A team of digital entrepreneurs takes on the gifting market to turn friendship, altruism, and a ‘black book idea’ into a wave of generosity.
Prsnt is an e-gifting app that makes it amazingly easy to find and personalise a truly thoughtful gift in a few taps. The gifting catalogue comes from the biggest premium brands in the UK at your fingertips.
For all occasions, we have got you covered.
In a Nutshell
The Prsnt team had a vision: to build an app that lets you choose a gift from hundreds of the UK’s best-loved high street brands and send it directly to another person’s smartphone. After encountering numerous stumbling blocks with an offshore software development company, we came on board to help Prsnt make their idea a reality and build an award-winning MVP.
The Background
When you’re busy building something the world hasn’t seen before, things are happening fast. After seeking funding during a global pandemic, aiming to build a brand-spanking-new app within 6 months, and cutting ties with their original software provider, this is a story that the Prsnt team know only too well.
Born out of co-founder Omid Moallemi’s frustration with the laborious process of last-minute gift-giving, the Prsnt app allows you to send the people you love the things that they truly love, directly from your smartphone, no matter where they are in the world.
Armed with the seedling of this innovative idea, founders David, Dan, Hamish, Louis and Omid understood that embracing modern technologies to carve out a new place in the gifting market would be no small feat. But this was a blindingly obvious market need, and as digital product veterans, the team knew that they would require additional software support to deliver it – and fast.
The Challenge
With a studio rented and funds ring-fenced, the pressure was now on to make the idea a reality and build an MVP to help secure investment. However, with several development quotes falling beyond budget, the Prsnt team were left with no option but to outsource their development to a low-cost offshore software company.
While the biggest benefit of outsourcing development is gaining access to a global pool of talent, it can also create a major pitfall — poor communication. It’s this issue that impaired progress and soon led the building of the MVP to hit a hurdle.
“ The good factors were the initial speed of development and initial speed of implementation. The bad parts were finalising projects; and the polish, the detailing – there wasn’t much attention to detail.” — Hamish | Prsnt
Experiencing a widening gap between expectations and actual deliverables and after almost six months of development, it was clear that a new course of action needed to be taken to complete an MVP they could ship.
“ By the end of it, there was a build-up of negativity.” — Hamish | Prsnt
With a new investor to satisfy and a short time frame to work to, support from a new supplier with the right framework, project management, approach and expertise was crucial.
Perfect for us.
Check out the article below for clarity on Minimal Viable Products (MVPs), and a summary of the path to market: Prototype → MVP → MMP → MLP
A Sigh of Relief
Keen to recoup the investment they had made by refactoring the code and expanding on their 70% complete product to create something scalable and secure, Prsnt approached CreativeStack.
Together, we built a plan that would get the MVP where it needed to be and launched within a tight timeline.
“ When Creative Stack stepped in it was just great; the difference in quality, communication, and project management side of it – it was a breath of fresh air. “ — Hamish | Prsnt
“ CreativeStack was brilliant in that they didn’t rubbish what we’d done to date. There were no wrinkled noses. They understood our low-cost offshore route was a different path up the same mountain and took an open-minded approach to take the project forward with the same code base, refactoring where necessary.” — David | Prsnt
The Outcome
Our team of experts stepped in, reverse-engineering the app, partially refactoring pressing issues with the code, adding in the right level of security through back-end architecture, and enhancing UI and UX functionality.
“ Creative Stack set up a conversation with their design team – they approached the project with objective, fresh eyes which was exactly what we needed. I totally agreed with everything they said.“
— David | Prsnt.
The result?
An award-winning app that secured their next round of funding.
Let’s Build Something Together
If you’ve got a product idea you want to bring to life, talk to us.
Here’s the next iteration of Prsnt | Part 2 | Minimal Marketable Product (MMP).
It hits the mark. It’s giving in the simplest of ways: easy, stylish and with love.
Now for both C2C and B2B: never miss a friend or employees special day again!
Check it out below:
