Blinqed: How Proshore Empowered A Hospitality Startup
Blinqed co-founders Bart Nijssen and Bart van Dijk had devised an innovative solution for the food sector, but when it came time to build the solution, they didn’t have the team or expertise to execute it. With Proshore, they now have a ready-made team of developers that continue to do their product justice.
Blinqed is a technology solution that’s designed for the restaurant and hospitality industry. Devised by co-founders Bart Nijssen and Bart van Dijk, Blinqed bridges the gap between restaurant owners and their suppliers.
On average, entrepreneurs in the hospitality sector have eight suppliers and tend to place up to twelve orders per supplier every week. This process often requires significant amounts of time – time that’s not always available. That’s where Blinqed comes in.
The platform is designed to bring together hospitality entrepreneurs and suppliers from the food sector. Suppliers join the platform and upload their inventory, which restaurant owners can then order from directly through Blinqed. This helps cut costs and time spent across the board, making it a win-win for both parties.
Having come up with this concept, the Blinqed founders were looking for a team that could bring their product to life in an agile and efficient way.
Enter Proshore!
With our Team-as-a-Service functionality, we were able to equip Blinqed with a team of professionals focused on building and enhancing their product. This approach saved the company time, not just in product development, but in hiring, upskilling, and professional development as well.
The Challenge
When Nijssen and van Dijk were ready to take their idea to the market, they started by hiring their own developers. As they embarked on this process, they soon realized that they didn’t have the technical know-how to pinpoint the skills and expertise they needed in a product development team.
Another stumbling block was the lack of developer talent in the Netherlands. There’s a high demand for skilled developers, and that’s pushing up the average rates for a developer position – rates that are out of reach for a small startup.
Nijssen very quickly realised that if they wanted to do Blinqed justice, they had to have a strong foundation of talent and seamless processes. Not only did they need a solid team of developers that could carry the project forward, they also needed someone who had experience taking a product to market with tested, agile methodologies.
With that in mind, they set out to find a partner that could translate their business needs into a technical solution. This is when the co-founders reached out to Proshore. They had previously worked with us on a small project and knew we would be the right fit to carry the project home.
The Solution
Blinqed engaged Proshore to build a team of developers to build and deploy their platform. As part of the engagement, we provided them with 10 full time senior developers from our Nepal office, who are entirely dedicated to developing, testing, and launching functionalities for the Blinqed platform. All software and architecture is built within a devops lifecycle where the team collaborates on all parts of the product, from conceptualization to deployment.
Now, Nijssen is free to focus on the areas of the business he’s familiar with. Even as the Product Owner, his responsibilities are limited to decision making, while the tactical elements are left to the Proshore team. As part of the Proshore model, the team is led by a scrum leader that communicates Nijssen’s requirements and operates fairly independently, removing day-to-day pressure from the company executives.
As part of the process, Nijssen draws up plans and supplies the team with market information. The developers then approach the problem from their respective areas of expertise, teasing out the right answer collaboratively. Since they are exclusively focused on the Blinqed project, the Proshore developers have developed an intimate understanding of the business and industry, and this knowledge is deeply embedded in how they build the platform.
The team has also proven to be adaptable, pivoting as needed to meet evolving priorities, while still prioritizing the success of the product.
The Impact
With the Proshore team in place, the Blinqed co-founders have been able to refocus their time and efforts on promoting the business and establishing key partnerships with suppliers and hospitality entrepreneurs alike.
As Blinqed continues to build and scale their offering, they’re hoping to continue working with Proshore to expand the number of engineers focused on their product. Nijssen and van Dijk’s ambition is to grow quickly, and they want to continue relying on the depth, expertise, and agility of the Proshore team.
Proshore is working with countless Dutch technology organisations like Blinqed to scale up their developer teams without the added cost of headhunting, interviewing, hiring, and upskilling new employees.
Curious to learn what that could look like at your company? Let’s chat.
