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While Q3 included a couple humbling external recognitions of that growth, I’m most proud of how our team continues to find new ways to solve problems for our clients like Stormwind and OrangeQC.

2022 Q3 Foxbox Quarterly Update - We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time

We made the Inc 5000 — and ranked top 2%!

I’m proud to say that Foxbox has made it on the 

 with an overall rank of 121! We ranked 11th among software companies. The Inc 5000 is the list of America’s fastest-growing private companies, and we grew faster than 98% of them with a 3,735% three-year growth. 

Thank you to our team, partners, and clients for making this happen.

I’m also thrilled to showcase some outstanding recent work with two new client case studies.

, an IT training company, had outgrown their e-learning platform. They hired an outside firm to build a new platform, but the firm struggled with development. We took over, stabilized development, and successfully brought version 2.0 to market.

”Getting referred to Foxbox was the best thing that ever happened. They jumped into an existing messy database and codebase and made productive changes very quickly. They managed the entire process flawlessly from start to finish. They are easily one of the best agencies I’ve ever worked with.”

-Tom Graunke, Chairman & CEO, StormWind Ventures

 a leading inspection platform, approached us to modernize their Android application. We rebuilt it from the ground up to increase stability, scalability, and speed of feature development. We released the new Android app in just two months. Then we went to work modernizing their iOS mobile app and building new capabilities onto their web application.

”Foxbox helps us differentiate ourselves in a traditionally paper-based industry. They helped us bring a modern approach to our application and deliver value to our users.”

The rumblings of the economy continue to grow louder and louder. Here’s how we are getting through it:

 for startups and SMBs. Clients often come to us when they want to create a robust, scalable product with a seamless user experience.

 for a large healthcare company. Other clients have come to us after they’ve outgrown their MVP and their customers want more, like 

With that in mind, we’ve built two new capabilities:

We handle the maintenance and modernization of mobile & web applications so our clients can focus on their core business.

We’re helping a digital payments company modernize their mobile app and provide ongoing support.

With this new offering, our clients have peace of mind knowing that they have a team they can count on to proactively respond to issues and resolve them. It’s a fully managed service with predictable pricing.

As tech companies of all sizes continue to face challenges hiring and retaining top talent, we’re now helping connect businesses with the developers, product managers, delivery specialists and designers they need.

For example, we’re helping Rain, a crypto exchange, accelerate development of their new platform across mobile and web through a dedicated team of engineers they can count on.

So if you know anyone who wants to create an impactful digital product, maintain an application, or fill a few key roles, 

Inc. Magazine announced Foxbox Digital ranks No. 121 on the annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

Foxbox Digital Ranks No. 121 on the 2022 Inc. 5000 List

On August 16, 2022, Inc. Magazine announced 

 ranks No. 121 on the annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

Marked by a 3,735 percent revenue growth over three years, Foxbox Digital is experiencing its most dramatic period of expansion, now boasting over 75 team members in seven offices.

“It’s an honor to see Foxbox Digital included in the Inc. 5000 list,” says Foxbox Digital Founder & CEO Rob Volk, “it’s both humbling and energizing to see our name alongside so many companies I deeply admire.”

Headquartered in Chicago with development teams throughout Latin America, Foxbox exists to help companies solve problems with technology. The agency specializes in digital product development, design, and software engineering.

Whether it’s working with high-growth startups or Fortune 500 brands, Volk credits the agency’s success to its focus on not just building great digital products, but successfully bringing them to market.

“The world has changed dramatically in the last few years,” Volk says, “and I’m extremely proud of how we’ve helped our clients respond to change and uncertainty with digital products they can’t wait to get in the hands of their customers.”

, a growing $1B real estate firm creating state-of-the-art hybrid living spaces that combine luxury amenities, cultural experiences and shared workspaces. The new platform transformed how residents engage with their space and how The X Company does business. Equipped with faster resident support, enhanced security, and more accessible service data, the X Company is now delivering a resident experience that lives up its disruptive vision.

lead mobile app development partner for a telehealth app

 launched by a large healthcare organization as the spread of COVID-19 was first gaining momentum. Foxbox’s extensive knowledge of React Native proved paramount in partnering with the client’s product, UX, business, integration, authentication, and backend development teams to deliver a secure and reliable experience to users. The telehealth app was downloaded over 260,000 times in 2020 alone, and has continued to play a pivotal role in helping thousands of people navigate the pandemic with confidence and clarity.

, an IT training company offering live and on-demand learning experiences, Foxbox built an unmatched student experience focused on personalization, simplicity and real-time insights.

In partnering with Home Chef, the Kroger-owned meal delivery service, 

Foxbox rebuilt and launched their iOS and Android apps

, significantly increasing app store ratings, meal kit conversations and user engagement rates.

WIth a staff that tripled in 2021, Volk says the key to Foxbox’s success is its expert team, strong culture, flexible approach, and the ability to deliver valuable impact for our clients.

As for the future at Foxbox, Volk says that building on their current momentum means focusing on what they do best.

“We want to continue growing organically by strengthening the core of our business. We create impactful digital products for growth companies. We’re puzzle solvers,” Volk says.

“We encourage our teams to ‘Love the problem, not the solution.’ It’s our way of reminding ourselves to never get distracted by technology for technology’s sake. Our job is to bring digital products to market that solve real problems. So no matter what your field of expertise, the most simple and elegant solution always wins.”

To learn more about the agency’s capabilities, culture and what it means to operate The Foxbox Way, visit 

https://www.inc.com/profile/foxbox-digital

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at 

. The top 500 companies are featured in the September issue of Inc. magazine, which was released on August 23.

“The accomplishment of building one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., in light of recent economic roadblocks, cannot be overstated,” says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. “Inc. is thrilled to honor the companies that have established themselves through innovation, hard work, and rising to the challenges of today.”

Methodology
Companies on the 2022 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2018 to 2021. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2018. They must be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2021. (Since then, some on the list may have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2018 is $100,000; the minimum for 2021 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Growth rates used to determine company rankings were calculated to four decimal places. The top 500 companies on the Inc. 5000 are featured in Inc. magazine’s September issue. The entire Inc. 5000 can be found at 

This press release was originally published on September 27th, 2022 at 

https://www.prweb.com/releases/2022/9/prweb18913332.htm

OrangeQC is a leading inspection platform that helps facility teams track and improve cleaning, disinfection, and safety. 

Organizations like the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins University, and the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport have relied on it for over a decade.

How Foxbox Modernized OrangeQC’s Android App in Two Months

 is a leading inspection platform that helps facility teams track and improve cleaning, disinfection, and safety. Organizations like the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins University, and the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport have relied on it for over a decade.

In simple terms, OrangeQC is a super-powered checklist app that allows facility managers to keep a pulse on their facilities by tracking quality control, compliance, and project completion.

No more paper. No more lost inspections. No more manually entering data into spreadsheets.

It was already an awesome app. So why did OrangeQC need Foxbox?

We Modernized the Android Experience From the Ground Up To Increase Stability, Scalability and Speed of Feature Development

OrangeQC was an iOS-first company, but after many years of success on iOS, they wanted to extend their reach to better support Android users. Users asked for it and OrangeQC delivered.

The trouble is that the Android ecosystem is in constant flux, so the constant changes quickly became burdensome for the company to support—and frustrating for Android users.

While most OrangeQC users depend on the iOS application, roughly 10–20% needed an Android version of the app.

Inconsistency was the primary issue with the current Android app. In other words, the app might work on one Android phone but not another.

It was a problem that needed to be addressed, quickly.

OrangeQC Took a Leap of Faith – And it Paid Off

If an Android app doesn’t work as well as it should, it’s understandable to think that you only need to patch the Android version.

However, our senior engineering team did a deep-dive into fixing the Android app’s core issues, and recommended to re-architect the app from the ground up. Complete rewrites are usually to be avoided, but with the everchanging Android landscape, it was necessary to get on a solid foundation for continued growth.  OrangeQC’s options were clear: patch the existing Android app for a short time, or fix it forever with a modern architecture. They put their faith in us and chose the latter.


A Modern React Native Platform that supports Android users.

Foxbox helps us differentiate ourselves in a traditionally paper-based industry. They helped us bring a modern approach to our application and deliver value to our users

The OrangeQC Android app is more stable than it’s ever been, and it opened up new feature development opportunities that were not available before our rebuild.

A flawless launch so great, nobody noticed.

We smiled at the opportunity to transform an app for what OrangeQC Founder Matt Gornick calls a traditionally paper-based industry into something that’s, well, tech-savvy , sleek, user-friendly, and, pardon the pun, clean.

