CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
Building Software That Works, Not Just Checking Off the Scope
After a frustrating experience with another development company, Ripcord turned to Technology Rivers to build a complex sales coaching and training platform with recording, transcription, communication integrations, and live coaching capabilities.
What began as one software project became something much bigger: a trusted relationship that led to additional projects, introductions, and long-term client relationships.
“They understood the project and what the software was trying to resolve. They were able to build things not just to check them off the scope, but to build them that actually worked.”
Frank Tommaso (Co-Founder, Ripcord)
Hear Frank's Experience Working with Technology Rivers
Frank Tommaso and his partner, Justin Tracy, were building Ripcord, a sales coaching and training platform designed around real sales conversations.
The product brought together multiple moving parts, including meeting recording, transcription, communication and calendar integrations, and live coaching capabilities.
In his story, Frank explains why Technology Rivers’ ability to understand the purpose behind the software, communicate daily, and work collaboratively made the experience fundamentally different from his previous development engagement.
Client
Frank Tommaso
Role
Co-Founder, Ripcord
Engagement
Sales Coaching & Training Platform Development
Industry
Sales Technology / Sales Enablement
Focus
Meeting Recording · Transcription · Meeting & Phone Integrations · Calendar Integrations · Live Sales Coaching
Why Frank Values Working with Technology Rivers
Understand the Problem, Not Just the Scope
Frank valued that Technology Rivers understood what Ripcord was actually trying to accomplish before simply building features. The team considered whether requirements made sense for the product rather than treating the scope as a checklist.
Truly Collaborative Development
For Frank, development wasn’t a process of handing requirements to a team and waiting for something to come back. Ripcord and Technology Rivers worked through the project together, with regular communication keeping everyone closely involved.
Technology Explained Clearly
Frank describes himself as someone without much of a technology background. Technology Rivers exceeded his expectations by explaining the technical side of the project and allowing him to participate confidently in the development process.
Execution After a Failed Experience
Before Technology Rivers, Ripcord spent approximately six months with another software developer in an engagement Frank describes as a waste of time. Technology Rivers provided a dramatically different experience, delivering the initial phase in approximately three to four months and ultimately completing the broader project within 12 months.
“What I like most about Technology Rivers was just working with them on a daily basis. It was truly a collaborative experience. It wasn't handing something off and receiving it back.”
Frank Tommaso
Co-Founder, Ripcord
THE PRODUCT CHALLENGE
Building a Sales Coaching Platform Around Real Conversations
Frank and his partner, Justin Tracy, both brought experience in sales and entrepreneurship to Ripcord. They saw an opportunity to make sales coaching more immediate by bringing it directly into the conversations sales teams were already having.
Their vision became Ripcord, a sales coaching and training platform built around capabilities including:
- Meeting and call recording
- Transcription
- Integrations with meeting platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet
- Phone call integrations
- Calendar integrations
- Live sales coaching
- Whispering and other coaching functionality
The goal wasn’t simply to record calls.
Ripcord was designed to give sales managers visibility into their teams’ conversations and create opportunities to coach representatives while those conversations were happening.
That required multiple systems, integrations, and workflows to operate as one cohesive product.
Technology Rivers entered the project after Ripcord had already spent approximately six months working with another development company without getting the results Frank expected.
“A lot of times you'll give your scope out and the development will just build something. It may not even make sense, but they'll build it just because the scope says it. That was not the case with Technology Rivers.”
Frank Tommaso
Co-Founder, Ripcord
UNDERSTANDING THE BUSINESS BEFORE BUILDING
The Scope Was a Starting Point, Not a Checklist
With a product like Ripcord, technically completing individual requirements wasn’t enough.
Meeting recording, transcription, integrations, notifications, and coaching capabilities all existed to support a larger sales workflow. The team needed to understand why those pieces were being built and how they were supposed to work together.
That became one of the biggest differences Frank saw with Technology Rivers.
Instead of blindly implementing whatever appeared in a scope, the team worked to understand the problem Ripcord was trying to solve.
As Frank explains:
“They understood the project and what the software was trying to resolve.”
That understanding allowed the development process to remain focused on creating functionality that worked as part of the overall product rather than simply completing isolated technical tasks.
MAKING A COMPLEX SALES PLATFORM WORK AS ONE PRODUCT
Recording, Transcription, Integrations and Live Coaching
Frank describes Ripcord as having “a lot of moving parts.”
The platform included a Chrome extension and progressive web application, alongside meeting recording, transcription, calendar integrations, phone calls, integrations with platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet, and live sales coaching capabilities.
The challenge wasn’t simply whether each individual feature could be developed.
Everything needed to work together around the way salespeople and managers communicate, review conversations, and coach.
Technology Rivers worked across those interconnected requirements while keeping the overall purpose of the product in view.
DEVELOPMENT AS A DAILY COLLABORATION
Not a Handoff. A Team Working Through It Together.
Frank describes the collaborative working relationship as one of his favorite parts of the Technology Rivers experience.
Instead of Ripcord preparing a specification, handing it to a development team, and waiting for something to come back, both teams stayed involved.
“It was really that daily communication that kept the project solid.”
That collaboration was particularly important for Frank because he did not come to the project with a deep technical background.
Technology Rivers didn’t require him to become the technologist. The team explained the technical side while keeping him involved in the decisions that affected the product.
“I’m like the typical person that would hire Technology Rivers without much technology background. They really exceeded my expectations when they explained everything to me.”
For a founder building sophisticated software without personally being a software developer, that made the development process considerably more accessible.
FROM SIX MONTHS LOST TO WORKING SOFTWARE
A Very Different Development Experience
Frank had already experienced the opposite approach.
