"Wiredelta is a web development house enabling SMEs to get quality web and mobile applications at affordable prices."
Hi Mark and welcome to our inspiring startup talks with entrepreneurs! Firstly, can you please tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up becoming an entrepreneur?
In 2010 I decided to quit my job as an analyst at the Danish investment bank for developing countries (IFU) while studying M.Sc. in economics, to do an MBA in Barcelona. Shortly after arriving to Barcelona, I met my co-founder Thibaut Delarbre at the student residence where we created our first company, a Vistaprint competitor called Designing Opportunities. I never really aspired to become an entrepreneur, more a problem solver, but my year in Barcelona definitely taught me that the most effective way to fix problems is to build a business around it to be able to fix even more and bigger problems out there.
Can you tell us about Wiredelta? Who is it targeted at?
Wiredelta is a web and mobile development house established in 2012 with the mission of enabling entrepreneurs to get quality web and mobile applications developed at affordable prices. If you want a burger chances are you will think of McDonalds, Burger King or similar. If you want to buy a coffee to go it’s Starbucks. If you want an app or website, who do you think of? Exactly.
What inspired you to come up with this idea?
When we had to dissolve Designing Opportunity, we realized what was going on in the tech world - it was lacking a transparent and reliable provider to build digital products. Because we couldn’t find this, Wiredelta was founded to be a global provider that seeks to stay local through a franchising network. That was in 2012, and within three years we’ve built four operating offices in Copenhagen, Paris, Mysore and Coimbatore. Our focus is still the same - to find a transparent way to develop applications at affordable prices.
Prior to Wiredelta, you launched a start-up called Designing Opportunities which unfortunately had to be dissolved. What do you think were the reasons attributable for its short life?
We did everything wrong and the company was a total fail - bad company name, even worse domain name, no web designers or web developers were willing to get on board. A lot of learnings there, which is all part of the process of building something meaningful in the world.
What have you learnt from that experience? Based on that learning, what measures did you take while building Wiredelta?
Failure is the road to success. There are countless examples of this, such as Michael Jordan failing to get on his high school basketball team, then training all summer and when school started again he was one of the best. When we created Wiredelta in 2012, we were both business graduates with limited technical know-how. Being outsiders turned out to be a short-term problem but a long-term strength, since it enabled us to see the industry from a different angle and recognize two main issues: Training and Tracking. That was the moment when the idea of building in-house training institutes and time tracking systems began. The in-house training institutes gives us the opportunity to employ the best developers and designers and, as a consequence, to give the best quality to our clients at affordable price.The time tracking system allows us to provide transparency: in fact we are able to spot the effectivity of our employees and hence estimate the accurate cost and time of a project. No assumptions, and, therefore, no hidden extra fees.
There are several other similar service providers in the market, how would you differentiate Wiredelta from the rest?
We differ from our competitors with the transparency we provide throughout the whole journey of getting an application done. To assure this, we have created and have been successfully testing our two tools: Estimator and Dashboard. The Estimator provides upfront estimations on the time and cost to build any type of web and mobile application. This means anyone, without having to talk to a sales or technical person, knows what to expect in terms of resources to complete their project. The Dashboard provides a login that gives an overview of all the ongoing projects. It is possible to check the developers and designers working on a project online at any point in time, and enables to easily add or change requirements. By providing accurate upfront estimates and live overviews of a project’s status, we pride ourselves on being the company where clients are informed at all times, knowing exactly what they are getting.
What is one thing that you wish you had learnt before becoming an entrepreneur?
It's all about the people. Time and again I get confirmed as to how important it is that the right people work on the right things. Our institute is brilliant to insure that, but it goes deeper than this as you grow as a company. If people work on something they don’t feel passionate about, they will get bored very soon and deliver poorly. If you want to be the global provider for digital products, it’s super important the right people work on the right projects.
Wiredelta has a unique ‘Timing and Tracking’ approach. Can you elaborate on that?
The tech industry moves super fast, and in order to keep up you need to constantly adapt to the newest technologies as well as track efficiency to deliver projects within budget. We solved these issues, as I anticipated earlier, by building in-house training institutes and time tracking systems. Every day, our employees log in the system and manage the tasks they have to complete. What we do is that we track - by our complex scoring algorithms - their work and the time they need to solve a task. Based on that, it’s for example obvious that experienced teams log less time for a feature than inexperienced ones. The cool thing is, that the more projects we complete, the smarter algorithms we get! So basically, the estimates are only getting better, on everyday basis.
As a mobile app/web developer, you must have observed various apps and websites of many start-ups. What are the common mistakes (structure, navigation, user friendliness, etc) that you have observed so far? Do you see that as a drawback? If yes, why?
Not being specific and “trying to build the next Facebook”. Today Google has more than 50,000 engineers, Facebook 10,000. These companies started just like any other company - on ground zero! Don’t try to build a massively complex system from the get go, keep it simple, neat and make the concept evolve. If you asked Larry and Sergey if their little search engine would be building self-driving cars, balloons with internet, a mobile operating system and more, I am pretty sure they would say no.
Would you have some tips for entrepreneurs who are looking to create a mobile app or a website for their company? What do you think should they keep in mind while looking for a web/app developing company?
Go to wiredelta :) Kidding. Start by asking what is different in what I want to build. Once identified, it’s pointless to go out and talk much about it, get a prototype done instead and start testing. Everything before that is just hot air.
At present, almost all the companies have either a website or a mobile app of of their own. What do you think are the three main things that will make a brilliant company website/application?
Depends on the company segment. This cannot be generalised, and also why Wiredelta exists.
What should a startup business consider when setting up an online presence?
Many things, again, not something that can be generalised
What is the next for Wiredelta?
No digital brand has managed to become global. Wiredelta seeks to be that brand, and we intend to do so by building franchises. As we are getting very good at what we do, we want to help all the digital entrepreneurs out there starting their business journey! We are offering a smart and proven system, experience and supervision, in exchange of sharing our brand and company’s vision. We are for example looking for people who can open in London, Berlin, Munich and Barcelona, so if anyone out there is hungry to work with the best, feel free to get in touch!
Before we let you go, where can we find you online?
Our promotional website is http://wiredelta.com/. You can also reach us on social media on Facebook and Twitter.
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Sindhu Chandrasekaran is a very confident and enthusiastic journalist who loves to take up responsibilities and challenges. My quest for learning and keeping myself abreast of any developments in the field have been a drive to experiment new things. Both, the interest that I have in meeting new people, make connections and flare for writing that I am blessed with has moulded me into what I am today. You can follow Sindhu on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.