Business Plan
The Polyfen Group LLC
Est. 2018
1. Overview
We explore new ways of using tech in creative projects
The Polyfen Group LLC is a fully-remote, US based company parent to multiple brands in the creative and software engineering industries.
The most significant brand we operate is Polyfen. A fully-remote creative & software boutique offering design, marketing, and engineering services for US businesses.
The company was founded on March 23rd, 2018 by Boris Hrnčić —Argentinian-Croatian, art director & product designer— with the support of colleagues sharing the same passion for building something that we can be proud of.
The stock is 100% independently owned by the team with no dependency on investors or any other kind of external funding.
Our location-independent business model takes advantage of the latest advancements in technology to work seamlessly with a fully-remote team years before the Covid pandemic made it the new normal.
We are a certificed LLC registered in the state of Delaware, USA and we offer our clients solutions in the same market as US based competitors at a fraction of their costs.
2. Purpose
Why do we exist?
To offer each team-member their dream job
We believe that focusing on developing a team culture that we can be proud of provides the ideal environment to grow, innovate, and push the boundries of what we can do.
3. Core values
Our Core values are the "How" in Simon Sinek's Golden Circle. They are the medium through which we translate our Purpose into amazing products and services.
3.1. Education
Excellence through R&D
As a forward-thinking company we explore the latest techologies and nurture professional growth through internal Research & Development projects, like Poly Qwerty and Polykit. That way, our clients count with the advantage of our top-tier talent to beat the competition and never be left behind in an always moving market.
3.2. Collaboration
Teamwork makes the dream work
Together we can achieve much more than we ever could alone. We are heavily commited to providing our team with all the tools, resources, and support to maintain a healthy and thriving work environment.
3.3. Flexibility
Fully-remote since 2018
We can't compete with the comp packages of big tech companies. But where we can compete and win, is in flexibility. That allows us to have the best talent in the world at a sustainable cost.
Found the perfect surf break in some remote paradise? Having a stable job shouldn't mean you have to sacrifice doing what makes you happy, wherever that may be.
3.4. Transparency
Transparency is in our DNA
Our Business Plan and Team Wiki are just some of our documentation that is publically available. We also contribute to the open-source software community with public code repositories in Github. We believe that the world of business could learn a lot from the practices and culture of the open-source community. Sharing our work allows us to:
- Reach more people with through content marketing.
- Make accessible educational resources for free to students starting out in a new career as well as well-stablished professionals looking to grow.
- Gain the interest of potential clients and talent.
- Document, standardize, and optimize our workflows.
- Give our team-members an accessible framework to provide feedback, share ideas, and have more participation in the direction of our team culture.
We don't perceive the idea of anyone "copying" us as a threat, because we value the innovative potential of our team miles ahead of any individual idea that we might've had and shared.
Wired's documentary of Shenzen, China, the hardware capital of the world shines a light on the philosophy that if somebody tries to copy your work and ends up doing better, it's because your results where lacking and the market recognized the value of a more capable competitor.
4. Family of Brands
Our Family of Brands answers to the "What?" in Simon Sinek's equation. An array of products, services, and other ventures all leveraging the marketing synergy and resources of The Polyfen Group as a parent brand.
What sets our business model a part is the possibility to explore and pivot into new technologies and niches as the market demands, as well as fostering an innovative and passion-driven culture within our company.
A good start-up should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.
Peter Thiel — Zero to One
Polyfen
Creative & software boutique empowering US businesses with design, marketing, and engineering services since 2018.
polyfen.com
Polyatlas
Open-source step-by-step guide to the Branding process, including practical tips, case studies, template files, and many other useful resources.
polyatlas.wiki
Polycookies
Open-source solution to privacy policy implementing a cookie consent banner with Google Tag Manager.
polycookies.com
polyqwerty
Your keyboard's assistant. Click on a character to copy it. Easily find the right emoji, punctuation signs, and other symbols.
polyqwerty.com
polykit
// Work in Progress //
Open-source design system for
User Interfaces with CSS code for developers and Figma library for
designers.
polykit.xyz
polyforum
// Work in Progress //
TBD
polyforum.org
polypress
// Work in Progress //
TBD
polypress.xyz
5. Services
These are the Services we offer through our primary brand Polyfen, a creative and software boutique.