Before Technology Rivers, Ripcord worked with another software developer for approximately six months.
Frank’s assessment of that experience is direct:
“Basically it was just a big waste of six months. They delivered three lines of code. They just didn’t understand and didn’t work collaboratively with their clients.”
A few months after Frank and Ghazenfer Mansoor first met and exchanged contact information at a conference, Frank reached back out.
Technology Rivers joined the Ripcord project and delivered the initial phase in approximately three to four months.
The broader project was ultimately completed within 12 months.
The difference wasn’t simply development speed. Frank’s testimonial repeatedly comes back to understanding and collaboration.
Technology Rivers understood what Ripcord was trying to accomplish, worked through decisions with the founders, and built toward software that functioned as part of the complete product.
“The collaboration between our team and their team was just amazing.”
Frank Tommaso
Co-Founder, Ripcord
ONE PROJECT THAT OPENED THE DOOR TO MANY MORE
Ripcord Became the Beginning of a Much Bigger Relationship
The Ripcord engagement didn’t end with Ripcord.
Frank’s business partner was Justin Tracy, a serial entrepreneur who had built multiple businesses. After the experience working together on Ripcord, that relationship created opportunities for Technology Rivers to help with additional products and organizations.
Ripcord → BOSSS
Justin also served on the board of a real estate franchise.
A few months after the Ripcord engagement, Justin introduced Technology Rivers to the organization for another software initiative.
That introduction led to BOSSS, an intranet project.
What began as another referral developed into a long-term Technology Rivers client relationship. The product relationship eventually evolved into an OEM arrangement with a larger real estate SaaS company.
The relationship that began with Ripcord therefore extended across multiple businesses and software products.
“Overall, the experience that I had with Technology Rivers has been overwhelmingly amazing. I've referred so many clients to them since then just because it was a great experience.”
Frank Tommaso
Co-Founder, Ripcord
THE BOTTOM LINE
A Great Experience That Led to More Great Work
Frank’s Ripcord experience demonstrates several qualities that mattered throughout the engagement:
Understanding before building
Technology Rivers focused on what the software was trying to accomplish, not simply what was written in the scope.
Collaborative development
The engagement operated as an ongoing conversation rather than a development handoff.
Communication for nontechnical founders
Technical decisions were explained so Frank could remain actively involved.
Execution across a complex product
Multiple application components, integrations, and sales coaching workflows needed to work together.
Trust that continued beyond one project
The Ripcord relationship helped lead to additional introductions and software engagements.
The most meaningful evidence may be what happened after the original project.
Frank didn’t simply say he would recommend Technology Rivers.
He did.
And those introductions helped turn one successful software engagement into multiple projects and longer-term relationships.
Video Transcript
The Full Conversation
[0:00] Good. So my name is Frank Tommaso. I’m the co-founder of Ripcord.io. We’re a collaborative team training software.
And my partner and I had an idea several years ago, both running sales organizations, that we came up with this idea of actually recording the calls real-time with real-time transcription and notifying the team managers or the sales managers that their people are on the phone, and they could just click a button, then join the conversation and coach them live.
[0:22] When we came to Tech Rivers, we had several things that we had to really make work together: a Chrome extension, progressive web app, and has a lot of moving parts, our software.
[0:38] Tech Rivers was able to understand what we were looking to do, and they understood the project and what the software was trying to resolve, and were able to build things, not just to build them, just to check them off the scope, but to build them actually worked.
[1:03] Just a collaboration between our team and their team, it was just amazing. We ended up hiring them and within 12 months completed the project.
[1:09] So what I like most about Tech Rivers was just working with them on a daily basis. It was really truly collaborative experience, wasn’t handing something off and receiving it back to me. It was really that daily communication that kept the project rolling.
[1:33] A lot of times you’ll give your scope out and the development will just build something, and it may not even make sense, but they’ll build it just because the scope says it.
[1:41] That was not the case with Tech Rivers. We really just went through everything together.
[1:48] And I’m the typical person that would hire Tech Rivers, without much technology background, so they really exceeded my expectations when they just explained everything to me.
[1:55] We had a short experience, I did, with another software developer, and basically it was just a big waste of time. Six months’ time were lost. They delivered three lines of code.
[2:08] They just didn’t understand, didn’t work well, they weren’t collaborative with their clients.
[2:15] So overall, the experience that I had with Tech Rivers has been overwhelmingly amazing. I’ve referred so many clients to them since then just because it was a great experience.
More Client Stories
Justin Tracy
CTO, BOSSS
After working with Technology Rivers through Ripcord, Justin Tracy brought the team into additional projects. In his own testimonial, Justin describes Technology Rivers as the first external development team he had worked with that consistently executed products to his expectations.
His story explores the relationship from the perspective of an experienced technology and product leader who went on to work with Technology Rivers across multiple projects.
Beverly Klau
Founder & CEO, Verbena
Beverly came to Technology Rivers after another offshore development firm produced an application that was buggy, clunky, and unpredictable. Technology Rivers overhauled the application, made it workable, and became both a technical and strategic partner.
Graham Dodge
Founder & Founding CEO, SickWeather
Graham initially turned to Technology Rivers for Android expertise after problems with previous development teams. The relationship expanded from Android into iOS and additional development work as Technology Rivers became increasingly integrated with his team.
Need a Development Team That Understands What You're Actually Building?
Whether you’re starting a complex software product or trying to recover a project that isn’t working, you need more than developers who can follow a specification.
Technology Rivers works with founders and product teams to understand the problem, work through the technical decisions together, and turn complex requirements into working software.