Since this is a platform that’s been used by organizations for over a decade, we needed to rebuild and relaunch without impacting current users.

We rebuilt the app in parallel with the existing one, allowing users to continue using the old version and slowly migrate to the modern application, before finally  ending support for the old version.

A big component of the launch is that the new version didn’t impact production users and the data that was stored on their phones from the previous version. We allowed users to upgrade to the modern app at their convenience.

Since many activities are performed offline, losing this data or forcing the user to upgrade was not an option.

We prioritized the user experience from the beginning, so launching the new version without the user losing their data that was stored on their phones was important, but also a big technical challenge.

The app is faster. More reliable. And most importantly, it’s a better experience for everyone. Period.

So that’s what we did: from proof of concept, to working MVP, to production app—in only two months. Over the subsequent months, we iteratively worked with OrangeQC to roll out further offline support and new functionality to bring it to parity with the classic application.

Modern Application, Fewer Bugs & Happier Customers

I originally envisioned Foxbox as the ‘Android team,’ but they quickly filled other development needs on web and iOS. I’ve never seen a software firm ramp up as fast as they did, and keep quality top of mind.

Now that the new Android app is launched, we're poised to continue development bringing it closer to the iOS application’s feature set. Impressed by the success of the Android project, OrangeQC enlisted us to improve their web application and iOS app.

More opportunities for bigger and better feature development.

The one thing that modernizing the Android app did for OrangeQC is that it allows the engineering team to move faster, and to build modern experiences without worrying about breaking the app as the Android ecosystem changes.

On the web application, we started by adding one of the most highly-requested user features: a Template Library incorporating industry best practices directly from within the software. Now OrangeQC users not only benefit from a world-class application, but can rest assured that they are also leveraging industry best practices.

On the iOS application, we undertook a modernization of the codebase to bring it up to date with the latest standards.

The end result? Polished, robust software that works across three unique platforms: iOS, Android, and the web.

We’re working to roll out new features soon, so stay tuned, Android users. You won’t be disappointed.

Foxbox came through. They did everything faster than I expected, and they delivered. I couldn’t ask for a better team than Foxbox. I’m excited to continue growing with Foxbox.

StormWind is an IT training company that offers live and on-demand e-learning experiences that are personal, interactive, and engaging.

Since 2009, the family-run company has partnered with a range of Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, United, AT&T, Cisco, Honda, Nestle, NASA, and more.

How We Helped Stormwind Launch a Customized, Automated E-Learning Platform

 is an IT training company that offers live and on-demand e-learning experiences that are personal, interactive, and engaging.

Since 2009, the family-run company has partnered with a range of Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, United, AT&T, Cisco, Honda, Nestle, NASA, and more.

With unlimited live classes, an elite faculty, and more than 170 program offerings in AI, automation, cybersecurity, end-user training, and more, StormWind remains a standout name in the remote-learning industry.

StormWind worked with a previous developer that consistently missed deadlines, didn’t deliver what was promised, and wasted over a year and a half with nothing to show for it.

Foxbox Digital took over, immediately stabilized development, and transformed how StormWind brought its product to market.

Here’s how we helped them take their training to the next level.

We created a personalized experience to make the student feel at home.

StormWind’s goal is to make education as great an experience as possible.

And to do that, the experience needed to be simple and personalized.

We optimized this experience by personalizing it to the student’s needs while significantly improving the course filters and navigation.

When users arrive at StormWind, they land on the My Classroom page first. It’s where they browse courses and filter them by title, topic, job role, difficulty, and instructor.

Students can now select what courses they want to take, and the StormWind platform will create a personalized classroom experience for them.

We made it easier to manage student enrollment.

StormWind’s internal team had to complete a tedious, ten-step process and navigate a series of pages just to create a single user account.

In short: It was a time-consuming, inefficient process—and a royal pain in the neck.

We like simple, so we decided to automate the enrollment process through an account creation wizard.

With our account creation wizard in place, StormWind team members now create accounts and groups and manage licenses from one place—without jumping back and forth from multiple pages.

We made reporting a powerful, simple, and easy-to-use admin tool.

It was difficult for StormWind to track user registration and membership status, in addition to expiration dates, course demand, and engagement.