5.1. Build
Brand Identity
$7,600
2-6 weeks
- Brand audit
- Market research
- Brand strategy
- Visual Discovery
- Typography selection
- Color scheme
- Logo system
- Iconography selection
- Illustrations selection
- Social media profiles
- Brand guidelines
Institutional Website
$7,800
3-6 weeks
- SEO audit
- UX audit
- Info architecture
- UX writing
- UI styleguide
- UI design
- Accessibility checklist
- Programming
- W3C & WACCAG Conformity
- GDPR & Privacy Protection Compliance
- QA
- Deployment
- Walkthrough
Web/Mobile App
$39,000
4-6 months
- Discovery Phase
- Initial consultation
- Requirement gathering
- User stories/Use case development
- Project kickoff meeting
- Design Phase
- Wireframing
- User interface (UI) design
- User experience (UX) design
- Prototyping
- Iterative design reviews
- Development Phase
- Frontend development
- Backend development
- Database design and development
- Integration of third-party APIs
- Continuous integration/Continuous deployment (CI/CD) setup
- Testing Phase
- Unit testing
- Integration testing
- User acceptance testing (UAT)
- Bug fixing and issue resolution
- Deployment Phase
- Deployment planning
- Server setup and configuration
- App deployment to production environment
- Post-deployment testing
5.2. Hire
Sr UX Designer
$45/hr
Sr Software Engineer
$45/hr
Sr Scrum Master
$35/hr
6. Differential
7.1. Low cost, high value
Our cost-efficient, fully-remote business model offers services from top-tier professionals around the world at a small fraction of the price from our competitors in the US.
7.2. Wealth of experience
Founder & Art Director Boris Hrnčić brings to the table 10+ years of experience in design, development, and marketing. Vetted in the top 3% of designers worldwide by Toptal in 2017. Led high-performing teams for small start-ups and big enterprises in Croatia, Argentina, and the US.
7.3. High-performance
We rely on a healthy cadeance of communication and Scrum practices with efficiently ran Sprint plannings and retros to ensure growth on a weekly cycle.
7.4. End-to-end service
We've got you covered next time you encounter any new requirements in the area of business development, marketing, design, or tech. Our growing list of satisfied customers is testimony that we go above and beyond to help your business grow and to develop a long-lasting and solid partnership.
7.5. Fast-track kick-off
Our standardized and automated workflows ensure that no time is wasted. Send us an enquiry and we'll promptly engage in understanding your requirements, proposing a solution detailed in a comprehensive agreement, and prepare for a prompt project kick-off.
7.6. Socially-cohesive team
This very same Business Plan being in existence and easily accessible along with our Team Wiki all work together as tools to (A) qualify the cultural fit of potential candidates, (B) have a swift and succesful onboarding of new hires, (C) define a common language to nurture collaboration and promote feedback and new ideas.
7.7. Near-shore availability
The market of remote services for US clients is very competitive. The same technology that allows our business to operate remotely and sell services to US clients is the same toolset that allows other remote businesses from lower-cost countries to compete with us. However, we bring a near-shore service in US timezone with most of our talent being based in Latin America, specifically Argentina, with senior-level engineers up to date with the most adavanced industry standards.
