Obecto, A boutique software development consultancy from Bulgaria

Please introduce Obecto.

Obecto was founded in Sofia, Bulgaria almost 8 years ago. It was found under the belief that software development should be more than a way of delivering features. It should bring valuable change to the world. Software development is not the goal, but the means of achieving one’s vision. As such it should be accessible and easy to all having such a vision.

The CEO, Todor Kolev is a software engineer himself, with more than 15y of professional experience. He is a passionate entrepreneur always on the lookout for possibilities to make a positive impact on the world. Attitude that persists throughout Obecto’s activities and we actively seek in people before we hire them.

Awards and Partnerships

Obecto is well known in the vibrant StartUp scene in Bulgaria. Being entrepreneurs ourselves we are well aware of how dependable a StartUp can be on software development. That is why we’ve developed a service allowing StartUps fast and easy access to experienced software engineers.

Partnerships: Start It Smart, B2P Academy,  HackFMI

What is your major service sectors?

Dedicated Team

1) Get the best fitting team for your project 2) Take full control 3)Use your own workflow and process.  Dedicated team is ideal for Companies with existing technical expertise seeking to expand their teams. Prices start from 6,000 EUR per team month

Managed Agile Team

1) Get the best fitting team for your project 2) Proven development process 3) Dedicated Product Manager 4)Technical supervision. Managed Agile Team is Ideal for Companies and founders building software products and adapting requirements on the go. Prices start from 6,400 EUR per sprint

Fix Bid Project

1) Get the best fitting team for your project 2) End­to­end product management 3) Predictable timeframe and budget. Fixed bid project is ideal for companies and founders seeking fixed timeframe and budget for a fixed set of requirements. Prices start from 15,000 EUR per project

Framework support

Java, Javascript, CSS, .Net, Azure, Angular.Js, iOS,Cassandra, C#, Hadoop, Joomla, Python, Django, Xamarin, Node.Js, Symfony, Dojo, HTML5, Spring Source, Apache Camel, JSF, Hibernate, Prime Faces, BlazeDS, Zend Framework, Doctrine, MongoDB

Obecto’s growth level of previous years. How is your business model beneficial to your customers?

Through a matching algorithm our platform matches our clients’ project requirements to the best fitting team of developers for that project. From our 7+y of experience we’ve learned that there is no singular approach that fits all software development projects. That is why we’ve also differentiated three separate services, to accommodate the specifics of our clients’ projects and match them to the development and management team with the required seniority level. We aim to make software development and management accessible to a much wider audience that it was ever before.

Currently we have a yearly turnover of about $1M and steady growth year­over­year of more than 20%.

What are your main marketing channels?

So far our main marketing channels have been establishing key partnerships and referrals from past client. Currently we are exploring several lead generation channels as well as SEO.

Your business philosophy?

We believe that software development should be more than a way of delivering features. It should bring valuable change to the world. Software development is not the goal, but the means of achieving one’s vision

How Obecto standout from the rest of other companies?

We design the perfect collaboration between our teams and any given business at any given stage of its life cycle which is need of software development Through an exhaustive matching algorithm our platform matches our clients’ project requirements to the best fitting team of developers.

Working Environment

By solving numerous challenges in their projects our teams have learned to work effectively together. They are self­organised, hyper­productive and bonded to share a strong team spirit. In our community, we certify our developers based on Dreyfus model skill acquisition. Our talent pool consists of intermediate, senior and expert full­stack developers.

In the Obecto community we strongly stimulate personal and professional development. Every two weeks we organize Knowledge Sharing events on which the expert developers share their knowledge with their junior teammates. This way we are up to date with all new technology trends and we make this knowledge available for all our community members.

How you estimate cost of a project?

The main factor we take into account when preparing the cost plan of a project is the man­ hours spent building the software product. The price per man ­hour depends on the seniority of the developer hired.

The average price for a project is between 25,000 ­ 50,000 $. Of course, we have bigger projects in our portfolio up to 500,000$ but the majority of the project are with budgets upto 50,000 $.

The billing could occur monthly or after a Sprint ends, depending on the type of service the client has chosen. As a payment method, we use bank transfers.

What are the main challenges and problems you face?

At Obecto we have a well developed and battle ­tested workflow. The members of the Obecto community are passionate software engineers for whom developing as software product is more than just going to work. They love what they do and enjoy being challenged. And here comes one of the main difficulties we face ­ currently the demand for engineers in Bulgaria is greater than the supply.

What is your promise to your customer?

Our customers are happy because we try to understand their vision and product needs, not only develop a software for them. By choosing the working methodology at the start of a project we ensure a stable foundation for meaningful communication and work.

Clean Code

we have projects that need to sustain development in the longer term. Cleanliness of the code is crucial when we need to maintain our productivity in the long term.

TAD

Testing After Development is a practice where the unit test is written after the actual code, and only specific part of the code are put under such unit testing instead of being in pursuit of 100% code coverage. For many project we have done exactly the opposite and we’re very proficient in TDD (Test Driven Development), as well as writing end­ to­ end tests with the help of BDD (Behaviour Driven Design).

Vision and future expansion plans of Obecto?

Our bold plan for the future is to democratise the software industry. By democratizing the industry, we want the client to have the whole information when hiring a software development team and vise a versa. We are a platform which will perfectly match the customer specifications with the developers’ specializations and willingness to work on such a project. The platform will use artificial intelligence to match every project with the most suitable team. In addition, the Obecto platform will review the quality of the code of each developer and will give feedback to the client. We are also developing our own chat bot who will guide the client through the whole journey. 

+