Dakai

Case Study

Glimpse

About Glimpse

Glimpse predicts upcoming trends months in advance. By taking keywords and tracking usage frequency across social platforms including Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and Pinterest, it spots fast-growing products, companies, and industries.

The platform spans many industries and most famously spotted unexpected trends from COVID as part of an internationally-known pandemic trend tracker.

The Situation

Despite a strong concept and leadership, the Glimpse team was too small to handle the challenges that cropped up or leverage new opportunities. The runaway success of its COVID trend predictions put heavy loads on its servers and product usability suffered from an out of date user interface and unfiltered trend predictions.

The Dakai team stepped in and filled in wherever necessary to drive the company forward, updating its approach depending on whatever was needed for the week.

The Results

First, Dakai did all backend and frontend work for an enterprise-specific portal for Glimpse that made data easy to browse, filter, and find. They then created a dashboard where anyone could understand the trends of their specific industry with the ability to sort by velocity, seasonality, etc.

On the technical side, Dakai handled billions of rows of rapidly changing data at first using Redux, which proved too slow. To improve performance, they switched to a new, experimental framework called Recoil that prepared Glimpse for success as the company scaled.

Most notably, the COVID trend predictions tool reached an international audience and became known even with consumers.

The Technical Details

Platform Creation

Created an end-user oriented platform which provided clear value for customers

Tech Upgrade

Enhanced Glimpse’s scraping technologies and implemented Recoil platform

Project Creation

Created COVID Trends

Analytics

Assisted Glimpse in compiling upcoming trends for A16Z and Sequoia Capital

Used Tech Stack

Python, Flask, React, ExpressJS, AWS

Client Testimonial

“They showed a keen interest from the start in delivering a fully functional product against a well-defined timeline, taking much of the coding and design needs off the client’s plate.”

Gina Abrams, Chief of Staff at Trust Machines

Client Testimonial

“They showed a keen interest from the start in delivering a fully functional product against a well-defined timeline, taking much of the coding and design needs off the client’s plate.”

Gina Abrams, Chief of Staff at Trust Machines

Client Testimonial

“They showed a keen interest from the start in delivering a fully functional product against a well-defined timeline, taking much of the coding and design needs off the client’s plate.”

Gina Abrams, Chief of Staff at Trust Machines

Looking Ahead

COVID Trends was a huge success for Glimpse, who as a result was featured in the front page of the Economist, a piece in Forbes, and a co-authored blog post with A16Z. As a result of the publicity and refocused user interface, Glimpse acquired more customers including Unilever, Google, and Shopify.

Glimpse’s powerful trend engine pulled in a constellation of enterprise clients hungry for cutting edge insights. Dakai helped accelerate the growth and success of a young startup from fledgling upstart to established tool used by dozens of influential companies. With a solid foundation of code and design, Dakai’s additions and projects built a sustainable, lasting product that successfully scaled with client needs.