Case study/Climate Tech
Rebuilding a carbon-footprint SaaS platform for a European climate-tech startup
unicrew embedded three full-stack developers and a UI/UX designer in a European climate-tech startup's SaaS product, rebuilding many parts of it from scratch.
A European climate-tech startup calculates the carbon footprint of food production, from sourcing the feed through the farm to the slaughterhouse, and 15 other environmental factors alongside it. unicrew put three full-stack developers and a UI/UX designer inside its SaaS platform, where they rebuilt many parts of the product from scratch (the API among them) on React, Next.js, and Neo4j. Its customers single out the interface and the speed.
- Focus
- Climate Tech, SaaS
- Market
Germany- Engagement
- Embedded engineering team
- Stack
React
Next.js
Neo4j
Outcome at a glance
What this project delivered.
- 01Enhanced customer satisfaction, reported by the CTO, with customers praising the UI and the speed of the application
- 02No errors in the system, with only minor UI bugs left to fix
- 03The from-scratch API finished on time even with tight deadlines, and the engagement stayed on budget
- 04Running since May 2024 and ongoing, with two or three developers offered whenever the client needs another resource
The challenge
The client is a small startup, one to ten people in Germany, working in sustainability measurement. It calculates the carbon footprint and 15 other environmental factors, water use and land use among them, for food production, especially chickens and pigs, across the whole chain from sourcing the feed to the slaughterhouse.
Two things follow from being that size. Engineering capacity has to arrive quickly and scale back down again just as quickly, which is the reason the CTO gives for hiring in development resources at all. And there was a legacy application that needed rebuilding, including an API that had to be stood up from scratch. If your engineering load is steady and predictable, a permanent hire is the cheaper answer; this was the opposite problem.
Our approach
unicrew came in as an embedded engineering team: three full-stack developers and one UI/UX designer, working on the engineering side of the client’s SaaS platform. The team joined the existing product and rebuilt many parts of it from scratch, the API among them. React runs the frontend, Next.js the backend, and Neo4j holds the graph database.
Delivery ran in the client’s own setup rather than ours: Shortcut for tracking, email and Discord day to day, and regular stand-up video calls. When the client needed another resource, unicrew came back with two or three developers to choose from. Asked what stood out about the engagement, the CTO named the quality of those developers.
Results
The CTO’s summary on Clutch: “Our customers love the UI and speed of the application.” There are no errors in the system, and what is left is minor UI bugs. On delivery, the API arrived on time under tight deadlines, and the work stayed on budget.
unicrew builds data-heavy products across energy and sustainability, where the calculation underneath and the interface on top have to be right at the same time. For a comparable build, read our search and AI engineering for meinUnterricht; the client reviews page collects what other clients have said.
“We’ve seen enhanced customer satisfaction thanks to unicrew’s work.”
CTO, Science Tech Company (Germany)
What the client says
We’ve seen enhanced customer satisfaction thanks to unicrew’s work. Our customers love the UI and speed of the application. We’ve received positive feedback, and there are no errors in the system. We only fix minor UI bugs, which aren’t worth mentioning. unicrew meets their deadlines and stays on budget.
04/Technologies
Technologies on this project
Frontend
- React
- Next.js
AI & Data
- Neo4j
05/Quick answers
The questions behind the project
What did unicrew do for the climate-tech startup?
unicrew supplied three full-stack developers and one UI/UX designer who worked on the engineering side of the client's SaaS platform, the product that calculates the carbon footprint of food production, from sourcing the feed through the farm to the slaughterhouse, and 15 other environmental factors alongside it. The team joined an existing legacy application and rebuilt many parts of it from scratch, the API among them. React runs the frontend, Next.js the backend, and Neo4j holds the graph database.
How does a startup of ten people or fewer scale engineering with unicrew?
By treating unicrew as an embedded engineering team rather than a permanent hire. This client needed engineering capacity to arrive quickly and scale back down again just as quickly, so unicrew put three full-stack developers and a UI/UX designer inside the product and worked in the client's own setup: Shortcut for tracking, and regular stand-ups. When another resource was needed, unicrew came back with two or three developers to choose from.
Did the work land on time and on budget?
On the client's own account, yes. The CTO reports that unicrew meets its deadlines and stays on budget, and that the from-scratch API was finished on time even with tight deadlines. What is left in the system is minor UI bugs. The engagement started in May 2024 and is ongoing.
When is a graph database the right choice for environmental data?
When the questions run along the relationships rather than sitting inside a single record. An emissions figure that has to be traced back through a supply chain touches many linked entities, and a graph database is built for exactly that traversal. If your data is a flat set of independent rows and the reporting is aggregate, a relational database is the simpler and cheaper answer, and we will tell you so.