How 8base Helped BLDR To Serve New Client Types, Increase Revenue

The challenge

BLDR is a Richmond, VA-based product agency and startup studio that helps founders get their ideas off the ground in exchange for equity. It also assists these companies with the design and building of digital products.

Like many digital agencies, the UI/UX-focused BLDR saw its earnings plummet during the Covid-19 pandemic. Because BLDR only took on projects that had a minimum budget of $50,000 — largely to cover the cost of hiring an external backend team — it was somewhat limited in its new business pursuits. 

Upon learning about 8base via MakerPad, BLDR cofounder Luke Rabin realized he’d be able to pursue sub-$50K projects. And unlike the no-code platforms Rabin had previously explored, using 8base’s low-code platform would allow BLDR to scale their projects as needs change. 

“With 8base, you don’t create something today that you have to scrap tomorrow,” said Rabin.

The outcome

Thanks to 8base, Rabin is now able to spin up the backend for a project in about a day. Because of his SQL knowledge, he was able to quickly learn GraphQL. Now he can write the GraphQL queries and mutations, and hand everything off to one of BLDR’s frontend developers.

With BLDR no longer needing to partner with a backend vendor, they’re able to take on projects with smaller budgets. In the first half of 2021, they were able to start four new projects they wouldn't have been able to previously consider. In fact, Rabin says 8base has been instrumental in helping BLDR recover from a bruising 2020.

8base is actually the reason BLDR has been able to serve up scalable MVPs as a new offering. At present, BLDR is using 8base to architect the MVP product for WorkReels, a collaborative video-making tool. 

While there was a learning curve for Rabin when it came to custom functions and going serverless, he likes how he can quickly test and change data models within 8base as he builds a product. Rabin no longer has to deal with database schemas quickly going out of date as the product grows (particularly with clients preparing for future AI and ML needs). 

“Determining a data structure that’s best for the team’s needs has always been hard, but it’s a whole lot easier when you can DIY it within 8base,” said Rabin.

Rabin also appreciates how 8base has changed who can build products. According to Rabin, product managers like himself can be more actively engaged than ever before. 

He can now say to one of his frontend engineers “this is where I’ve gotten things to and let’s talk about what we need.”

He’s now able to give his engineering team something to react to, which he believes is a great way to facilitate a conversation during the hand-off process. 

About 8base 

If you run a digital agency that builds custom software and apps for clients, 8base will prove to be a pivotal tool for growing and optimizing your business.

8base’s backend-as-a-service platform offers serverless architecture, strong reliability and unlimited scaling. 

Our new agency plan — $250/mo. for 5 developer seats — helps you:

          Accelerate delivery Ship client projects up to 50% faster

          Increase profitability Realize ~30% more margin

          Optimize resources Deploy and maintain projects without DevOps

With 8base, you can give a single developer the power of a full engineering team, allowing your agency to take on larger client projects with smaller teams.

How Cobuild Lab Reduced Their Build Time by 30% – 50%

The challenge

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 outcome

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. He 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.”

About 8base 

If you run a digital agency that builds custom software and apps for clients, 8base will prove to be a pivotal tool for growing and optimizing your business.

8base’s backend-as-a-service platform offers serverless architecture, strong reliability and unlimited scaling. 

Our new agency plan — $250/mo. for 5 developer seats — helps you:

          Accelerate delivery Ship client projects up to 50% faster

          Increase profitability Realize ~30% more margin

          Optimize resources Deploy and maintain projects without DevOps

With 8base, you can give a single developer the power of a full engineering team, allowing your agency to take on larger client projects with smaller teams.

The 8base Console Is a Digital Agency’s “Secret Weapon”

Many of the digital agencies we work with don’t have a backend team. And yet that hasn’t stopped them from building a variety of applications. So how are they getting it done? By using the 8base console, one of the standout features of 8base’s platform. 

Easy data entry

The 8base console is a secure, easy-to-access web portal that can be accessed from any computer. Its simple graphical user interface (GUI) allows frontend pros and other digital agency staff to create tables (and relationships amongst those tables). 

“The 8base console is my agency’s secret weapon. It let us do data entry right out of the gate. It offers full configuration plus gives us control of our data and data structure. The 8base console allows non-technical customers to see and enter data very easily. - Angel Lacret, VP of Product, Cobuild Lab

Data from a Salesforce.com account can even be pulled in via 8base’s Bolt, a single API endpoint that traditionally would have required varied expertise and significant budget to develop and maintain. All of the Salesforce data appears in virtual tables, which can then be customized in the console without impacting how it appears in Salesforce. This includes adding custom fields and files.

Accelerated querying

Once a workspace has been set-up, 8base’s API Explorer helps your team make use of live production data. The in-browser integrated development environment (IDE) permits the exploration of a workspace’s API, simplifying the task of writing and executing GraphQL queries within that workspace.

