goBalto

goBalto, Inc., 2009

Challenge

Starting from scratch

In 2008 Jae Chung, a seasoned pharmaceutical executive, set out to create a new company and product to serve the pharmaceutical outsourcing industry. With no brand or technical team, he wanted to early product launch to start building a strong customer base.

Solution

Bootstrap with full service solution

Carbon Five teamed up with partner Hot Studio to provide a full service solution that included naming, branding, user experience design, software development and team building and training.

Hot led the initial engagement of branding, design and strategic process, with Carbon Five consulting in the process. Four weeks into this process, the branding effort had defined the goBalto identity, and design and strategy began driving software development.

Carbon Five provided a software development team and technical leadership. We built customer facing features, which included a faceted search engine, social networking, e-commerce, on-site email and company profile management. In addition to the public-facing web site, we built a set of tools for the goBalto team to build and maintain a robust, industry-first database.

We used an iterative development process driving towards a first release six weeks after development started. After an initial launch, we provided quick turn-around (often just a few days) between feedback from the goBalto team and customers, and seeing changes on the live web site.

We also helped goBalto to identify and evaluate candidates for their software team and trained those hires to take over the product development process we had put in place.

Value

Commercially viable in a matter of months

Jae's own reaction says it all.

Carbon Five has helped me build a fully interactive and commercially viable professional networking platform for the global biotech and pharmaceutical industry in a matter of months. Carbon Five also provided practical advice on challenges I faced at key decision points relating to my company's business model.

What sets Carbon Five apart from other development teams, is their ability to carefully listen to my specific needs and convey recommendations in an easy to understand manner. They have always been flexible and accommodating and have generated visible results. Carbon Five has proven themselves to be an exceptional Rails development organization, and is definitely worth getting to know.