Reuben talks with MindSea’s Director of Client Experience, Alex Ferrari about how we work with and advise clients on their digital health projects.
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Read Transcript:
Reuben (00:00)
Welcome to the MindSea podcast series, Moving Digital Health. So this episode is a little bit different than most. Our guest today is one of my team members at MindSea, Alex Ferrari, the director of client experience. Welcome to the podcast, Alex.
Alex Ferrari (00:16)
Thanks for having me, boss.
Reuben (00:18)
Alright, so maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you do at MindSea.
Alex Ferrari (00:23)
Yeah, so I do a bunch of different stuff to help out the teams, but essentially my main role is acting as the face of the company, meeting with prospective clients, whether that be on Zoom, people going to our website, booking meetings with us, and generally just inquiring about what it would be like to build software, whether it’s a mobile app, website, web app, doesn’t really matter.
So my job is basically to meet with them, act as the face of the company, figure out what their needs are, what problem they’re trying to solve, what milestone they’re trying to hit, and then prepare a game plan for them around that. Every client’s in a different unique situation with a different or unique product idea. So one of the coolest parts of my job is, I don’t really know what I’m walking into when I go to each discovery session with a new client. Get to hear about a lot of new and cool products and ideas.
I also get to work with clients throughout the entire process. So from the first day we meet them to figuring out how we’re working together, to going into our first paid engagement and then even afterwards into the future. I have the privilege of working with some clients for years, not just for a small engagement.
Reuben (01:32)
Yeah, so you’re often the first point of contact at MindSea. So when people contact you have that first meeting, and they’re looking to build a digital health product. How does that initial conversation usually go?
Alex Ferrari (01:45)
Usually goes really well. You know, recently a lot of people do a lot of research on me, you, MindSea and the company and whether they go to third party review sites, which is a common theme of 2022 and 2023, which is they go to Clutch. They see some really awesome reviews, some clients we’ve had the privilege of working with have left. And that leads them to come to me to have a discussion.
So it’s either that we get a lot of introduction meetings as well from current clients that have friends or peers in their network that are also looking to build digital health products that get referred in. Some of them get referred in because of the awesome work that Ruben does as well, which gets handed off to me. And some of them are clients that I work with, especially like in the university landscape, everybody seems to know each other. And when people get good service somewhere, they’re comfortable referring us to possibly help out more people in their network.
Reuben (02:39)
Nice. So you hear all kinds of ideas. What’s like the craziest idea for an app you’ve ever heard in one of those initial conversations?
Alex Ferrari (02:49)
There’s a lot. I typically have about a hundred plus of these meetings every calendar year. I don’t think there’s any like insane or crazy or out there ideas. I just think that there’s a lot of ideas that may look good on paper, but are very complex, difficult products to build and practice to have a game plan together behind the business plan of building software that’ll lead it to revenue generation or commercialization. I mean, it really depends on the type of app people are trying to build. Like as far as I’m concerned, there’s typically two kinds of buckets of software people reach out to us to build. There’s either I’m building this as a business that’s going to collect revenue and I want to grow it as a company to eventually run it myself or to sell it to another entity. That’s about the first 50%.
But the other 50% is it’s never going to collect revenue or earn revenue. It’s actually made to just assist like a vulnerable population, assisting in mental health, assisting in something like that. I wouldn’t say crazy or insane ideas, just a lot of things that have already been built that don’t really have a unique differentiator. It’s not common, but it’s stuff that happens sometimes. And a lot of Twitter-esque ideas and Facebook clone ideas, I guess, would be the weird ones.
Reuben (04:11)
Yeah, it is surprising how many people reach out to us. And then we have those initial conversations. They seem to have a really clear idea of the product they want to build. And then we ask, who’s your competition? And they say, well, there’s no competition. I’m the only one doing this. And that’s almost never the case. There’s typically an existing solution out there in some form that is competition.
And sometimes it’s doing exactly what they want to do. And we’ve gotten into projects before with clients and they realize that what they want to build has already been built. And then it’s the question of, okay, do you want to compete with an existing product that’s out there? I think that when there is existing solutions in the market, That’s usually a good sign that you’re solving a real problem. So it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you should still always be doing that research to figure out who is your competition and really, really understanding that.
Alex Ferrari (05:16)
Totally, I’ve personally been involved in a couple of those with you, where after a couple of chats, we figure out the exact solution already exists in the marketplace.
Reuben (05:25)
So the app landscape the way it is, a lot of companies that needed an app within the last 10 years have already built so it’s a fairly mature and saturated marketplace that way. But a lot of these apps are getting out of date. They need to be updated or rebuilt. Talk about how when a customer comes to you with an existing app where does the conversation go from there?
Alex Ferrari (05:51)
Got it. So first, I just try to understand like the original idea why the product was built in the first place before we get into who actually built the product. Sometimes it’s, you know, a private company that hired software developers, designers, engineers. So they hired an internal team of people to build the project. That’s about half. The other half are they reached out to an agency or to independent contractors that went and built the software. So that’s usually the origination point.
A lot of times as like, especially as a software market becomes more mature. Now, a lot of these products are already out there, but sometimes these folks that built it are no longer at the company or that contractors no longer available. The product’s gone a little bit stale. It hasn’t had an OS update in a while. It hasn’t had new features and the usage base is starting to drop. when they come to me, we try to understand like, okay, how long has this been going on for what are your current needs?
We’ve had so many of those chats that led me and Ruben to strategize kind of a different offering that MindSea didn’t have before, which we call Digital Health Check, which is basically MindSea will do a small engagement with a potential client. We’ll get a bucket of hours with developers and designers to look through the code base to make recommendations for improvements. The design team led by Craig will do a holistic overview of the UI/UX and come up with any suggestions or things to change. And then the output or kind of the final deliverable of that small engagement is a detailed game plan of what do we recommend you change. Maybe it’s as simple as an OS update, maybe some features aren’t working properly and we need to go behind the hood and we need to make some changes to implementing new designs, all of those different kinds of things.
That’s a product that’s specifically geared towards that type of client. cause we try to have an offering for people regardless of what stage they’re at, why are they calling us in the first place? And we’ve seen a lot of success with that product. It’s also, a better way for a potential client to get to know my team, like our team, I should say, at MindSea get to work with the designer and developer, ask them questions. Why did that come as an outcome? and get a feeling of what it’s like working with MindSea before going into a longer term engagement as well. So it also serves that purpose.
Reuben (08:14)
I often compare it to a house renovation because the house is already built, we’re coming in to assess what is the current state, look behind the walls, look at the plumbing and the electrical, how badly out of date is it, and then understand with the client where they want to go, what’s their ideal future state. and then we can help them evaluate, well, this is really a teardown where, you know, it’s so bad, the whole thing has to go because it’s just not a solid foundation to build upon. And sometimes it’s really just, hey, we can knock down some walls reformat things, you know, new finishes, new paint. And it’s really just more of an upgrade of the existing product than starting from scratch.
Every client is really unique situation. So understanding the goals or the end outcomes is really important there so just like any house renovation, building software is never a completely smooth process. No matter how many apps we’ve built, whether it’s renovations or from scratch, there are always unexpected things that come up, whether it’s with third party integrations or scope creep. How do you handle those conversations with clients when things aren’t going exactly according to plan and we have to figure out how to move forward.
Alex Ferrari (09:45)
Excellent question. So there’s a couple of things we do as a company before we even start a build for a project, which is kind of putting the order of importance through all of the scope that’s gonna be built. So let’s say we’re about to build an app and it’s gonna have 15 features. We try and get into agreeance with our client of what is the most important feature, and then kind of just work our way down that list throughout the cost and the timeline of the build.
