even having a know-how staff, some are beginning to rent and develop their growth staff, and a few have a completely staffed know-how staff that’s swamped with current work and can’t tackle extra initiatives.
We at all times try to assist startups rent and full their know-how staff, particularly if they’ve an concept that revolves round know-how. In truth, I’ve served as interim chief know-how officer (CTO) for 3 startups.
Why do you assume structure design recommendation is necessary?
Early-stage purchasers are usually targeted on their MVP and launch schedules. Too usually, we have to stroll this delicate path of serving to them transfer as quick as attainable to beat the competitors and impress their traders, whereas on the similar time attempt to cease them from dashing into architectural or technique selections that would come again to chunk them laborious when it’s time to improve some options, add new performance, iterate or aggressively scale. Meanwhile, we’re doing our greatest to offer steerage, stop some frequent points and clarify why early investments in structure or formal operational processes would assist in the close to future.
We are inclined to focus our suggestions on the time span of roughly six to 12 months in order that we don’t get caught with untimely optimization. A custom-tailored architectural design permits for a extra environment friendly growth course of, quick iteration and will get to the sturdy and scalable software program answer leaner and with fewer bumps alongside the way in which.
What is your billing mannequin?
Monika and I strongly consider that transparency and easy-to-understand billing have helped us quite a bit in constructing belief and robust relationships with our purchasers. We use a project-based billing mannequin with a flat hourly charge.
During the preliminary diagnostic conversations with our potential purchasers, we attempt to perceive their priorities and carve out an inexpensive scope for tasks divided into stepwise phases. Nima and I then put collectively a Gantt chart to visualise a sensible schedule of duties and estimate the variety of hours it could take to design, develop, check and deploy the anticipated answer given shopper and useful resource situations. The proposed price range is just this variety of hours multiplied by our hourly flat charge, which incorporates all overhead prices.
What’s your typical timeline?
For a typical startup product that’s at preliminary phases of creating an MVP, we usually advocate two weeks for discovery and necessities gathering, 4 weeks for UX/UI design alongside with infrastructure and structure design, eight weeks for agile growth and steady testing to implement the main performance and eventually two weeks for deploying the MVP answer and last-minute tweaks.
Image Credits: Solwey
We work with our purchasers to postpone any duties that have been collectively recognized as non-blocking or non-critical to maintain the MVP lean sufficient to have a profitable launch inside such a brief timeline. This is as a result of in our expertise, 4 months is lengthy sufficient time to develop most MVPs and quick sufficient to allow speedy launch and get a lot wanted suggestions from customers and traders that assure the success of the startup in subsequent phases.
Two of your purchasers talked about coming to you after not-so-great experiences with different corporations. Could you clarify what that is like? And do you will have any recommendation for startups eager to keep away from unhealthy experiences?
The very very first thing I inform our purchasers within the diagnostics name, is that generally issues don’t work out, however their damaging expertise doesn’t imply that working with exterior groups is at all times going to fail or that their earlier know-how associate was unqualified or had unhealthy intentions. I joke generally that our staff needs to be known as “iteration #3.” A majority of tasks that we take over often went by two iterations: as soon as with an company exterior of the United States, attributable to cheaper charges, and one other time with a junior or midlevel freelancer. And whereas there’s completely nothing flawed with both strategy, founders are inclined to underestimate the extent of hands-on coordination required to finish the undertaking in these situations.
Advice on avoiding a foul expertise? Setting clear expectations and communication. Whether a startup is engaged with a staff-augmentation company, or a brief rent, or a freelancer, or an company like us, all of it boils all the way down to having clear delineation of duties and frequent check-ins to make sure that any potential points floor rapidly and the staff can pivot rapidly. Will there be surprising points, delays, issues? Certainly. But it issues how these obstacles are communicated and addressed.
Do you will have any ideas on faux agile versus actual agile? And why do you consider within the latter?
In my opinion, the phrase “agile” has been loosely utilized to many alternative approaches and methods to handle tasks so the dialogue of “faux” versus “actual” agile is difficult with no particular context or instance. Through our interactions with completely different groups, we’ve encountered instances when the agile course of ended up being extraordinarily inefficient for quite a lot of causes. Sometimes, a supervisor or staff lead could be laser-focused on agile ceremonies designed for big distributed groups whereas the whole staff measurement is simply two builders working in the identical room. In different instances, the method was set to be so fluid that the priorities would shift a number of instances a day. And generally, the staff would outline weekly or biweekly sprints, however then would have a inflexible quarterly plan that appears precisely like a waterfall strategy.
To be sincere, I’m not positive that our course of would fall into the strict definition of agile as a result of we alter it and attempt to accommodate shopper preferences to cut back any potential friction. We have a number of necessary necessities, together with day by day check-ins with our designers and builders, weekly sprints with well-defined duties, common launch schedules, steady integration flows, striving to have design belongings be prepared 1-2 sprints forward of growth, and so forth. But past these, we do our greatest to accommodate and supply suggestions to the shopper as the method could be fairly completely different for a one-person staff versus a late-stage startup with dozens of staff members unfold throughout a number of time zones.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/10/from-ph-d-to-boutique-software-developer-an-interview-with-solweys-andrew-drach/
