Real-time neighbourhood alerts trusted by millions
- Client
Neighborhood Alerts
- Services
UX, UI, Product Design, Ruby on Rails, DevOps, SRE, Platform
- Description
thoughtbot built a robust Neighborhood Alerts platform that integrates data from multiple 3rd-party sources while handling astonishing user growth
How do you ship a multi-integration product fast while scaling to millions?
Neighborhood Alerts set out to deliver trusted, third-party local alerts without the noise of user-generated platforms. A simple real-estate MVP quickly grew into a robust local-intelligence product, and as it scaled past 4M engaged subscribers, the thoughtbot team shifted from launch to performance optimization.
I was surprised by how strong thoughtbot’s talent is and how much they feel like ‘our team.’ They’ve thrown their heart and soul into making a great product, and it shows in many ways.
What We Did
thoughtbot’s early focus was to build a full circle flow of data from a single source, aggregate and process incoming data and send targeted email alerts to relevant users.
The team added multiple third-party integrations, even though none had APIs. Then the product blew up, when subscriptions went viral.
The thoughtbot team is made up of talented, no-drama, get-it-done people, The engineers have integrated easily into our team. There is never any issue around getting them to take ownership or to care deeply about the work they do. If they make a mistake, it's like we made it ourselves. If they come up with an elegant way to solve a problem, it's like it was solved by our team.
Launched in 2023, Neighborhood Alerts continues to grow in features and subscribers.
Carlson and his team members say thoughtbot has been an invaluable partner with the rare ability to both build the product and guide the work around its scalability.
thoughtbot engineers integrate easily into your team - becoming a trusted part of it. It never feels like ‘outsourcing’. Most companies make you feel at least a little bit at arms-length, and thoughtbot does not. I think that’s wonderful and very very productive.