Intro

Rebel is a mobile app that offers a one stop shop for health, fitness, and nutrition in the Philippines. They have a library of thousands of workout and meal prep videos, and also offer a remote personal training service. All of these services are offered through native android & iOS mobile apps.

They wanted to build their product and their business in as lean a way as possible - keeping their cash burn low, whilst also offering a very polished experience on both iOS and Android, in a market where slow internet connection is the norm.

The Setup

Tonic worked with Rebel from December 2019 until January 2022, on a monthly Fractional CTO retainer arrangement. Rebel wanted to hire their own in-house team, so we oversaw that process and installed and trained a developer who is still with them to this day.

The scope of work changed over time. For the early period, it was mainly focused on hiring and training, then it transitioned to setting up the systems, processes and technology, then to focusing on launching the first version, and then to getting into a steady state of constant feature updates, improvements, and regular shipping.

Our communication consisted of 3 weekly scheduled calls (which included the developer once he was hired), a shared project management tracker where we would store and track all of the work, and a group chat where Gilles (the Rebel founder) could ask any questions as they arose. Additionally the Rebel team were able to call us directly as and when needed to discuss whatever required attention, and we would also occasionally join vendor or partner calls as the technical authority.

What We Did

Hiring

Decision on what kind of profile to hire as the lead developer - important skills, experience and characteristics.

Drafting of job spec & sourcing of candidates - posting on jobs boards, slack channels etc. based on our knowledge of where to find best local talent.

Candidate interviews - being the technical point of contact; ensuring the candidate is sufficiently tested and appraised; ensuring the candidates feel like the company they're joining is well set up.

Re-hiring: In this case the first candidate began building the first version but had some family issues and had to leave, so we had to find a new developer.

Infrastructure & Technology

Build out of first version of marketing website on Webflow.

Decision on optimal tech stack for desired goals (React native, firebase for auth, Webflow CMS, later Rails GraphQL API)

Detailed review and ultimate decision on optimal video hosting service, criteria being suitability to slow speeds (chunked playback) and cost effectiveness. Tested 6 providers and decided on Cloudflare.

Decision and guided implementation of important analytics tools (Mixpanel, Bugsnag) to keep a tight handle on quality.

Decision and guided implementation on migration from Webflow CMS to an in-house CMS which integrated Cloudflare Video directly, built on Ruby on Rails and served via a GraphQL API.

Decision and set up of other hosting providers (S3 for images, Heroku for web apps).

Guidance on an incremental codebase cleanup post launch with a view to doing it in incremental chunks

Management

Implementation of project management workflow and tracker. Daily calls with the team which ensured optimal co-ordination between the product and engineering streams.

Assistance with forecasting and prioritisation

Implementation and training of a practice of

Results

Within several weeks of launch, the app reached 100,000 users. The infrastructure we had set up was capable of handling this load without a glitch, and the app was received incredibly well. To this day it is still rated 4.9 and 4.7 on the app stores with thousands of reviews.

Additionally, Rebel continues to go from strength to strength, using the same original tech team that was installed by Tonic. They have raised money from an impressive roster of investors and are generating substantial revenue for their business. Because of our focus on using the correct technology decisions and finding the right lead developer, they've also been able to iterate rapidly, introduce new services and offerings and bring them to market quickly. For example, their coaching service was

What the Client thought

"The fractional CTO setup worked remarkably well for us, due in no small part to the wealth of experience that our Tonic CTO brought to the table. I was skeptical that we'd be able to reap the full benefit of this knowledge and experience in a part time capacity, but it became very clear very quickly that it was much better to have someone great who we trusted fully, available when we needed them, than someone mediocre in an in-house capacity. When I speak to counterparts who have spent enormous time and effort on building a large team in house, they're always amazed at what we've been able to achieve - solid video experience, support for hundreds of thousands of users, top rating in the app store - with such a small team and tech cost"