In 2023 we celebrated our fourth year of existence and a series of accomplishments that reinforced the drive with which we started. Growing from a handful ...
Preserving a Legacy
Permanent.org is a unique, secure cloud storage service which provides to customers a safe place to safeguard and share their personal history.
Backed by a nonprofit, Permanent seeks to ensure that one’s experiences and histories are preserved to create a valuable springboard for all individuals, small organizations and families.
A Mobile Solution
Keeping up with current trends of user behavior is a challenge for any organization in the digital marketplace. Recognizing the need to provide customers more than a desktop portal for storing their digital memories, Permanent concluded that a mobile application was the best solution.
Upon embarking on this new venture, at stake was Permanent’s ability to reach the vast majority of their target audience, made up mostly of baby-boomers, who can tend to be less than eager to learn new tech interfaces. Permanent.org’s Executive Director Robert Friedman:
“Having perpetual access is a core service and without a mobile native application, our mission itself is at stake”.
Robert Friedman, Executive Director, Permanent.org
More Than Just Builders
They helped us understand our challenges better than we did, an gave us a roadmap of how to reach our goals, and they did all this during the process without waiting for our direction. We are not seasoned veterans in the tech sector, and we are a small team, and so we need that critical advice. This is something that we get from VSP that we wouldn’t get from other firms.
When they first approached Victory Square Partners, the Permanent team was immediately struck by how different the experience was.
“VSP recognized that we were non-profit and providing a public service, and they made it clear that they were willing to do whatever we needed to accommodate our unique needs: like working in an open source environment and giving us an affordable plan. They were accommodating and collaborative.” says Freidman.
The team at Victory Square Partners went beyond just constructing Permanent’s greenfield mobile application. They provided consultative feedback in the planning stage that took into account the future of the whole company.
“They helped us understand our challenges better than we did, and gave us a roadmap of how to reach our goals, and they did all this during the process without waiting for our direction. We are not seasoned veterans in the tech sector, and we are a small team, and so we need that critical advice. This is something that we get from VSP that we wouldn’t get from other firms.”
The low turnover rates that Victory Square Partners enjoys were another key element in the success of the mobile product build and launch.
Consistent help with low personnel turnover was critical.
“Permanent is a small company, and as such, we need the stability of low turnover. With certain firms, it can sometimes feel like we get a new person every quarter. But with VSP, we have the same team the whole engagement. This was critical for us. If someone leaves and you have turnover, because of our size, we can’t risk that. It really cuts into our growth.”
Another benefit was the excellent employee management that is “baked in” to the VSP culture.
“The kind of talent they hire is not the kind of talent that needs a lot of handling. They are warm, kind, friendly group of engineers; gender diverse and age diverse. And they even brought in interns, which we love because of our commitment to mentoring. You can tell that they care about our engineers as much as they care about us.”
The People Make the Difference
The kind of talent they hire is not the kind of talent that need a lot of handling. They are warm, kind, friendly group of engineers: gender diverse and age diverse. And they even brought in interns, which we love because of our commitment to mentoring. You can tell that they care about our engineers as much as they care about us.
The Team at Permanent.com
A Step Forward and Beyond
The team from Victory Square Partners completed the mobile application project in March of 2022. Friedman explains:
“We are clearly reaching the audience that we were hoping to. And although we are still exploring product market fit, what we have discovered by building this app is that there was a demand for it, and now we are moving forward with VSP to develop the tablet version.”
The trusted partnership forged during the initial project has produced excellent results, and Permanent has continued their partnership with Victory Square Partners, who are now contributing mobile, web, and ux/ui support. This has enabled Permanent to look towards the future.
“The next problem to solve is UX/UI design, and how do we collect data to track and optimize user experience for that purpose.” says Friedman. “The team at VSP are diverse enough to handle that.”
“It doesn’t feel like Victory Square Partners are more than merely third-party contractors. Their teams are made up of quality people with integrity, the sort of people who are invested. And that is not just the leadership. It runs all the way through the organization. They are invested in our goals, and willing to do whatever it takes to help us reach them.”
70%
Of new Permanent users are engaging on mobile
1,300+
New app downloads
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