Kyte

Helping Kyte expand their market reach across the U.S.

Scaling is the phase where more than 70% of startups stumble, and one of the main reasons they do is team management and hiring mistakes. In fact, a bad hire can cost the company 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Contracting a dedicated team of developers provides a leaner way of augmenting the company’s resources, without the hassle of headhunting and massive budget allocations. This is where and how our relationship with Kyte started.

Business problem

Kyte is a Silicon Valley-based mobility startup that delivers rental vehicles to their customers’ doorstep. Operating in more than a dozen U.S. markets, Kyte is backed by some of the biggest names in finance, including Goldman Sachs and Ares Global Management. Unlike incumbents, Kyte does not operate rental counters or stores and is going all-in on developing their tech and operations. This means that the company is able to significantly elevate the rental experience and keep costs low for their customers. Like many Silicon Valley companies, Kyte needed talent to drive their vision forward. However, experienced developers are not that easy to hire and retain at such an early stage, and with new features that need to be shipped on a frequent basis, the company sought an alternative – a dedicated remote team. Kyte needed developers that had experience in both Python and mobility. NFQ could easily cover both bases, having worked with a wide range of mobility players including Rebike, Sixt, Plugsurfing, and AnyMove.

Technological solutions

Acting as both consultants and software engineers, NFQ’s dedicated team helped establish good development and architecture practices, which laid the foundation for Kyte’s inventory management and vehicle operations, to the ultimate improvement of the customer experience. The team was involved in finessing the tool for calculating car availability – a crucial feature required for efficient fleet management. Continuous database updates with automation tools was another area that our team was instrumental in. “NFQ has been a great partner for Kyte. We found the engineers we worked with to be extremely knowledgable and capable of both adapting to our technical stack and improving it significantly,” Nick Cobb, VP of Engineering & Head of Product at Kyte shared. One of the main advantages of hiring a dedicated team is that extra push you get when growing your business. In the case of our cooperation with Kyte, the team provided support in expanding to the East Coast – a major milestone for the company that ultimately has the ambition to offer their services nationwide.

Added benefits:

Companies sometimes fear that contracting a dedicated team of developers means that you’re locked in the relationship, with no possibility to actually hire the people you grew accustomed to seeing as crucial to your success. This is not the case with NFQ, as we offer a straightforward buy-out option. In fact, this was the option that Kyte took in 2023, fully onboarding the developers as their own employees. “We found that the engineers from NFQ are regularly teaching our internal team about best practices and leading by example. And thanks to the flexible agreement we had with NFQ, we saw the dedicated team as fully fledged employees. This approach helped us build a stronger connection between people and technology needs at Kyte,” Nick Cobb shared. Looking for Python developers or other tech specialists to bring your business to the next level? At NFQ, we can offer you more than just a flexible dedicated team. Our extensive experience working with global players across multiple industries means that we can both help you make strategic decisions and provide technological solutions tailored to your business; we can also establish a subsidiary and hire a full team in Europe. We help you make your own way.

Results:

NFQ demonstrated a strong early belief in Kyte, exemplified by NFQ Capital's investment during the pre-seed funding round. This investment shows that here at NFQ, we’re committed to founders not only in terms of technology support but also by helping businesses scale with our financial investments. Thanks to the input of our engineers, Kyte could significantly advance their inventory system and technical implementation behind fleet health and fleet control. This means that today the company has a clear picture where every car is and what state it is in at any time.