MediaKits Case Study
Going from Free to Pro
Building a paid version of a growing product.
Idea
Empower digital creators to showcase their success
Challenge
Update a SAAS product that creates a digital media kit
Services
Custom software development, Staff Augmentation, Process Improvement, Product Management
Company
About Media Kits
MediaKits is a SAAS company that provides a simple and easy to use platform for influencers, bloggers, and musicians to create a custom media kit online with real-time data and analytics.
Each MediaKit compiles data from social media platforms, Google Analytics and streaming services, and packages it into a customizable, beautiful dashboard. This service makes it easy for creatives to showcase their achievements to fan, agents, press agencies, corporate sponsors, and more.
“I’m a non-technical founder and so is my co-founder. So that’s why Revelry Labs was a godsend. We were really trying to make sure that we put the right team in the right seats at MediaKits. Overall the experience was incredible and I have nothing but good things to say about it.”
CONTEXT
Ready to Grow
When our partnership with them began, MediaKits was a growing early-stage startup. Founders Kieran O’Brien & Casey Adams were ready to build a Pro version of their product, to allow for monetization. But their internationally distributed, part-time technical team was not moving fast enough.
To hit their goals, MediaKits hired a full-time developer and partnered with Revelry to kickstart technical changes that would allow them to grow the product for years to come.
Delivery
Product, Process, and Development
The Revelry team partnered with MediaKits to develop new features with engineering, build solid technical processes, integrate product management principles into all phases of development, and augment their team as they grew into a larger company.
Cleaning up Technical Debt
We began our partnership with MediaKits by working with their senior engineer to identify the application’s technical strengths and growth opportunities. After completing this code audit, we cleaned up technical debt in the front and back-end codebases and updated database schemas.
Beyond cleaning up the codebase itself, we emphasized the importance of using a development and deployment process that exceeds industry standards. Together, we implemented a two-review-required pull request (PR) review system with protected branches to prevent any user from pushing to them without making a PR. To improve communication and increase momentum, we restructured sprint commitments into Revelry’s lean agile model.
What began as an unorganized set of numerous branches without reviews, approvals, or version control became a unified process for growing the product. Along the way, we consistently created documentation to make things easier for ourselves and for any future developer to work on the application. Now, the MediaKits team can quickly understand a feature request, work with product owners to understand the simplest version to build, and make this update to the app as soon as possible.
Engineering
Adding features to a growing product
The Revelry team partnered with MediaKits to develop new features to meet the company’s growing needs. A few highlights include:
- Implemented a version of “pro” functionality to monetize the app
- Refactored codebase to support multiple media kits per user
- Implemented a beta version of “Agency” functionality to increase user base
- Tiktok and Twitch social media platform integrations
- Automated syncing of data from users’ social media connections
- Implemented a tool to record and aggregate user bugs automatically to detect pain points for users
“For the longest time I was trying to do product management and project management myself, which is not something I’ve ever done professionally. We had a number of product managers from Revelry share their experience: how to create those tickets and the flow and improving our Kanban/sprint boards. Now, I’ve been able to take over those prioritization calls and do a lot better of a job managing product requests now.
With other firms, there have been so many times where code reviews fail over little things or obvious design decisions weren’t implemented because someone was just trying to get their job done and go home. But that was not the case with anyone here. People were asking questions and going above and beyond in any opportunities that they could. Hands down, the best and most enjoyable product managers and developers I’ve ever worked with. Dream team.”
A partnership accelerating growth
After five months of teaming up with Revelry, MediaKits grew exponentially, from less than 1,000 users to over 15,000.
The product is now monetized, full of feature enhancements, and has a documented process to make onboarding future developers easy.
With this technical foundation, MediaKits is ready to continue growing and supporting creators around the world.
Ready to build with Revelry?