How a Language Services Company Shipped Two Custom Apps in 20 Weeks Without Slowing Down the Business
Client: Executive Linguist Agency
Industry: Language Services / Professional interpreting
Company Stage: Growth-stage, scaling operations and infrastructure
Both apps in production.
Market gap closed with a HIPAA-compliant messaging solution that did not previously exist.
Executive Linguist Agency is a professional language services firm based in Manhattan Beach, California. They provide interpretation services across industries — including healthcare, legal, and government — managing a distributed team of interpreters who need tools that are reliable, purpose-built, and capable of meeting strict compliance requirements.
By the time CEO Robert Randolph reached out to Vertice Labs, the company was in a period of operational expansion. Their interpreters were relying on the company website to handle assignments and communications — a friction-heavy experience that was generating unnecessary support overhead and creating a poor daily experience for the network the business depended on. More pressingly, Executive Linguist was mid-rollout of an entirely new front and back end, and Robert needed to move quickly before that transition created more complexity.
The internal team was at capacity. Outside help was the right call. But Robert had been down that road before.
Executive Linguist faced two distinct but related problems.
The first was a market gap. Interpreter-to-client communication in healthcare and other regulated industries requires HIPAA compliance and human verification. Robert had done the research. No messaging application on the market checked both boxes. If Executive Linguist wanted it, they would have to build it — and building it would mean entering a space with no direct competition.
The second was an operational bottleneck. Without a dedicated mobile app, interpreters were logging in through a browser, navigating a website not designed for mobile workflow, and calling the office when things didn't work. Every support call was time the team spent on a problem a well-built app would eliminate.
Bringing in a software partner was the obvious move — but Robert had been burned before. A $40,000 consulting engagement the prior year had produced four loosely actionable items and no roadmap. His bar for what a vendor needed to demonstrate before the work started had gotten considerably higher.
Your entire pitch had no BS in it. You weren't trying to convince me of anything, you weren't trying to overpromise. It was just: here's what we do, here's what you're going to get at the end. And I was like, actually yes.
Vertice Labs started where it always starts: a defined scope of work before any money changed hands.
The SOW outlined exactly what would be built, how it would be built, and what Robert would have at the end. No retainer. No vague discovery phase. Just a deliverable, a timeline, and a price that fit the budget.
The sequencing decision was deliberate. The HIPAA-compliant messaging platform went first — it was the larger technical challenge, required more architectural consideration, and filling that market gap was the strategic priority. The internal interpreter app, more defined in scope and lower in complexity, followed.
Throughout both projects, Vertice Labs ran all work through Linear with client-facing visibility enabled. Robert could see what was in progress, what was completed, and what was queued — without needing to schedule a status call or chase for updates. That transparency wasn't a feature. It was just how the work ran.
When an unexpected Stripe scrape triggered an alert mid-project, Aram, the lead engineer, didn't wait to be asked. He investigated, rotated the keys, resolved the issue, and reported back before Robert had time to follow up. That kind of response tells you more about how a team operates than any kickoff meeting.
Vertice Labs designed and engineered a secure, real-time messaging platform for interpreter-to-client communication. The system was built to HIPAA compliance standards with human-in-the-loop verification — a combination that had no commercial equivalent on the market. Vertice Labs owned UX/UI design, system architecture, and full-stack engineering from start to production.
A dedicated iOS app giving the Executive Linguist interpreter network a single place to handle assignments, communications, and workflow — replacing browser logins with a purpose-built mobile experience. Vertice Labs also provided support on the broader front and back end rollout happening in parallel.
Both products were built to Executive Linguist's existing brand standards. The apps looked and felt like extensions of the company, not contractor output.
Both apps shipped to production. No scope changes. No cost overruns.
Robert's summary: "Easy."
On the messaging platform: "You got us to market so fast I didn't have time to put together a sales strategy."
That is not a complaint. It means Vertice Labs moved faster than the client anticipated and faster than the market — leaving Executive Linguist with a live HIPAA-compliant product in a space where no comparable solution existed.
Beyond the deliverables, the engagement produced an unplanned benefit. Robert's internal development team improved their own practices by watching how Vertice Labs operated — how tasks were tracked, how decisions were documented, how scope was managed. That process visibility transferred organically, without an extra invoice.
Hard performance metrics are not yet available. The apps are new. What exists is a foundation that didn't exist before: two production tools, a defensible position in HIPAA-compliant interpreter communication, and an internal team better equipped to build on them.
Transparency goes a long way to letting me know that I'm not being screwed over. I didn't feel the need to keep checking up on you or look over your shoulder.
Most companies at Executive Linguist's stage face the same constraint: the work that would move the business forward requires capacity the team doesn't have. The choices are usually hire full-time, find a contractor, or delay — each with its own cost.
This engagement worked because the constraints were well-matched. Robert had a clear idea of what he needed and the discipline not to expand it mid-build. Vertice Labs had a defined process and the judgment to scope honestly and deliver exactly what was agreed.
The $40K consulting experience Robert mentioned — money spent, sessions held, team largely unchanged — is a common outcome when vendors optimize for relationship maintenance instead of delivery. Software development doesn't have to work that way. But it requires a partner who treats shipping as the baseline expectation, not the final milestone.
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