Building an MVP for Seamless Internal Handoff
Background
After he left the company that acquired his most recent startup, BringIt, serial entrepreneur Woody Levin had another idea: an online safety deposit box in which users could securely store, organize and keep all of their important account information and life documents up-to-date. The user could then share access with those that matter most to them—in real-time and, perhaps most importantly, once they’ve passed. The idea was called Estate Assist.
Getting the product built wasn’t going to be easy—and Levin wanted to start the company with the product ready to go. He knew he needed to hire a team that could develop Estate Assist immediately—and professionally—so that his time to market, and ability to walk prospective investors through a live product would happen fast.
Story Highlights
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By hiring Arcweb Technologies to develop the Estate Assist MVP, serial entrepreneur Woody Levin was able to start his next venture without having to build out the whole team first. This saved approximately six months of calendar time.
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With product in hand, Levin added his engineering team, which was impressed with Arcweb Technologies’ product architecture, code quality, documentation and testing. This made for an efficient handoff to the internal team.
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In November of 2015, DocuSign, the global leader in eSignature and Digital Transaction Management, acquired Estate Assist.
Solving the Challenge
Arcweb Technologies came on board to build the Estate Assist MVP (Minimum Viable Product) with the end goal of delivering it to the forthcoming in-house engineering team. The team developed rapid prototypes on an iterative basis; identified and integrated all partnering products; built out location-specific transaction cataloging; and developed the “modular permissioned sharing system” that would allow an Estate Assist user’s accounts to be transferred to beneficiaries. Throughout the entire build, Arcweb Technologies maintained accurate testing and documentation to best prepare for transitioning the product to the incoming Estate Assist engineering team.
Outcomes
A serial entrepreneur, Levin was able to get his next company up and running with an actual MVP ready out of the gate—on budget, on time and within scope thanks to Arcweb Technologies’ development capabilities. And in November 2015, Estate Assist was acquired by DocuSign, the the global leader in eSignature and Digital Transaction Management used by over 225,000 companies and 85 million users across 188 countries.
But perhaps most importantly, the incoming Estate Assist engineering team was happy. The team’s product architecture, code quality, documentation and testing made for seamless transition and minimal training.
Usually when you inherit a product, there is a ton of work to do. But this wasn’t the case. Arcweb Technologies had built a sound product that made my first day on the job much easier than I had expected.
Head of Engineering
Estate Assist
Estate Assist