7. Target
| Buyer Persona No.1 End-to-End Project |
|
|---|---|
| Pseudonym | Founder Frank |
| Occupation | Founder & CEO at Business Management Consultancy |
| Location | San Francisco, California |
| Company Size | 8 employees |
| Brands they follow | Forbes, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Inc., Ted Talks, Ideo, Deloitte, Accenture, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur. |
| Bio | Frank has an Ivy League education on business, and he counts with 15+ years of experience in business. He was leading a business development team at Accenture, working on projects for Nike until, during the uncertain time of the Covid pandemic, he decided to make use of his gathered professional experience to start a venture of his own. He bootstraped his initial efforts investing money from his own pocket into his business project. He came up with a name for his company himself, he registered the webdomain of the company himself, he posted a job on Upwork to get a quick logo done by a cheap designer, and he created his business' website himself on Wix. He reached out to a few close, like-minded, experienced colleagues with whom he has worked previously on other business and offered them to be a part of the team he's leading. After a couple of months of launching his business, he closed a long-term contract for continuous consulting services for a large corporation. This allowed him to expand his team hiring an executive assistant and formalize other aspects of his business like bookkeeping so he doesn't have to take care of everything completely by himself. Now that the business has some dough and a couple of regular clients he wants to scale his operation to take in new, bigger clients to really make a difference in the income the consulting firm generates. However, as a savvy business person, he realizes that the quick logo that he got done for cheap and the Wix website he created himself do not express the level of professionalism he's hoping to communicate to potential clients. |
| Problem | He is the Founder & CEO of an emerging company in the Business Consulting sector but their Brand Identity doesn’t reflect the high quality of their services. |
| Solution | [End-to-End Project] Finding a reliable team of experts who can translate his vision for the business into a compelling brand identity and a website with user experience that delivers a good, professional, trustworthy impression to prospects and interests them in becoming paying clients. |
| How will they measure success? | Having an increase in the number of meetings scheduled with leads every month. |
| Buyer Persona No.2 Executive Consulting |
|
|---|---|
| Pseudonym | Corporate Catherine |
| Occupation | CMO at Fintech App |
| Location | Houston, Texas |
| Company Size | 65 employees |
| Brands they follow | # |
| Bio | Catherine has a background in marketing with a strong focus on closing new clients and upselling existing ones through social media, PR, and email marketing campaigns. In previous jobs, she helped startups get out the door and make the most use of their funding to establish themselves in the market and fulfill their expected ROI. Three years ago, the head of HR of a young fintech startup reached out to her, offering the role of CMO. Since then, she succesfully put new marketing strategies into action that showed significantly positive ROI results with an exponential increase in registrations of new users. However, most of the in-house staff at the company are heavily oriented in developing new features for the product, and she realizes that the visual identity of the brand has suffered from neglect at the hand of a creative team that is strong in UX, but not in branding and visual design. The logo of the app is OK, but it's not great. The UI has inconsistencies in the use of color and typography, and the set of illustrations they use looks too generic. With the number of sign-ups and retention recently stalling, she proposed to the C-level to refresh their brand with a more eye-pleasing visual identity to make the app more attractive over its competitors and show a more promising value for its price. However, her team is not particularly strong in branding; plus, they could use a fresh set of eyes. |
| Problem | # |
| Solution | [Hourly Services for Executive Consulting] |
| How will they measure success? | Increase in the number of monthly sign-ups and lower churn rate. |
| Buyer Persona No.3 Staff Augmentation |
|
|---|---|
| Pseudonym | Director Dave |
| Occupation | Managing Director at Marketing Agency |
| Location | Miami, Florida |
| Company Size | 24 employees |
| Brands they follow | # |
| Bio | Dave is a self-made man. He didn't went to a top college, but he still committed himself fully to his professional career burning the midnight oil to get new clients for a marketing agency where he had a junior sales rep role. He climbed up the corporate ladder being head-hunted for better and better positions. He developed wonderful relationships with loyal clients and made himself a name in the industry. One year ago, the founder and CEO of new marketing agency he used to work with as a client offered him a steady position at the company being his right-hand man in keeping the revenue growing. |
| Problem | The inhouse team already has a heavy workload and the C-level wants to keep growing the revenue with new clients but they don't want to hire a bunch of new employees and have to deal with the management and budgeting risks that come with scaling the business. |
| Solution | [Hourly Services for Staff Augmentation] |
| How will they measure success? | Customers commenting to accounts executives that they are very satisfied with their results and want to continue working with the Marketing Agency. |