Reported for the Flatiron Hot! News by Tod Shapiro and Eric Shapiro

With the ongoing pandemic, we’re always interested in resources for Flatiron small businesses to adapt their operations to cope with the crisis.  Therefore, when it came to our attention that a programming and development firm was doing lots of work with that focus, I asked them to speak with us and give us a summary of some of their recent work and how it was applicable to Flatiron and NoMad businesses.

Waleed Nasir, Head of Products at Virtual Force, told us about some of his Wall Street-based development firm’s resources and latest projects to help small businesses.  Waleed has a distinguished academic pedigree, having come to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar where he studied computer science at the University of Michigan, followed by study at Yale where he obtained his MBA degree.

Waleed told us that in the last few months much of his work has been pandemic-related, and that he went in with his team and helped build web-based applications and processes that helped firms deal with the pandemic at a reasonable cost, by either building out apps that would modify their business processes to work within the constraints imposed by the pandemic, or to take their existing processes and make them adaptable to a new way of doing their business altogether.

Waleed describes his firm: “Virtual Force is a technology advisory, design and engineering firm that builds next generation products for enterprises and founders. We have solved complex technology roll out and growth problems for our clients in health tech, fin tech, ed tech, and digital transformation verticals”.

Waleed has a Flatiron connection, having moved to NYC five years ago and worked for a media startup with offices in Flatiron that was ultimately acquired by Comcast. Virtual Force was a spin-off of a venture fund that worked with companies that did not have the in-house capability to bring their business concepts to fruition.  So, this is a firm that has roots in our neighborhood, and a skill set ideally suited to solving business problems created by this pandemic.  And, they have a team consisting of almost 300 developers and business analysts, working out of their Wall Street offices and abroad in Asia and other tech havens,  which can be assigned to just about any business challenge in these daunting times.

His team has built web applications that offer the ability to take and schedule orders at a much lower rate than some of the larger platforms available to small business, including small business types as diverse as smaller physician’s practices, notary public services, and small brick and mortar retail establishments in New York City, all which have seen their businesses impacted by Covid 19.

Waleed specifically mentioned the work his team had done with many NYC-based restaurants that have been impacted by the Covid shutdowns, losing their sit-down business, and been forced to rely primarily on takeout orders. Many of them did not have their own web apps  (as opposed to for-pay web services that take a share of each order) to allow them to take their orders.  His team has been able to build out custom apps and websites to take the orders that are entirely owned and under the control of the restaurants, on a fast and timely basis, for as little as $1,500 per month.  So, his firm has helped firms as diverse as pizza parlors and boutique coffee shops get up and running with these value cloud solutions.  With Flatiron’s plethora of fast-casual eateries, many of which are coping with a transition to economical on-line ordering systems, this is a service that may be well worth exploring.

Virtual Force, in a similar vein, had also developed a web platform that helped primary care physicians move their appointments and medical practice operations on-line, including the management of virtual meetings, the scheduling of sessions, and the management of prescriptions on-line at a much lower cost than some of the larger medical practice platforms – a must for those in the medical sector that have had to move much of their practice activity into the virtual realm.

Waleed then went on to discuss how Virtual Force has engineered, at reasonable cost, cloud-based solutions for hair stylists, interior designers, notary public services, and some of their clients in the banking and financial services sector.  A list of some of the companies that they have helped can be found on their website.

Waleed indicated to me that for as little as $5,000 his team of developers and programmers will brainstorm with your small business and discuss what can be done to bring your business processes on-line in a four-week time frame – and that his firm will offer a money-back guarantee on your investment if it does not perform in a way that helps your business as expected. 

Waleed went on to explain that his firm has had to reorient their focus to reflect Covid’s impact on the economy. Virtual Force has created an application to help a regional hospital create a “triage” system for Covid cases,  a cloud-based virtual dating app that fosters dating during the pandemic, an app that helped small businesses manage the bewildering set of rules needed for PPP applications and loan forgiveness, as well as an application that allows businesses impacted by the recent protests to keep track of damage that may have ensued. One can see that Virtual Force has the flexibility and nimbleness to tackle an assortment of programming tasks that have been kicked up by the pandemic!