Digital products, delivered by humans
We’re a talented and diverse team of entrepreneurs, project managers, designers, testers and engineers sweating the details to passionately design, build and ship digital projects. We’re not your “contractors” or “resources” — we’re your partners to deliver ROI-driven, thoughtful and robust products that materialize your vision.
working with entrepreneurs, startups as well as these slightly bigger companies
Entrepreneurs
We help great people with solid ideas refine, visualize and eventually build and launch them. We’ve worked with young ambitious entrepreneurs as well as with seasoned professionals looking to kickstart a side-gig or a new career.
just like Mike Wong
Busy Managers
We get it. There is a ton happening. We’ve had the back of countless companies over the years — be it in developing automation to improve processes, fast-tracking the development of features or entire products or giving them the extra capacity they needed.
just like Peter Jensen
Enterprise Heroes
We know navigating enterprise environments takes a special kind of “skill”. We help entrepreneurial leaders within big organizations launch digital products with startup agility, creating measurable outcomes and internal acknowledgment.
just like Francesca Roth
We don’t have a set menu to choose from. We’ll work together to understand what is needed, what is the core problem or opportunity you are dealing with and provide the best mix of technology and implementation that can get the job done. We only work with web and mobile-based projects and either create from scratch (launch an idea, create a product, create a sales channel) or integrate and build on top of existing software.
Technology & Skills
We see skills as part of something bigger. Skills and specific technologies are just a way to materialize a solution for an identified problem with a structured process. We like to say we’re technology (and platform) agnostic, because technology — for most projects — is not what matters the most. Put the best technical stack through a horrific implementation and you’ll get… a horrific product. We are, however, skilled in the below.
Help launch a side-business
We’ve supported many entrepreneurs (some working at FAANG or at one of the Big 4) leverage their unique business understanding to create a digital product from scratch by supporting through ideation, spec’ing and actual design and development.
Create a tech business as a non-technical person
The vast majority of our clients are non-technical. We work with them to help assess what the best potential technology (or no-code solution) is to execute their vision and then as their trusted advisor and technical partner whilst they continue creating and running the business. We let you focus on what you do best.
Spot the inefficiencies and deliver solutions
It’s not that you don’t know what needs to be done. It’s just that there’s lots to do, no time to sit back and think through the problems and opportunities. We get it. We’ve helped others identify these and then built the tech to tackle them.
Scale a team
We’ve had extremely successful experiences with our engineers or product managers helping internal teams scale to meet peak demand and deliver insanely high quality products.
Build or expand products
We’ve helped companies of all sizes create new venture lines, new functionality for existing products or key integrations that unlocked growth. Our ROI-focused approach makes sure you’re not building tech for the sake of building tech.
Innovate in a big corp
Most of our big contracts with the big brands were us knocking on their door with a polished idea for a problem they had and a sketch of a plan on how to make it a reality. We’re able to provide innovators inside bigger organizations with the structure they need to deliver enterprise products at startup speeds (well, within the known limits of the internal bureaucracy :-)).
Case Studies
How BlueGlass partnered with ColorElephant to deliver a world-class website with powerful visual editing in a headless implementation to one of Switzerland’s leading brands, Rivella.
Over the years we’ve executed hundreds of projects and through that, we learned a lot of lessons. These were the result of observation of our successes and the distilling of our screw-ups. After going through all of this, we believe we found the set of steps that can take a project to the finish line as well as the rules and structure that ensures the process is enjoyable and fits the needs of the clients we work with. We call it The ColorElephant Way. A typical project of ours will go through most of the stages below. This depends on the stage we get the project at and the client’s needs.
For as much as our process logics a “waterfall”, it is in a lot of ways, agile. Each of these stages happens, frequently, in parallel ‘batches’ and each of the BUILD and VISUALIZE stages are always executed in pure agile Sprints.
We got your back
In any project with ColorElephant you can always count with a few things to make the process of working together smoother...
Communication
You get access to your project manager via email. During key stages of the process, they might become available via Slack or another chat tool and will always be happy to get on a call with you.
Fixed-scope or time-based
We have worked with both scope-based and time-based projects. With either, you’ll always get a sense of cost and we’ll help you navigate through the differences and pros/cons of each to help you decide.
Single Project Manager
Throughout the project's life cycle you’ll get a single project manager. They’ll be your main point of contact and help ensure the project is executed within a set timeline and with the highest possible quality.
