1848 Ventures achieves maximum development velocity

LIMITED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT VELOCITY

With a startup ethos and an entrepreneurial spirit, the team at 1848 Ventures is passionate about business success. That passion is displayed in their ability to start from the ground up, searching for pain points that affect small and medium-sized businesses. After identifying the pain points, the 1848 Ventures team builds SaaS solutions to address those issues with the hopes of possibly launching a successful SaaS business based on the solutions.

“We are a rapidly growing operation, and it’s a challenge to quickly find people with the right technical skills when we need them,” said Chris McPherson, Venture Builder and Data Science Leader at 1848 Ventures. “That left gaps in our talent pool and limited how fast we could develop concepts. This is a critical issue because what we do requires a lot of prototyping as well as trial and error. Consequently, velocity—defined as development speed in the right direction—is very important. We’d rather spend months on a project rather than years.”

To achieve and maintain the desired development velocity, 1848 Ventures had two options. It could spend the time it takes to increase overhead by recruiting and hiring staff. On the other hand, the company could find a technology partner that could help strengthen the company’s IT infrastructure and manage its Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Snowflake environments.

“We want to be doing what we do best: building concepts,” said Chris. “We knew we could increase our focus on value creation when we have a partner supporting our infrastructure needs.”

After this realization, 1848 Ventures turned to North Labs for help. 

REVAMPING THE AWS INFRASTRUCTURE

North Labs is on a mission to help organizations navigate the cutting edge of cloud, data, and analytics through an informed, prescriptive approach. This approach results in successful outcomes so professionals like Chris and his team can spend more time on what matters most to their organization.

Once engaged, the North Labs team quickly identified the challenge 1848 Ventures faced. The team also knew that the personnel at 1848 Ventures didn’t want to concern themselves with infrastructure. North Labs was able to build automation that allowed 1848 Ventures to focus on its business initiatives rather than complex infrastructure management.

Following is a summary of the solutions North Labs put into place:

1. Organized and Optimized AWS Account Structure - The new structure allows 1848 Ventures to create the required AWS accounts/resources as necessary and do it in a repeatable and scalable way. 
2. Created a Custom Solution for Prefect Flows on AWS and Kubernetes - This gives 1848 Ventures greater flexibility, velocity, and scalability for Prefect workflows.
3. Created an API Layer Solution -  Some of the APIs will be used by 1848 Ventures in its customer applications and will serve as “building blocks” for additional applications. Different APIs are used internally to automate the other solutions the North Labs team built, such as AWS accounts and Prefect.
4. Creating a Service Catalog - The catalog will enable 1848 Ventures to interact with all of the automation the North Labs team set up through a user-friendly interface. It allows the 1848 Ventures team to trigger the creation of necessary accounts/resources from a single place via a clickable interface rather than having to trigger the automation manually.

Additionally, North Labs provided the 1848 Ventures team with a baseline understanding of the network so that they could rely on the various automations without spending time and effort managing infrastructure.

“We are pleased that the North Lab team operates as an extension of us,” said Chris. “Their professionalism and flexibility enable us to do what we do best.”