Marigold Health
A four-person team that built a patient intake product from scratch while the in-house team kept the lights on.
The situation
Marigold makes scheduling and intake software for community clinics. A new contract meant they had to ship a redesigned patient intake flow — with the compliance care that healthcare demands — inside of two quarters. Their seven-person engineering team was already fully booked keeping the existing product stable.
Hiring four full-time people for a project with a clear end date didn't make sense. Neither did handing something this sensitive to a faceless vendor. They needed a real team that could own the work and talk to their compliance lead directly.
What we did
We assembled four people — two full-stack engineers, a designer, and a delivery lead — chosen specifically for prior healthcare or regulated-industry experience. They worked as one unit with a single point of contact, not four separate contractors.
The team set up their own ceremonies but plugged into Marigold's compliance review and security processes from day one. Weekly demos kept everyone honest about scope. When the timeline got tight, the delivery lead flagged it early enough to cut the right corners instead of the wrong ones.
What sold me was that they pushed back. When we asked for something that would've blown the timeline, the lead said so and offered two alternatives. A vendor that just nods scares me more than one that argues.
How it turned out
The intake product shipped a full quarter before the contractual deadline and passed its compliance audit with no findings. Marigold's own team never had to context-switch off the core product. Two of the four goblins were later brought on for a follow-up project.