“The speed at which you can put together a data model and then change it as you're figuring things out makes the architecture process really fast and accessible. The API Explorer is a game changer — being able to write and test queries on real data in the same place you're creating the database is hugely powerful.” - Luke Rabin, co-founder, BLDR

No backend team required

8base provides the most robust GraphQL-based query language for your API. Open sourced by Facebook in 2015, GraphQL eliminates the need for a frontend team to ask a backend team for new endpoints or changes to existing endpoints. It allows agency staff to build features in real-time and take advantage of advanced query syntax for filtering, full text search, sorting, pagination, groupings, and aggregations.

Setting up a backend with the 8base console doesn’t require much coding expertise either. Those with a cursory knowledge of JavaScript, TypeScript or SQL have told us they’ve been able to set up their application’s backend in about a day. 

Should your team need some coaching, we’ve prepared a wide variety of educational materials. Check out the 8base Academy for videos on working with data and the API Explorer, or read up on related topics in the console section of the 8base Docs library. What you’ll learn will change how your agency creates apps from here on out. 

Why Agencies That Build on 8base See Their Profits (and Business) Grow

When digital agencies like yours have built client projects using 8base’s low-code platform, it’s allowed them to work faster, serve more clients with fewer employees and increase their revenue. Here’s how:

Improve efficiency — and your bottom line

When you choose 8base, every client project begins with 80% of the backend built.

“8base cuts in half all the things that you need to do to create a well-designed application.” Angel Lacret, Chief of Product Development, Cobuild Lab

8base empowers agencies to deliver client work in record time, too. Some have told us they’ve been able to ship applications 50% faster! Others have said they’re seeing 30% more margin per project.

Those aren’t the only advantages 8base offers either. When you utilize our built-in invoicing tools, you’ll have the ability to customize pricing of our monthly workspace fee to generate recurring revenues for your agency. 

Get the most out of our platform with robust support

Of course, like any good partner, we’ll always be there to ensure your project’s success. We offer an extensive video and documentation library to help you expand your platform knowledge. 8base also has an active community of users you can lean on as well as live chat representatives who are available weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EST.

Additionally, each agency agreement includes dedicated onboarding with a Q&A session. The 8base team is happy to help on your client projects, too. We offer a number of support options at a nominal hourly rate:

Live Developer Training An 8base Developer will train you and your team on how to use 8base’s platform or integrate it with third-party tools.

Live Developer Support An 8base Developer will help you and your team debug or strategize your project.

Project Consulting An 8base PM or Product Architect will help you and your team architect and select project resources (ex: data models, front-end technologies, third-party tools).

Scale continuously vs. scraping frequently

An important distinction between 8base and the “no-code” solutions you’ve likely considered is that when you build something on 8base, it’s scaleable. Luke Rabin, co-founder of 8base agency partner BLDR, said a big reason he went with 8base was due to the “limitations of no-code.” He added, “No-code is great for hustling entrepreneurs, but you can’t build upon it. You’ll always have to throw out what you did and start over.”

When compared with other solutions out there, 8base gives agencies access to rock-solid architecture, incredible reliability (99.5% uptime is guaranteed) and, yes, infinite scalability.

Why Agencies That Build on 8base See Their Profits (and Business) Grow

Product development is a very “tip of the iceberg” situation — there’s always more to deal with than you initially expect. Most non-technical founders tend to focus on the tip of the iceberg, the 20% of the product experience that people see, but there’s another 80% of the iceberg that could sink their proverbial ship. 

Fortunately, 8base Labs helps clients navigate murky waters. As a full-service partner, we deliver smart and stunning UX/UI along with consumerized design that’s responsive, progressive, incremental, maintainable and secure. 

Need help bringing a new digital product to market? 

We’re experts at building state-of-the art web and mobile apps.‍

Looking for someone to create an MVP for you? 

Our MVPs communicate value that drive adoption from your target audience, allowing you to vet your idea and raise capital while investing toward a full build. 

Want to rebuild an existing product that isn't scaling? 

‍We can offer you a backend that’s as sound as your frontend (it doesn’t matter if you’re using React, Angular, Vue, React Native, Swift or other frontend technology). ‍

Have a legacy application that needs to be re-platformed? 

‍We can assist with migration to the rock-solid 8base platform.

‍Best of all, when you choose to work with 8base Labs, you won’t have to worry about missed deadlines; cost overruns; a shortage of talent; an unskilled team; projects feeling like they’re built from scratch; “gotcha” architecture defects; or every new enhancement seeming like a full rewrite. It’s what sets us apart from other providers of design and development services.

Don’t take our word for it though. Here are just a few testimonials from the clients and partners we've worked with:

They deliver on projects faster, better and with fewer resources

8base Labs is able to use their own tooling to spin up an application’s backend…they can do that really quickly because they are intimately familiar with the 8base platform. [Their] services have been incredibly valuable for the business, allowing the internal team to focus their energy on other operations. Not only are they accommodating and proactive, but they are also committed to the success of the project.