The reason we do that is especially in longer builds, like six months to a year timelines with the full team, the client’s business needs change in the middle of the build. And there’s a new feature that’s required that wasn’t talked about in the planning stage that the client didn’t know and we didn’t know. So we do the best we can to reprioritize scope to remain within the original budget that we’ve estimated to the client. Our goal is always to deliver the most amount of value with the number that we proposed at the beginning of the engagement. Sometimes if that can’t happen, then that becomes a trickier conversation of maybe some of the other things in the original scope were more nice to haves, and what we’re swapping it for is now considered a requirement. If it doesn’t have this feature, the software isn’t gonna solve the problem it was intended to solve. So it’s more around like scope change.
I would think earlier in my career were more difficult, but I think MindSea does a really good job of anticipating those conversations before they even happen. So we’re prepared and our clients are prepared so that when we come to that fork in the road, four months into a 12 month build, it’s like, hey, remember that conversation we had four months ago? Here’s where we’re at today. Here’s MindSea’s recommendation. Here’s all the info you need to make an informed business decision. The clients take some time away from us, make a decision and come back in. And then we move on. We try not to let it cause too much of a road bump and try and get ourselves back on track to finish the app as quickly as we can while providing the level of detail the client needs to make an informed decision.
Reuben (11:47)
Because we’re all on the same team, essentially, we’re working together to try and solve those problems as a team. Often technical issues need to be explained in more business terms so that clients and stakeholders can make informed decisions. So we always try and do our best to come breakdown of the pros and cons of each route. And really at the end of the day, it’s up to the client on how they want to handle this situation. But we want to keep them as informed as possible. What about some common misconceptions about the software development process? Do you run into those a lot?
Alex Ferrari (12:32)
Yeah, I would say that the number one thing people say to me, usually on meeting two or number three is, sometimes people get a little bit overwhelmed when it comes to doing something they’ve never done before. For some people, that’s buying a new house. For some people, it’s building a piece of software. At the end of the day, like we’re not just a company that’s going to gather your requirements, get a team together, build it, and we’re going to keep you in the dark for five months and then show up out of nowhere and say, hey, your product’s done.
You’re actually very much a part of the journey from the very beginning, from discovery to figuring out scope. the way I put clients minds at ease is saying the app that you want to build or the piece of software you want to build, it’s already in your head right now. It’s our job of a team like MindSea to pull that idea out of your head, storyboard it out on paper, and then make a detailed game plan to go build it, which alleviates a lot of concerns because they get to learn more about, okay, I understand that we’re going to do the strategy phase first, followed by the design phase to get detailed cost estimates to move into the build so that we’re always one step ahead of the next engagement and there’s nothing showing up as a surprise to a client which can obviously cause anxiety if you’re doing something you’ve never done before. the big misconception I deal with almost every day with potential new clients is like, maybe I still need to hire somebody on my side to help me out with this process because I don’t know what I’m doing.
Our clients end up learning a ton about software development throughout the process. And at the end of the day, we treat them as partners. Like they’re part of our team when we’re in a build and vice versa. We’re all on the same team. We’re trying to meet a deadline and deliver world-class software. That’s really gonna help their users, whatever it is, whether it’s collecting information or a cool new product idea.
Reuben (14:12)
Yeah, it’s really rewarding working with clinicians that especially I find that, you know, they’re experts in their field, in medicine, you know, whatever specialty that might be, but they may not have had any experience with, you know, the inner workings of technology and software development. So at the beginning of the project, there was, you know, quite a bit of guidance and education around, you know, how an agile development process would work. And, you know, how the different parts of technology work together. But by the end of the project, you know, they’re speaking the lingo, you know, talking about APIs and, languages. And you see, you know, how much they’ve learned from the beginning to the end. And then we always learn so much too from the clients we work with.
Because although digital health is fairly niche, there’s still so many different specific avenues or specific areas within digital health that every project can have similar themes and apps have similar features, but they’re all they’re all unique in the use cases we deal with.
Alex Ferrari (15:30)
Yeah. Um, another, another good misconception that I deal with quite a bit is like how involved does a client need to be in a project? So you want to build an app. Is that going to take up 40 hours a week of your time? Is it, are you going to have to quit your job and, you know, not hanging out with your family and friends as much because it’s going to take up so much time. And the reality is some clients we meet with, you know, two to three hours a week, and maybe they have a little bit of homework to do for us. Some clients we meet with, you know, much more than that or much less than that.
We just try to understand like how involved is a client want or need to be in a project and then build a game plan around their schedule. All of our clients have full-time jobs outside of the app they’re building, even if they’re like a product owner at another company reaching out to us with an RFP to bid on building them software. It’s still gonna be part of their job, but they don’t wanna have to go with a partner that necessarily needs to be handheld 40 hours a week. They have other responsibilities you know, spouses, children, family, friends, work, like all these other things outside of MindSea. So we try to create a really solid balance of they’re involved to know that they’re okay in each major decision being made along the way, but not involved too much that it’s distracting or taking time away from other roles and responsibilities they have outside of building software.
Reuben (16:49)
Yeah, I honestly don’t understand how they do it sometimes, but to work with a clinician that, like you say, full-time job, plus plus, on call, and have such a busy life already, and then to be working on a completely new, innovative digital health solution on top of that, and guiding the process and lending their expertise It is amazing and we get to work with these amazing people on a daily basis.
And really we are looking for those partnerships, those long-term relationships where sometimes multi-years, some of our longest clients have been with us over 10 years and we continue to maintain and upgrade their apps. But we don’t always work with everyone forever. Often there’s a time when a client needs MindSea and their team to help get something off the ground and then it transitions from there.
So maybe you could talk about, you know, how sometimes we wrap up a project and it gets transitioned to a client.
Alex Ferrari (17:59)
Yeah, for sure. So there’s a couple different ways we transition. So there is a portion of clients that reach out to us that have an existing business that need technology to help them or future proof them, whatever have you, whether it’s a public facing tool to collect revenue, an internal tool to help employees, a tool to help clinicians or doctors or nurses. But at the end of the day, some clients come to us to specifically build something that they don’t have the capability in-house, like.
React Native or Swift or Android or something like that. And the goal is from the start that we’re gonna build the software. Once it’s built and released, we’re gonna do a transition game plan with that client to get their internal developers ramped up so they feel comfortable taking on the project and supporting it going forward. I consider that more of a goodbye for now, not a goodbye forever. These clients still reach out to us a year later, hey, the devs that built it, we’re trying to hit a sprint really quickly.
Can we borrow somebody, you know, for a couple of weeks to help us out? We do that stuff all the time. And then there’s some of our other clients that after the software is built, they have no intention of hiring or ramping up an internal team and they engage with MindSea long-term. So we work with them for a few months to get the build of the initial product out, and then we keep a portion or sometimes even a larger team than the original build team together to be their ongoing tech partner. You know, these clients are entrepreneurs and founders. They run the operations, the accounting, the advertising and marketing of running the business. But everything regarding the technology stack is something that MindSea does on behalf of the client, which is more of our multi-year engagements that we’re in with some clients. So, you know, some of them is a couple months, some of them is many years. We’d love to work with people forever, but we understand that’s just not doable most of the time. So our job is to make sure that whenever we transition it, We’re making the new team feel just as comfortable as the existing team that’s been supporting the software for whatever period of time.
Reuben (20:02)
For sure. And I think especially with startups, that the inevitable path for a successful startup is they need to have their technology team in-house to really scale. And we work with a lot of startups to help them get that initial MVP out the door, and then version three, and then version four, and they start to get that traction where they’re building their customer base and they’re starting to get more attention, more revenue investment coming in. And then that’s the point where at the scaling stage where then they’re looking to transition, hire their own internal team and bring the product completely in-house. So we’ve been able to help startups do that, including running developers through our interview process, helping them with interviews and hiring their own staff. We even helped a startup hire their own CTO before, who then became our main point of contact at that startup. We continued to work with them through a kind of a hybrid mode for several more months after that, until eventually they did bring their team completely in-house.