Knowing that data is their #1 tool to foster growth, we designed and developed an admin portal where they could easily view the following:

Filter search results for onboarding and expiration details

Review courses in progress by specific users

Examine course activity for students and groups

E-Learning solutions: Powered by top-notch engineering, design, and product teams

“What Foxbox Digital brought to the table, that nobody else has, is their ability to move things forward. They moved through roadblocks and ambiguity and turned that into real software that changed the way we operate. I’m grateful to have them as our digital partner,”  Tom Graunke, Chairman & CEO of StormWind Ventures.

Foxbox clients generally come to us for three reasons:

They’re trying to bring a new product to market, and they need a partner to create the product strategy, design it, and execute it.

They’re building a product, but they want it built faster.

They tried to build something and struggled. So they come to us with a foundation, and we build off of it.

In this case, StormWind needed help taking over from another development firm that couldn’t get it done.

Now, their platform has a streamlined user experience with the ability to gather more data and build and manage user accounts with ease.

Within a few short months of launch, the new platform enrolled 2,300 users and is expected to reach 10,000 users in a few months post-launch. The new platform has already made a significant positive impact resulting in hundreds of thousands in revenue.

Foxbox was already a remote-first company, so unlike other organizations, we didn’t have to retreat into damage-control mode at the outset of the pandemic. We’d already figured out how to run an international remote team. The pandemic simply handed us an opportunity to do it better.

No HR? No Growth. How Foxbox’s HR Team Pushed Us Into Growth Mode During a Global Pandemic

 magazine announced that we’d landed at number seven on the magazine’s 

. It was a prestigious nod that validated everything we’d worked for.

We grew our revenue to $5MM. We also crushed our 50 percent growth target and are now 100 employees strong. The crazy thing is we did all of this during a global pandemic.How did it happen? It’s complicated, but our HR team deserves much of the credit.

No one at Foxbox felt the squeeze of the pandemic more than our HR department. We leaned on them—and they responded.

Almost from the beginning, we set our sites 

If we were going to thrive, we knew we had to grow, mature, and remain stable. Thanks to our capable HR department, we did. Here’s how.

There’s still an unfortunate misconception that HR is a “fluff” department. We can’t speak for other organizations, but our HR team is indispensable. That’s because they uphold the core pillars driving our business.

They know how we generate revenue and profit. They’re tech-savvy, well-versed in laws and regulations, and, just as important, know how to delight team members and customers.

In short, our HR team has business acumen. They see the big picture, and that’s critical when you’re in growth mode.

When we hired Megan Zeeck as VP of People and Culture, she brought a decade of HR expertise and a fresh perspective with her. She noticed something: our HR information system needed help. She was right.

Our previous HR system was tedious and inconsistent. Everything from tracking time off and benefits to sending a simple “welcome” message to new employees was done manually. That created unnecessary work.

So we created a new system that centralized HR documents into one location. Now, much of the employee onboarding process is automated. The new system frees HR up, allowing them to focus on other tasks, like growth.

Foxbox invests in its employees. Why? First, because they’re good people, we want to enrich their lives. Second, we don’t want them to leave.

To ensure our team is happy and constantly growing, our HR team collects employee data. We know who’s requested training, what kind of training they want, and whether they received it.

We looked at the data and found gaps, specifically with management training. Our managers were already awesome, but they needed more support. In fact, most of them had never received management training before joining Foxbox.

Better managers, better employees. So that’s where our attention went.

Diversity has always been important to Foxbox. But there’s a difference between believing something is “important” and making it a “priority.” The pandemic handed Foxbox an opportunity to prioritize inclusion. And that’s what our HR team did.

Foxbox is a global team. We come from different countries and cultures and speak different languages. We’re diverse. We’re proud. That makes us powerful.

But being diverse also means that leadership must take great care to be inclusive, especially during a global pandemic. To do what we do, team members must feel invested. And to feel invested, they must feel safe.

To ensure that outcome, Foxbox eliminated exclusive language from all company verbiage, offers flexible PTO to ensure global employees celebrate their uniquely personal traditions, and hosts monthly town halls to encourage input on diversity.

Could we do more? Sure. And guess what? We will!

As an agency, part of our core value proposition is that we can accelerate the start of a project in ways our clients cannot – we can bring a team, infrastructure, and processes which allow us to deliver more value, faster. At Foxbox, this starts with Sprint Zero.

