Supportful is the epitome of a desire to do business in an area that is not exactly easy, and to create an opportunity for professionals from that area who would otherwise be forced to leave their places of origin. Supportful was founded in 2022 in Lebanon at the behest of Fadi Boulos who understood how the country was able to offer the availability of talent and professionals but not enough market for all, and so he created what he calls an “impact startup that has a mission to contribute to Reduce the brain drain in my country, Lebanon. We also want our engineers to work from their hometowns., spend their money on local businesses and contribute to the development of the economy of the community in which they live. When I founded the company, inflation was in triple digits, the currency had devalued by 90 percent, and there were power and Internet outages all over the country. This made every person in the country think about leaving. Today we have 10 full-time employees, all based in Lebanon, they come from different religious backgrounds (Christian and Muslim) and live all over the country, 30 percent of them are women.”
Fadi has not invented a new business model, not even a new technology, but he has been able to intelligently apply the concept that many refer to as ‘body rental’ by leveraging the high-profile professional and skill resources that are in Lebanon to make them available to companies around the world.
“Our clients are in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Singapore,” he tells Startupbusiness. Some examples: Echo360, a highly ranked edtech company in the US; Step, a UK-based social tourism startup; ArcusScale , a US-based tech startup. According to Clutch’s assessment our clients are extremely satisfied we have an average rating of 4.8 out of 5, and our employees are also very happy working at Supportful: we have a talent retention rate of 91 percent and our eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) is 56 – the average is between 10 and 30.”
Supportful is headquartered in Beirut and follows its employees comprehensively by taking care not only of bringing their skills to serve client companies but also of training : “We sponsor up to 50 hours of continuing education for each of our engineers each year. The upgrade program is customized for each person and decided in collaboration between the engineer and his or her manager. Once completed, the engineer is rewarded financially. We hold one social event per quarter and one annual outing because we are a distributed company. I place a lot of importance on the cultural aspect of the company.”
Skills and talents
The skills of Supportful employees cover the most popular technologies in AI/data (ML, MLOps, DE, DS), frontend (Angular, React, Vue), backend (Node, Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, Go), mobile (native, Flutter, React Native), QA automation (Cypress, Selenium, Appium), and DevOps (AWS, Azure, private cloud), “we also work on articulated projects and have in our talent pool profiles such as project manager, product owner, and product manager. The talent search process is carried out starting from the analysis of the client’s needs in terms of skills, then we send at least a couple of profiles of our employees who may be suitable to meet those needs, the client companies then come into direct contact with our employees whom they have selected and proceed to interview them, just as if it were their hiring, downstream of this process when the selection has been completed and the person has been selected she starts working for the client company as if she were its employee even though for all practical purposes she is an employee of Supportful who is also in charge of providing all the necessary tools so that the work can be done in the best possible way, unless the client company prefers to provide its own tools, which may happen perhaps in case it needs to process sensitive data or there are special security needs.”
Supportful has a comprehensive set of tools to ensure information security consisting of several policies and procedures that cover both employees and customers: how we use their data, how we protect it, where it is stored, who can access it. The company has established an information security policy, a confidentiality policy and agreement, a cybersecurity incident response plan, an acceptable use policy, a password policy, and a privacy policy.
“Our prices start at $3,900 per month (man-day rate of $200) and can increase depending on skills and experience. Companies that work with us usually see savings of about 50 percent compared to in-house hires,” Boulos concludes.
Supportful can therefore be a viable alternative for companies around the world that need to have technological expertise for defined periods in order to accelerate the development of their projects, including those related to the use of artificial intelligence. (Photo by Piotr Chrobot on Unsplash)
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