STYLING FOR SUCCESS
How Zing helped Vessel Health meet its app development goals
Vessel Health: How Zing helped them meet their App Development Goals
When entrepreneur Jon Carder reached his mid-30s, he began noticing small health issues that seemed to be preventing him from performing his best.
“I wasn’t sleeping as good as I did normally. I was waking up a couple times a week in the middle of the night with tons of energy and my brain wouldn’t shut off… I had memory issues popping up.”
Intrigued by the concept of functional medicine, he booked an appointment with a doctor. Subsequent blood tests revealed low magnesium levels and mercury poisoning - allowing him to make positive lifestyle changes.
“I loved the whole process. The only downside was the expense: thousands of dollars for all the blood work and $500 an hour for the best doctors.”
That experience inspired him to launch Vessel Health - allowing him to make that experience available to everyone via a .“million dollar test card”
The co-founder explains how it works:“You just pee on it, wait three minutes, scan it and all of a sudden you know what’s going on inside your body…It’s a good starter kit to understand your body.”
Key to Vessel Health’s proposition is an app, which, according to Jon, will give users a“functional doctor in their pocket”.
RELIABLE AFFORDABILITY
While Vessel Health succeeded in attracting the investment capital to get its product off the ground, Jon recognized the problems of shrinking budgets and rising prices in the market. But the challenges didn’t end there,
according to Jon:
“We were in a tricky position where what we needed wasn't just an app - it was an actual product. So we needed both versions of our app to function well with our product, the test card.”
MEET ZING
That’s when the team at Vessel Health discovered Zing, a brand enabling ecommerce brands to scale as a growth partner.
Its highly-skilled team impressed Vessel Health’s CTO with its reputation for delivering clients with high-quality custom software solutions quickly, flexibly and affordably.
UNDERSTAND THE CHALLANGES
Working in close partnership with Vessel Health’s CTO, Zing gained a deep understanding of the project’s complexity - enabling them to support the client’s team of in-house and 3rd party software developers.
The app needed to provide Vessel Health’s users with the personalized food, supplement and lifestyle recommendations necessary to boost their health. Importantly, it also needed to create opportunities for users to undertake additional testing.
MIRRORING EXPERIENCES
While two versions of the app would be required, the Vessel Health team were keen to focus on the IoS version first - with great results, according to Jon.
The former chairman of the board for a luxury fashion association in the Middle East, Shahzad had a vision when he moved to New York City. He saw an opportunity to establish an ecosystem around luxury fashion on a global scale.
“His vision, Future Connoisseurs, is an invitation-only, membership-based alliance that brings together the industry’s designers, innovators and thought leaders. Its aim? To create a future of luxury beyond brands. ”
SHRINKING FUNDS
Despite the shrinking funds available to support the Android version’s development, Jon needed to bring it up to speed with its IoS counterpart, explaining:
“What we sell is a test card and we work in the UK where half the people are on Android. You can’t really sell a product like that and then say to half the users, ‘Well, you can’t actually use it.’””
Timing was everything, according to the co-founder:
“We needed to a lot done in a short time so we could show the next milestone to our investors to raise the next round of funding.”
One of the biggest issues facing the Android version of the app’s success was the core scanning functionality. Jon recalls:
“It needed to work really well. It worked on most devices - but not all of them. We were short by around 30 or 40 devices. They couldn’t scan accurately which is such a key focus for us and our company.
ABSOLUTE AFFORDABILITY
Jon enjoyed the way Zing structured its projects, explaining: “I really like the concept of charging by the project instead of the product.
“It really puts the onus on the development team to hit their targets, while relieving stress for the company itself. It means a set budget and a set timeline. That means that even if the timeline slips, the budget will be hit consistently.” He adds:
“It’s a beautiful thing - especially for a startup that has limited cash!”
“Hard to beat”
As Vessel Health prepares to launch its product, Jon looks back on his experience
He suggests: “If you’ve got a developer with really good reviews and project-based billing, you know, it's, it's just hard to beat that!
“Ultimately, if your startup is going to outsource - with no internal team - those are the two key fundamental pieces that should be a requirement.”
He adds a word of warning: He adds a word of warning:
“Miss either one of those and you could face some really tough times.”