Sprint from Zero to Hero

Foxbox performs application development as a service for our clients as a core business offering. These applications are of a known scope, and therefore should executed on a fixed timeline and within a fixed budget. Traditionally, this type of contracting work has used (and arguably gave birth to and fed) the “waterfall” approach to project management. Foxbox has embraced Scrum as our agile (i.e. non-waterfall) project management methodology. However, as an agency, part of our core value proposition is that we can accelerate the start of a project in ways our clients cannot – we can bring a team, infrastructure, and processes which allow us to deliver more value, faster. At Foxbox, this starts with Sprint Zero.

The Scrum Alliance, provided the following working definition for sprint zero:

Sprint Zero should be used to create the basic skeleton and plumbing for the project so that future sprints can truly add incremental value in an efficient way. It may involve some research spikes.

Minimal design up front is done in Sprint Zero so that emergent design is possible in future sprints. This includes putting together a flexible enough framework so that refactoring is easy.

For minimal design up front, the team picks up a very few critical stories and develops them to completion. Since these are the first few stories, delivering them includes putting the skeleton/framework in place, but even Sprint Zero delivers value.

This same article also identifies some things that are not 

The team needs to be assembled in Sprint Zero.

Organization and logistics need to be set up in Sprint Zero.

Consider planning, product backlog setup, and design.

At Foxbox, we start every project with discovery. Ideally, this is a Design and Discovery service we are contracted to perform to help our clients refine their product and business vision. Sometimes this is part of our exploration process as we learn about a potential client and the work we are looking to perform. If we are unable to complete this work before we officially start an application development project, this is done in Sprint Zero. Regardless of how this Design and Discovery phase is coordinated, it meets this definition of Sprint Zero keeping us in line with this definition and Scrum’s tenants.

Even though every client is different, this is not our first rodeo (so to speak). We have already established processes so they can be tailored and repeated. We have defined an organization structure which allows us to drive continuous improvement. In other words we can maximize the value of the right side of the 

 while continuing to value the items on the left more.

So what can we do during Sprint Zero that our clients can’t? We can assume that they can do the things that Sprint Zero 

 include, so let’s explore this under the above examples of what Sprint Zero should not be but definitely 

So according to the Scrum Alliance, the team does not need to be assembled in Sprint Zero. But what if the team is assembled? Our ideal teams have a mix of experienced Foxboxers and newer joiners and even some members who worked together on previous projects. This allows us to bring in the best of Foxbox and inject diverse viewpoints to provide the team empowerment that is a key to successful Scrum. While we do value responding to change, our clients value predictable pricing based on a clearly-defined staffing plan. Setting this upfront gives our clients and our business a baseline that we can adjust for success as we execute the project.

According to Sun Tzu, “the line between disorder and order lies in logistics.” Another way to say this is that logistics is the line between disorganization and organization. While it isn’t necessary to have an organization or logistics to start a Scrum project, plugging a team into an organization and having logistics from the start is a huge advantage. 

From the very beginning, we have tools like Slack, Zoom, Google Workspace, Miro, and Figma to help us in our Design and Discovery projects. During Sprint Zero, we can add tools like Jira, GitHub, and TestRail as well as best practices and automation around public cloud management. Our teams have support structures beyond their immediate project to answer questions around technology, processes, etc. Even when the the client brings their own processes and tools or organization, we are able to draw on our past experience and best practices act as a trusted advisor to help make sure our joint project is successful.

Plans are Useless, but Planning is Indispensable

This quote from Dwight Eisenhower is one of my favorites when talking about Agile. In Agile, you don’t simply throw away the concept of planning entirely, you embrace the fact that no amount of planning can prepare you with the reality of what you will face. Again, our clients are trusting us to deliver some result for some fairly-predictable amount of money. We are transparent on the risk around the scope of work, our understanding of it, our technical abilities, etc. but the client will always expect some degree of predictability. This requires at least some macro-level planning. We want to enter Sprint 1 with a high-level plan that we can measure our progress against. Ideally this will capture all of the major milestones, but more importantly allows us to add new scope and communicate the impact to our clients. All of our progress needs to be tracked to this plan so our client knows the definition of done for the project and where we are on the roadmap to get there.

At Foxbox, our definition of Sprint Zero is simple: complete the work required to start Sprint 1. As a company, we already completed a “Foxbox Sprint Zero” to determine how we are organized, how we work, etc. We continuously improve that over time while adding our preferred tools and best practices. As a result, we can now follow a repeatable process to exit Sprint Zero at a higher level of readiness which means we can deliver more value in Sprint 1.