Meet Daniel Altenburg and Michael Lenny of Zipdev in Little Italy

Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Altenburg and Michael Lenny.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Daniel and Michael. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Our story begins in 2009 when Mike and I both lived abroad in Peru. We both had a mutual friend in Lima, Peru that invited us to an Expat Thanksgiving. This was the first time we met and the start to what would ultimately become a friendship and a business partnership.

Mike started and ran a Professional English Business and I (Daniel) was working for a company that sent international students to live and work in the USA on a J1 visa. When we were not working or playing rugby, we would spend our time coming up with business ideas.

Mike moved back to the USA in 2012 and I returned in 2013. Upon my return I took a job as a Recruiter with a company called RemX. Mike was living in Northern California but looking for an opportunity to make the move back to America’s Finest City. One of my clients had had an opening for a sales rep and I presented Mike. He got the job and made the move.

Now that the both of us were back in San Diego and bouncing ideas off each other once again. Mike approached me in August of 2014 and asked if I could help him find a mobile developer to build a mobile app for his Professional English business in Peru. I accepted and let him know that I would get back to him in a couple of days.

Two days later I met with Mike and shared with him what I was able to find out. I let him know that the candidates I spoke with, here in the USA, were expecting $75 up to $150 per hour. We thought to ourselves, “What are other companies doing that are on a budget?” We asked some of our friends and colleagues where they usually get development resources from and the common answer was India or Eastern Europe. When asked about the experience, everyone talked about the early 3AM meetings that they were having that they were not too excited about.

This could possibly be our “A HA” moment. Being that we are both bi-lingual and located in San Diego, we thought, “What does the tech scene looks like south of the Border in Tijuana?”

In November of 2014 we started to do some research /investigating and attended a few startup events both in San Diego and Tijuana. We quickly found out that there are 30+ Universities in Baja that offer Computer Science Engineering and Graphic Design degrees. Who would have known??!!

June of 2015 we launched Zipdev at San Diego Startup Week. We had a table, a clip board, and business cards. We must have spoken to at least 50 founders and entrepreneurs that said they were interested in our services. Shortly after we landed our first client who had a need for 1 designer and developer.

Fast forward to today, January 2018, we currently have a team of 23 full time developers and designers that work from home offices or co-working locations in Baja and other tech hubs in Latin America. We service startups and small to medium sized businesses. We typically engage with clients on a Project basis or provide them with Full Time remote team members.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When we started recruiting team members from Latin America one of the biggest challenges was reaching the right candidates for the positions we had available. When we first posted jobs we did not get a good response rate. It took a while to figure out what channels to use, to grow our network, and to get some credibility with the developer communities where we source candidates. Once we figured out the ropes, it’s been much easier to find the right candidates for the job.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Zipdev – what should we know?
We help startups and small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) with software design and development in a number of different ways. We build apps and websites for them on a project basis and also provide them with qualified, remote designers and developers who are located in Mexico.

Our expertise consists: UI/UX Design, Web Development, iOS & Android Development, QA Testing, some Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, and are just getting into Data Science/AI.

Technologies we typically work with: Swift for iOS, Java for Android, JavaScript, .NET, Ionic, Nodejs, C++, C#, Python, PHP, WordPress, HTML, and CSS among others.

What makes us spring out of bed every day is that we are able to assist in bringing our clients’ ideas to life. There is nothing better than seeing the smile on someone’s face when the idea they have had for so long actually turns into a functioning piece of software that people can use. And on the other side, it’s great to be able to connect our designers and developers with really great companies here in the USA. It’s a win win for everyone involved.

What sets us apart is that we deliver quality software like our local competitors, but can offer lower price points to our clients while at the same time providing above-average salaries to our team members. Our remote team members also work in your time zone so you don’t have to wake up at 3am for team meetings.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Transparency and Communication.

Being 100% transparent with our clients and with our developers is extremely important especially when dealing with software. We are always updating our clients on the status of their product or where we are at on finding their next team member, it’s extremely important. The same goes with our developers. We don’t just place people in interviews, we make sure they are fully aware of the company the will be working with and/or what the application they are going to build does.

Communication is a huge piece to our success. Our clients expect us to communicate with them when we have finished a project or if we have encountered an issue so we expect the same from our team members. We work with tools such as slack and hangouts to communicate with our remote team members so it is as we are in the same room. These communication tools are one of the main reasons we can have a flexible work schedule and work remotely.

Pricing:

• You can expect to pay 40-60% less than what you would find locally

Contact Info:

• Address: We are located inside Deskhub at: 2159 India St, San Diego, CA 92101
• Website: www.zipdev.co
• Phone: 858-880-7035
• Email: hello@zipdev.co
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/zipdev.co
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/zipdev
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/zipdev

Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.