Toptal

I’m a lead combat designer for a video game development company. In my free time, I work on the fundraising process for my personal studio.

I’m not a financial expert, so I needed help with financial modeling elements for my personal project.

I initially contacted Toptal in December 2023 and asked them if they could do the financial modeling for my video game company. They told me they could, so I dropped the deposit money into their account on December 11th.

I only worked with Bruce.

I searched online. Maybe I’m bad at online searching, but Toptal was the only company I found that provided free consultations. I initially talked with their CEO, then I spoke with their accountant; it was a straightforward, friendly, and smooth process.

I spent $1,300 in total.

We worked together from January–March 2024.

Toptal’s work was excellent; I can’t say anything bad about it. The specialist was always open to giving me feedback and sharing knowledge. They explained how to work with the financial model, the usual fundraising process, the missing elements we needed to cover, and where we needed to improve. Overall, it was a pleasant experience. I’d like to work with them further in the future.

Project management was great; they did the work promptly. We mainly used emails to communicate. If needed, we organized quick calls through Google Meet.

Toptal was straightforward about the billings; it was clear if someone asked for $70 or $100 per hour. When I talked to Toptal, they gave me a clear range of how much it’d cost to do the job and the time it’d take, which was really beneficial. Other companies I searched for didn’t provide that information; they were straightforward about the minimum amount of money required without explaining how it was calculated.

It’d be cool if Toptal’s specialists could drop after-meetings notes with what they did and how much time it took to have an extra layer of transparency regarding their work. In the way it currently works, the specialist explains what they’ll do, and then you start receiving invoices for the time they spent. We’d like to understand when there’s a need for extra research or extra time. Toptal is missing that.

Be clear about what you want to do and the service you need; it’ll help Toptal provide the right specialist. Also, don’t be afraid if a candidate’s hourly rate is high. It usually turns out they’re doing the job faster than the specialists with low rates, so don’t chase for the cheapest specialist.

I’m the founder of a decentralized, autonomous organization.

We needed help with blockchain development. We needed someone who knew backend and theory to make smart contracts and knew enough about frontend design to help with the interconnections.

I had just finished my MBA in entrepreneurship and gotten a grant from my school to help pay for it. I started with my hosting, name, and the website shell. I made a step-by-step explanation of what I needed from Toptal.

They gave us a project manager and 2–3 people to interview, and we chose a developer from there. We needed an update in the last two months; the same developer was available.

I first contacted them over two years ago. I searched for companies and freelancers for blockchain development and did my due diligence by calling at least three companies. Toptal was the best option.

We spent between $10,000–$50,000.

I got the grant money in March 2022 and began working with them in April 2022. We paused the project in April 2024 because I had other bills to cover, but we were at a good stopping point.

Since I work in UX, I’ve always looked at metrics. In this case, we have a slow-burn process. We started with zero and now have 10 members, so we’re slowly building our community. Overall, Toptal exceeded our expectations.

We initially met on Google Meet. I tried to hook up my Slack, but it didn’t work. We mainly used emails, and they also sent me videos to show me what they finished.

Javier (E-Commerce Developer) was an excellent, super communicative developer. Last time we needed some tweaks, he fit them into his regular schedule and understood things quickly. I’m happy to give him kudos; he was amazing.

Their communication was excellent.

The only thing I didn’t understand was how to end the project. I was unfamiliar with my project manager, so we got over-billed for a bit. However, Toptal corrected it immediately.

Be prepared and know as much as you can about what you want. Doing strategy beforehand, writing it down, and thinking of the logic and use cases before talking to them will save everybody’s time.

I'm the director of education at a nonprofit organization that offers positive parenting and caregiving courses to caregivers and parents.

We needed support in creating an online course's interactions, including quizzes and exercises for students to complete online and integrate it into our animated online course.

After our initial meeting, Toptal set up an interview with a candidate. She was the first candidate we interviewed and had a background in education. She was also adept and capable in programming and coding. We went through a trial period, and once we approved the candidate, Toptal set up a Slack channel for us to communicate with her. We provided a script of what we wanted, and the team came back with suggestions for changes. Toptal created storyboards, and after reviewing them with us, they provided samples. Toptal made adjustments based on our feedback and came up with several interactions that we're integrating into each of our lessons for this online curriculum. We created the course content, and Toptal created interactive quizzes.

We worked with around four teammates from Toptal.

We had a budget of $15,000 for this project, although I'm unsure how much we spent since I wasn't involved in the financial negotiations.

