Our copywriter Nikita talked to Jesse Janson about his experience of working with Fora Soft.

Jesse hails from the Janson family. Movie nerds might know the family by their brand, Janson Media. After all, they’ve been in the movie renting business since 1989.

Jesse’s app isn’t officially released yet, but he certainly does have something to say about his work with Fora.

Today we have Jesse Janson with us. Jesse is a CEO of Vodeo, am I correct?

Yes. So my name is Jesse Janson, and I work at Janson Media, which is our TV and film distribution company. I am in charge of acquisitions and business development. And Vodeo is a mobile first video streaming rental service that we worked on with Fora Soft, and that’s a separate company which. Yes, I’m president of that company.

Tell me a little bit about Vodeo. What is it? How did it come to be?

Vodeo is a rental only mobile service, an application that we’re going to launch on iPhones first. The service is different and unique in the sense that the users can rent movies or TV episodes for a limited period of time. And for this, they use a credit-based system within the app, which allows the cost per movie rental or episode rental to be much lower than any other application or video rental service currently available in the market. So, within Vodeo, our users can pre-buy credits within the app that they can then use to rent movies and rent TV episodes. And each credit to the user only costs them about $0.10 right now.

Was Fora Soft your first choice?

I think it was probably our first. Definitely the first company and only company we’ve worked on for Vodeo and for the development of the application. I certainly researched and spoke to other companies as well.

«But after speaking with Fora Soft, we decided to work together, and it’s been a good decision.»

Tell me why you turned to Fora Soft? Why us?

The previous work that Fora Soft has done was impressive, and that was an important factor in our decision. Also, the communication was excellent. So I understood the scope of the project, the estimated time, work, and costs that it would take to get the project up and developed. And yeah, it’s been really good. The communication mostly. And then also the previous work was a big factor.

Share your before and after working with us, like what it used to be before you worked with Fora Soft and what it is now?

Sure. Well, before the Vodeo app, it was really just an idea on paper and just a concept. So we really needed Fora Soft to help us with an MVP. In the space and get that up and running. And then once we sort of had that tested and we had a first version, we worked with Fora Soft to update it. It’s still private, just for us to look at. And we went through a few versions of that, and that whole process has been excellent. And now we’re pretty much to a point where I believe we are planning to publicly launch this year, so maybe June.

Congratulations on that. So I believe since you haven’t officially launched yet, you don’t have any measurable figures, any amount of crushes or profit or anything like that, right?

No, not yet. Right now it’s very much private, and in beta. We probably have a pool of maybe 20 private users who have been testing the app on their phones – registering, renting movies and making sure everything works properly. And that whole process has been great so far. The feedback has been very good from everyone in our small private circle.

Let’s talk a little bit about difficulties. If there were any difficulties with working with us, please tell me honestly.

Yeah, no, I haven’t encountered any difficulties yet. Working with Fora Soft, every question or product feature that I’ve requested or asked about has been easily addressed by Fora Soft. I never got the impression that Fora Soft couldn’t implement a feature or an update to where we are so far with the app. Even discussing future possibilities of updates and features on our future roadmap down the line. Fora Soft has said all of it is possible, and we haven’t had any difficulties in that regard in terms of the development and adding new features. It’s been excellent.

What’s the situation where you would think like, all right, I really want this feature, but how do I implement it? Can they implement it? And you talk to Fora Soft and Fora Soft was, like, yes, sure. Easy peasy. We can do that.

Yeah, that’s been the case. Sometimes it’s not a quick “Oh, that’s easy”. Sometimes the project manager I’m working with at Fora Soft will have to bring it to the developer team and ask them if it’s a feature that could be done. Then they will come back to me and provide me with an estimate and explain how long it will take to implement the process. So, yeah, it’s been really good. Some features are easy and quick “Oh, yeah, we could do that quickly and easily”. And some are “let me just check with the developers and see if it’s possible”. And that’s always been “Yeah, it’s possible. We’re able to do it”. So it’s been great.

Qualities like determination and communication and professionalism are really important when it comes to project type of work. Can you please rate us on those qualities on a scale of ten and maybe come up with other qualities if you need to?

Yeah, I give a 10/10 across the board on everything. It’s been really great.

«I really enjoy personally working with a project manager.»

We’ve worked with two project managers so far at Fora Soft. We worked for a while with our first project manager, maybe a year, and she was excellent. And then there was a transition. She left or moved on and we worked with a new project manager, and that transition was super seamless and easy. A new project manager picked up right where she left off.

Working with a project manager and communicating with them has probably been the most valuable to me. Especially because I’m not a developer by any means, and I’m not able to speak developer language, code and whatnot. But working with a project manager helps that a lot. So I can communicate what I would like to see and have done. They know how to communicate with the developers and the designers and then bring that back to me and let me know how it goes.

I’ll make sure to forward this feedback to Vladimir. He’s a cool guy.

Yeah. Excellent.

Okay. And would you recommend Fora Soft to your friends or colleagues?

Yeah, I’d definitely recommend them. I think Fora Soft certainly has the skills and know-how to develop applications like this very well. Also, I felt like the price in working with Fora Soft was very competitive across the market, and that we liked as well.

There’s a trade-off. Once you go too low in price, usually the quality of the work is reflected and is poor with the cost being so low. Sometimes, when the price is very high, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality will be that much and greater. So, I think Fora Soft is in a perfect spot of good pricing of projects and development. At the same time, they offer very high quality in the work that gets done.

Do you have anything else to add?

No, it’s all been great.

«I’m in New York, Fora Soft is in Asia, there’s a time difference. Even with that, the communication’s been great. I don’t feel like we’re that far apart. The work’s been excellent.»

It might be around a couple of years of working on this application. We’re pretty at the point where we’re ready to put it out in the public and hopefully get good feedback.

Thanks a lot, as a movie geek myself, I really hope everything will work out. Bye!

Watch the interview on our YouTube channel.

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