But it really was a very smooth transition over a long period of time that allowed them to just keep operating, keep growing, keep scaling without any interruption.
Maybe you could tell me a little bit about the team at MindSea, the different skill sets and how you’re able to bring in the right person to help a client move to the next step.
Alex Ferrari (21:46)
For sure. So really the conversation all begins in discovery. So however they find us, they book a discovery call with me and I start to learn more about what their needs are. There are clients that have a full design team in house but no developers. So they have their new designs for their dream software they wanna build, just not the team to build it. So Mindsea will work as an extension of their team and provide the missing resources, whatever they might be. And there’s also kind of vice versa of that where they have all the devs in-house, but they’re looking for world-class UI, UX work to be done, in which case that’s the work that we put forward. At the end of the day, MindSea is always prepared going into an engagement that we’re going to do everything white glove service from project and product management, design, development, QA, and any other additional needs they might have when it comes to building world-class software. But at the end of the day, we understand that some clients have different needs.
Our job isn’t to try to make you fit within our box. Our job is to understand like, what is the problem that needs to be solved? Let’s get full understanding with each other. The game plan’s a result of all of those conversations, rather than, you know, just trying to get an engagement quickly and trying to put a team together too fast without fully understanding the scope and the needs of the client.
Reuben (23:06)
And what about the person who comes in who really has a clear vision of what they want to build, but it’s still very unclear of like, how we’re going to achieve that vision, you know, what are the detailed requirements and technology required in that there’s still a lot of details to work out before we can even, you know, give them an estimated quote on a project.
Alex Ferrari (23:31)
Yeah, so for those kinds of clients that have the dream and the vision and they know the problem they want to solve, but it gets a little bit gray on like what features does it need to have? Who are they directly competing against? And really just like the full encompassing vision of everything required to actually build it and make it a reality. We recommend something called a blueprint engagement, which is just, you know, a four to eight week span of time.
On the mindset side, we pair you with a senior developer, a senior designer and a PM at the minimum. Sometimes there’s more or less people than that, depending on the needs of the client. And our job is to basically capture the entire vision of your idea within that four to eight week span. It starts out with discovery, strategy, understanding some competitive analysis on what people are doing well in the market, what people are doing well and what gap can you fill that nobody else is filling that will give you a really unique competitive advantage to releasing your product to the market. Um, all those things lead to what type of features are going to be included in the app to what is each screen of the app going to look like, which are the wireframes to the visual design, all while completing detailed cost estimates of, of time and scope, which is basically, you know, how many dev hours is that task going to take when we build it? How many design hours, so on and so forth.
So at the end of the engagement, they don’t just have what the app is going to do, what it’s going to look like, a product vision slide to show off to potential investors or people at their company to get them interested in the build. But also the cost and the scope of the project as well. And for those clients, we break it into two separate engagements where we do the blueprint first followed by the build phase after. So basically the client has all the information they need to feel comfortable about going ahead with a build. So for those types of clients, that would be the recommended solution most of the time.
Reuben (25:25)
Yeah, it’s a good example of how clients come to us at all different points in their journey, right? It might be very early on in that idea stage, but they need a partner to help them work through the user experience and design, really think through all the stakeholders involved. Sometimes they’ve already done a lot of that upfront work when they come to us. And then it’s just a matter of translating that to us. And then we take it to the next step. So we’re always looking at how can we leverage the knowledge and work that’s already been done and then help them get to that next step, whatever it may be. Maybe that next step is just a really simple, clickable prototype so they can test it with a patient or a user group.
Maybe it’s that crystal clear vision of the app that they need to get investment. Or as we talked about before, they already have an app, but they know they need to take it to the next level, whether it’s on the user experience side or on the technology side as well. We really try to be as flexible as possible to meet clients where they are and then figure out how we can supercharged them, give them superpowers to take them to the next level with their business goals.
Thank you for joining me on the podcast, Alex.
