The Creation of MosaicSecurity.com

Viget has worked and continues to work with a lot of start-ups. Some of them have many people, lots of backers and even more ideas. And some are simply a single individual with a concept that keeps them up at night. When the entrepreneur behind MosaicSecurity.com, Lucas Samaras, first came to Viget it was to decide whether his idea was even viable. Sure, Lucas had the market knowledge and the confidence that the product could be successful. But could it be built with the available budget, and does it make sense as an online tool and destination for buyers of security software? Viget helped answer those two primary questions, and inside of four months MosaicSecurity.com was born.

At its core, the product aims to facilitate the finding and purchasing of security software, which can be quite a chore considering the options and disparate information in the marketplace. Not all products have meaningful descriptions; reviews can be hard to come by; the information routinely changes; and the volume of products is massive. After some careful (and creative) planning to mitigate the cold start problem (i.e., seeding the system with initial data) and managing this extensive information in the future, Viget designed and built MosaicSecurity.com from the ground up using Ruby on Rails and just a team of four -- a visual designer, user experience lead, developer and project manager.

From the project's start there was an intense focus on efficiency and running lean, given the constraints in play. All of Viget's team worked directly with the client to review materials and progress, and make decisions. We rarely made an "official" presentation or provided overly polished deliverables. This deviation from our typical approach to projects was refreshing and only works well with a client that can roll up their sleeves and work in such a nimble way. Trust and commitment were instrumental to getting MosaicSecurity.com live. Without those two influencers, the timeline could have unnecessarily grown, the budget could have burned too quickly, and the understanding of the product's direction across the team could have fragmented.

MosaicSecurity.com is just on its feet, but Lucas has ambitious plans to grow the inventory of information and bolster ways in which vendors and buyers can interact. The project has proven to be a fun and valuable one for Viget, and showcases the varying ways we're able to work with clients, large and small, new and old.