Visibility
The whole project is tracked and managed via Clickup. You get full visibility over progress in regular calls and an updated board. You’ll also see our incremental deployments into a test url when the project is at a stage where regular sprints can commence.
Strategic Point of Contact
Throughout the project you’ll also get regular access to one of our strategists. They’re there to assist the PM in the background in ensuring your project is successful but are also happy to get in conversations with you to help strategise solutions or identify opportunities.
Plan with Milestones
A fool without a plan is just a fool 🙂 We develop a project plan with key project dates and milestones as well as what the expected progress is. Given the nature of software development, the scope will have small adjustments that might lead to small changes in this timeline. These will regularly be reflected.
Everyone will tell you their team is the best around. We’re probably not. But we are, however, better than most because we’re a unique mix of people that work hard, every day, to be the best. We match a deep business understanding with extensive technical expertise. We care, Deeply. We don’t deliver code, we deliver a solution to a problem or a way to do something better. We make mistakes and then we show up, fix it, learn and try not to repeat them again.
And we don’t just say it, we bake these promises into an enforceable contract. We believe the choice of whom you work with should be driven by how much you “connect” and how you see your partner driving your business forward. We hope to be able to show you just that.
At the end of the day, there’s thousands of mobile/web development companies out there.
Picking one is a mix of credentials, availability and … chemistry. 🙂
ColorElephant is a small (yet growing) boutique digital studio, with physical addresses in Porto and New York but a global footprint with a team of savvy digital natives helping global clients create, connect, improve and grow their digital products and initiatives.
Over the last 8+ years, we’ve done everything from helping a mom and pop shop launch their business idea (and see it grow!) to creating a local HR system for one of the world-leading car manufacturers. This unique exposure to different realities, paces, and industries provides us an edge on having a much more comprehensive approach to problems. We bring together the agility of startup development and the rock-solidness of enterprise deployments.
Bootstrapped from day one by two young entrepreneurs with an international background, we rely on doing great for our customers to grow (and survive). In just eight years, we got offices in two continents, a growing (remote, even before pandemics were a thing) team of incredible professionals and clients on all continents. We set ourselves apart by a lean structure, fair pricing, and a deep sense of mission and dedication to our customers, all the way from the CEO to the programmer working on your project.
Let us share the truth: we’re not perfect or even the best. There’s a bunch of things we need to improve (and do so every day) but if you talk with our clients, you’ll learn about our creativity applied to solving real business problems or seize on opportunities, our support, and insight beyond what any scope of work can set, about our unbeatable commitment to successful delivery and our technical soundness.
At the end of the day, it comes down to being humans: understanding problems, making commitments, and working alongside you to execute on solutions. Not as ‘resources’ but as partners.
A Remote Team
With clients spread across the globe (from Hawai to Sydney) and talented team members across the world, we have a truly widespread presence from the frenzy streetlights of New York to the river-bathed hills of Porto.
We are all shades of color, come from over 10 countries, speak over 13 languages (and many more accents), have different religions, preferences, and perspectives. Some of us graduated from prestigious universities while others dropped out. Some worked for big corporations, others as one-man freelance shops. In all our diversity, we all share one thing, though: a passion for crafting mobile and web experiences that delight. That is what brought us together. Regardless of our geography, all of our team adhere to the same rules and best practices allowing us to work with clients even in the tightest regulated industries.
See how we look at remote work.
BOBJ – Data Model Explained
Choosing the data model for a project requires an extended conversation about the project itself. Its plans, goals and dreams. What does the project hope to be? It should not be a “choose your database and then fit your model”. You don’t buy a Ferrari and then see how much lumber you can fit on top: you choose the car for the purpose that you need it for.
CEO = Chief Enabler Officer
As a Founder/CEO of a small (albeit growing) tech company one of my biggest issues — to which I’ve not been able to find a solution still — is time management. I end up taking up a lot of work (some of which I probably shouldn’t) and between financials, client management, product development, roadmap structuring, hiring, and the dozen other tasks I assign myself to, I barely have time to do any of it timely and effectively — let alone spare some time to myself.
After a ton of time searching, going through multiple teams both near-shore and off-shore, ColorElephant was able to deliver at a level even I wasn't expecting
Marco Schläpfer Entrepreneur (Zurich)