Our initial contact with Toptal was in October 2023, and we worked with the team through February 2024.

We're finishing our online course and integrating the work delivered by Toptal. We haven't launched the course to the public, but the team helped us create a more interactive, interesting, and engaging experience. Toptal delivered excellent quality work and was super creative and professional. The team created interactions that aligned with our goals while also being engaging. The candidate we worked with was located in France and communicated excellently in English. Her suggestions were helpful, and she was very flexible and open to feedback. We had a great working relationship with Toptal.

Toptal delivered work on time and stayed on budget, working in a timely manner with our schedule. We communicated via email, Zoom meetings, and Slack.

Toptal heard exactly what we wanted and made sure to find talent that was a perfect fit for us. The team didn't give us things that we had to go through. Toptal was honest and informed us that they had a limited number of talent who could be a good match for us because their big clientele wasn't in the education industry. I appreciated Toptal's honesty. We also had a trial period with the provided resource to see how she responded to our requests and what kind of work she could provide. That took pressure off from us, and our communication was very good and timely. Overall, this was one of our best work experiences. We've worked with contractors for different projects, and Toptal was an excellent team with a good system.

I can't think of anything Toptal can improve on.

I suggest communicating your needs to Toptal clearly when you contact them and being completely upfront and honest. I also recommend being responsive to Toptal's feedback and questions — it's up to the client to get the most out of their engagement with Toptal. The team will engage as much as you're willing to engage.

I’m the CFO of a health technology company.

We needed to modify and evolve our existing financial model to a more comprehensive one in a framework we could share with investors and partners.

Toptal provides an Indian-based resource to help us with financial modeling. He builds the spreadsheet models we use to project our business and measure our results against projections.

Dhruv (Management Consultant) is our business consultant.

We found them through Google. We were looking for someone with advanced financial modeling skills and a knowledge of SaaS businesses.

We began working with them in May 2021, and the project will be completed at the end of March 2024.

Toptal has helped us save time.

They’ve helped us find someone in an efficient manner. Moreover, Toptal has made it easy for us to engage with Dhruv even though he’s in India. We communicate through email and phone calls.

We’d give high ratings to Dhruv for his modeling work over the past three years.

They’ve developed a pool of high-quality resources that companies can outsource on a project or on a continuous basis. Overall, Toptal removes the friction in finding and engaging with resources.

I haven’t noticed anything so far.

The more you define the characteristics of the contractor or consultant you’re looking to hire, the more likely you’ll be satisfied with the outcome. You should know your needs and prepare to get the most out of Toptal.

I’m the director and founder of AfriFindInvest (AFI). We’re an advisory boutique that helps early-stage tech founders or startups in Africa raise money due to the lack of access to capital in the classical stage.

The first time we engaged Toptal, they designed our website to showcase the value of our services. In the second instance, we wanted to go beyond the website and increase our average audience reach. Our goal was to push social media channels like LinkedIn to drive attention to the content on the website.

Toptal creates the content showcased on LinkedIn and hosted on the website’s blog pages. The content redirects to the website so people can learn more about it. They’ve used WordPress to embed the content into the site, but the particular deliverable is done through Google Docs.

We have a dedicated relationship manager to ensure our needs are filled in. Additionally, we’ve worked with two specialists: a developer and a marketing expert.

We came to know them through my extensive research. I had the names of various freelancers and platforms, such as Upwork and Fiverr. However, we needed to be assured that our investment would be reflected in the quality of work. Toptal’s 3% promise drew us in and made us willing to pay more so the results would be exponentially better.

We spent $2,500 in the initial deliverable. The second deliverable is about $2,100.

We began our engagement in January 2023; it’s an ongoing partnership.

One measure is how responsive it is to inbound requests and how many new requests we attract. Since we’ve been doing business with Toptal, we’ve seen an uptick in activity. Although we haven’t published the pieces from the content strategy, we’re confident they’ll drive a lot of traffic to the website.

We have scheduled Zoom calls every month.

We appreciate the feeling of having a team around us. It’s incredibly lonely at the top, so it’s often hard to find people with a similar caliber and talent.

The feedback from other people is that the price point is probably higher than anticipated. However, it's a question of value, and we’ve seen a lot of value. Ultimately, it’s about executing on a deliverable, and Toptal has been instrumental.

Don’t feel shy about talking to Toptal if you don’t fully understand your needs. You don’t have to have the answer when their network is tuned to your problems. They’re willing to explore the landscape and take it from there.