Cobuild Lab is a Miami-based software development studio that creates custom solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.
The common denominator amongst Cobuild Lab’s clients was a lack of technical expertise. They didn’t understand why custom software cost so much money or required so much time.
To thrive, Cobuild Lab needed to accelerate their clients’ time-to-market while keeping their costs down. It wasn’t a problem they could solve by simply adding more developers, as that expense would’ve quickly depleted their clients’ modest budgets.
“For years, we’d been looking for ways to reduce development time as well as the budget burden for our clients,” said Angel Lacret, Cobuild Lab’s VP of Product “We also wanted to build infrastructure for clients using a smaller team.”
After a chance encounter with the 8base team at a hackathon event in 2018, Cobuild Lab sat down for a formal 8base product demo at the eMerge Americas Conference in Miami Beach later that year. Lacret and his team were intrigued by 8base’s low-code backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform and thought it could be the solution they’d been searching for.
“We had tested a couple of platforms prior to 8base’s introduction,” Lacret added. “But after the eMerge Americas Conference demo, we decided to move our full infrastructure and operations to 8base.”
The appeal of 8base’s low-code BaaS was that it provided an out-of-the-box API Cobuild Lab’s developers could use on Day 1 to start modeling the business logic for its applications. This dramatically cut down on the lag between a project kickoff and having an MVP to show clients. “Rapidly prototyping and deploying faster is something we’ve taken advantage of in each of the projects we’ve built on 8base,” said Lacret.
Since transitioning to 8base, Cobuild Lab has used the platform to quickly build a wide variety of custom software solutions. This includes a HIPAA-compliant, patient follow-up tool for Avsee’s customer base of physicians; the Mama “matchmaking” app for personal and professional connections; and an app for Okroo that allows users to search for food-and-drink deals in their local area.
Lacret credits the 8base console as a huge differentiator compared to the other vendors he considered. Its intuitive console interface makes it incredibly easy for Cobuild Lab’s non-technical clients to review their data and make informed decisions based upon it.
Partnering with 8base has also been beneficial to Cobuild Lab’s bottom line. Lacret notes that the products Cobuild Lab built upon 8base have required substantially less time. Most have taken under 400 hours to complete, which is a reduction of roughly 30% - 50%.
As a result of partnering with 8base, Cobuild Lab no longer relies on application services to provide their core product. File storage has also completely moved to 8base. When he factors in the reduced infrastructure, Lacret says 8base is helping Cobuild Lab realize a 100% - 200% savings in terms of cost and overall time management.
Cobuild Lab gives 8base high marks for customer service as well. “We have a very close relationship with [8base CEO] Albert Santalo,” said Lacret. “We frequently chat with Albert and [8base Product Manager] Sebastian Scholl. There are daily touch points and weekly conversations with the 8base team — they’re very engaged.”
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