Case Study: Mon Ami

Executive Summary

Silicon Valley startup Mon Ami engaged Hint to build a two-sided marketplace where seniors can book time with visitors for meaningful socialization, activity, and task-based care. Visitors can earn flexible income and engage with their community while seniors can get out of the house, start a new project, or get a helping hand.

Challenges

As many early-stage startups do, Mon Ami started with limited technology to support day to day operations. When the company began to grow, co-founders Joy Zhang, Madeline Dangerfield-Cha, and Steve Fram knew that it was time to build a technology platform that would support the business for years to come.

One of the core functions that Mon Ami serves is to match seniors with visitors, based on criteria like interests, schedule, and location. The process of matching a new customer to an available visitor was measured in days and required a lot of hands-on intervention.

Visitors are often college students who have unusual work schedules, and they expect well-designed technology to do the footwork for them. On the other end of the marketplace, customers are often family members of the actual person being visited. Family members want to stay informed about how their loved one is fairing, as well as pictures of the visit so they can take part in the joy.

How we helped

Mon Ami partnered with Hint to build a technology platform that would allow the business to scale while also remaining flexible to change. Using best-in-class technologies, Hint delivered web and mobile applications that have transformed day-to-day business operations, delighted customers, and provided visitors with the tools they need to be successful.

"We hoped a firm would understand our challenges and take a step back in helping us solve them- not just execute our vision but collaborate with us on the dream of it. Hint was such a phenomenal partner in that."

- Madeline Dangerfield-Cha

Command Center

The foundation of the platform was built using Ruby on Rails, React JS, PostgreSQL, and GraphQL. The application features an extensive admin interface called the “Command Center”. This interface allows Mon Ami staff to onboard new customers, facilitate the visitor matching process, manage visits, customer invoices, visitor payouts, and much more. The Command Center integrates with Mon Ami's Slack, allowing team members not only to stay informed with regards to the happenings of the business but also take action on certain notifications where time is critical.

The customer portal

Customers have a web-based portal where they can manage upcoming visits, review past visits, communicate with their visitors, as well as manage payment information.

A mobile app for visitors

Visitors have a dedicated mobile application where they can manage their availability, browse opportunities, book new visits, submit photos, and more. Built with React, the app targets three platforms with a single codebase, including iOS, Android, and the web.

Results

After a short beta period, Mon Ami migrated all customers & visitors to the new platform with no downtime. It wasn't long before the benefits of the new platform became clear. For example, the time required to match a new customer with a visitor has been significantly reduced.

"Scheduling is difficult because students have weird schedules. You want to be able to match people and settle a visit fairly quickly. Before, the process was very manual, and the time to match was measured in days. Now the time to match is measured in minutes or hours."

- Steve Fram, CTO

Since the successful platform launch, Mon Ami has worked with Hint to transition further development of their platform to the Mon Ami internal team. The rapid development of the platform has afforded the team time to focus on expansion to new markets in 2020 and beyond.

More than software

Hint partnered with Mon Ami to build a culture of engineering excellence. Sustainable code, extensive automated testing, and strong development processes have set Mon Ami up for success in the years to come.

How can we help you?

Interested in finding out how partnering with Hint could help your company reach the next level? We'd love to talk! Contact us to get started.