• Mbiyimoh Ghogomu, CEO, Tradeblock

Their entire approach is really a huge asset to the development process

Any founder, technical or not, should consider 8base as a software development partner. The company is easy to work with, has highly skilled individuals who truly understood [our] aspirations and business. We made a conscious decision to not enter the IT space and 8base is helping us achieve our goals while delivering beautiful, scalable software hosted on a world-class cloud.

• Bob Jones, Co-Founder & CEO, collabtogrow

To date they have done an excellent job implementing the functionality needed to make a viable product

I look at 8base as the hub and APIs as the spokes along the wheel. Having a team that has the ability and know-how to bring in Twilio and Amazon Transcribe APIs only enhances LeadVolt’s platform, expanding our system’s functionality exponentially.

• Jason Killings, CEO, LeadVolt

8base Labs has done great work

Despite the short timeline, 8base Labs delivered an excellent tool before the deadline. The team's ability to stick to the quote they provided and strong communication skills have made for a pleasant partnership. They are a helpful partner who does work beyond the project scope.

• Drew Baker, Technical Director, FunkHaus

They’re an excellent resource and the team has a lot of experience working in the technology industry

8base Labs made a positive impact on our business. They acted as an advisor, assisting us beyond the scope of their work. The team was accommodating throughout the process and worked independently to produce a high-quality solution. 

• WIlliam Lopez, CEO, Livo Holdings Group

Their holistic understanding of our vision was a key factor in the success of the project

8base Labs really hit it out of the park early on by bringing the right people into the room and then creating a MVP visualization of our idea in a sandbox environment. When we kicked off the project, we not only had technical developers and engineers on the call, there was also a UX designer and a business strategist. This was key because technical developers, UX professionals, and business strategists will all have different perspectives.

• Omar Taher, Co-Founder, PhoTag

Our Founder and CEO Albert Santalo likes to say that hiring 8base Labs is like taking out an insurance policy. “It’s a sure thing that we will deliver a brilliant product and for a fixed fee. Knowing exactly what you will get and for what amount of money greatly de-risks the entrepreneurial process for non-technical founders,” adds Santalo.

The Secret to a Non-Technical Founder’s Success? 8base Labs.

You don’t need to be technical to launch a successful startup. 

While ingenuity is required, coding expertise is not. Case in point: Airbnb, Pandora, Tinder and Pinterest — along with many other apps and sites we use every day — were started by non-technical founders. In fact, 65% of startups today are led by non-technical founders and this number is growing.

So if you’re not going to take on the laborious task of learning to code, does that mean you need to hand a sizable amount of equity over to a technical cofounder? Some do, but oftentimes this move is premature. 

There’s a third option here, and that’s to hire the 8base Labs design and development team to create custom software for you. Our world-class pros aim to amaze, moving fast and lean while never sacrificing architecture or security (thanks to the AWS-based, API-first 8base platform).

Why you should hire 8base Labs over a CTO

The chief responsibility of a technical co-founder isn’t to code. It’s to set technical direction and staff up. With 8base Labs, you gain instant access to a team that have built products used by millions. Instead of wasting weeks on resume review and job interviews, our pre-vetted product designers, engineers, project managers, enterprise software experts and digital strategists can immediately start working on your company’s product. By eliminating the expense of a CTO — and an internal team — you’ll be able to reduce costs by at least one order of magnitude. 

While a common critique of outside vendors is a lack of dedication and responsiveness, the 8base Labs team is highly engaged. Our founder and CEO — an experienced engineer, management consultant and three-time venture-backed entrepreneur who’s served as an exec at dozens of companies — frequently serves as a mentor to our non-technical founder clients. And in a move you may not expect from a professional services firm, we don’t try to maximize our relationship by billing you hourly. Instead, 8base Labs works for an agreed-upon fixed fee. 

Just as you would evaluate a CTO candidate by checking their references, we think it’s important you know the company we keep as well. We’re an official AWS and Salesforce partner, a Clutch Top Web Developer, a Makerpad Platinum Ecosystem Partner, a Linux Foundation member and a GraphQL Foundation founding member.

When you choose to work with 8base Labs, you’ll get the expertise of a technical co-founder without having to give up equity before assessing market fit. Many of our founder clients have actually chosen to hire a CTO after we’ve built their product, which has allowed them to avoid significant equity dilution (in addition to expensive salaries). Being further along in their company’s journey has even allowed them to hire an accomplished CTO when the time is right. Attracting a competent CTO to a startup outside of Silicon Valley is incredibly hard and the polish of 8base Labs can help increase your appeal.

Built the right way, and to scale from the get-go

The digital products built by 8base Labs can be counted on to have a modern, aesthetically excellent look-and-feel, and they are architected leveraging decades of experience in industry-specific, enterprise-grade systems. 8base-built products also don’t require our clients to maintain back-end infrastructure. How and what we build is ideal for those who like to iterate and release new capabilities quickly.