Kurtis Jensen / KBuilds LLC / Concepts Collective review: poor software development & cheated with taking money

Date of Incident - Project SOW sign-off date : May 24, 2017
Total duration - 8+ months with no delivery. Created 5 web page, with few text boxes and labels and charged 10, 000 USD
Desirable Resolution: Please return the money as Kurtis Jensen refuses to come on phone / Skype (Since Oct 2017) even after multiple emails / calendar request.s

Full description of the Incident:
We had bad experience with Kurtis Jensen and his company kbuilds LLC also Concepts Collective. He also operates a company called Concepts Collective (https://info.conceptscollective.com/). He first approached us as Concepts Collective and when closer to time he asked us to switch and said will do everything by him self as "he is very interested" in the project. Please do not fall for this trap. He wrote to us saying he was interested to take the project and his Concepts Collective team were not interested, and suggested to go through kbuilds LLC. Be aware when this type of game that will be played. He has another training company called https://www.collectiveeducation.com/ which his linkedIn profile claims to be the founder. He is also listed as mentor for https://techjobstour.com/speakers/kurtis-jensen/

Our experience with kbuilds LLC / Kurtis Jensen was very bad and we got cheated. He gave us a quote of $60, 000 (Sixty thousand USD) to develop a peer-to-peer marketplace, and took 10, 000 (TEN thousand) to start work. He made us interact with a "distributed" Concepts Collective team. However, when he saw that the deal was happening he pitched kbuilds LLC and asked us to go through that and said he will be the lead developer/point-of-contact, including CTO (if needed) for talking to investors. He is a very smooth talking person, and will give you all the reference websites, technical documents and similar.

Traps of Kurtis Jensen/ Concepts Collective / Kbuilds LLC also started newly called Concepts Education.
1. Never give a lump-sum money - This is a trap. They will try to convince you that they will help you end-to-end and try to get a lump-sum money. This is a scam and a trap.
2. Always ask for references - With this company we highly recommend you talk to references. Ask for their documentation skills and how they interacted? Highly recommend to ask for references and talk to them and ask the limitations including their documentation skills. Ask for projects that failed and talk to those reference
3. Present as CTO to Investor - This is another trap. do not take these guys to your investor. Kurtis is not qualified for being a CTO. Executing a few IT projects is not CTO. He did not deliver even a simple web application in 7 months for us. The website was so bad that we could not even show it anyone. YES - That bad.
4. Unit Testing - Unit testing is very poor. Kurtis will make it sound as Unit Testing is extra development effort. It is the responsibility of the developer. His unit testing skills are so bad that even the simple things did not work.
5. Trello Trap - This is another trap to manage the project. They can train you in Trello for sure.

Our experience with this company and Kurtis Jensen in particular:

Bad Coding practices & delivery: His coding skills are poor and even simple validations were failing right from the start.
Make you believe "he" is a smart Technical person: Highly recommend please do not get carried away by Kurtis Jensen smooth talk or technical expertise discussions. We found Kurtis to talk well technically however, his execution skills are weak and failed badly.

Forces to Custom Develop: Please weigh-in if whatever you need really needs to be custom-developed. He refused to look or check or research or analyze the various peer-to-peer marketplaces that we gave. He strongly pushed towards Custom Development and finally he did not deliver anything.

Poor / No Documentation: His documentation skills are very poor and refuses to document technical steps. He feels documentation is a waste of time, and will point you to AWS. He hand drew a one pager and was pointed out for design, wireframe, database design and anything would be pointed to that one-pager. Upon further emphasis he agreed to scan the hand-written document and share it.

Requirements / Scope: He will portray as he is helping and flexible with taking requirements however our experience was he was not delivering even the basic functionality. He tends to complicate even the simplest requirement and do not be surprised if he yells back you in the calls.

Second Opinion - Whatever is developed from him or his team please parallelly hire an experience freelancer/third party to check his work. We did the same (in the later half) and were surprised by the results.

Background Technology: Kurtis will sell something called the "Background Technology". This is a SCAM. Please do not sign-up or insist to see the code before he sells you this. These are linked as kbd files. We did not find or substantiate anything that the standard framework would not give (Django). He will refuse to give any details on this, hence this is a SCAM.

Bait & Switch: Never get engaged with this company or his associated companies by paying a big lump-sum amount. Ideal situation is not to get engaged. We did the mistake and should have pushed for payment "only after delivery". He will push for payment-advance, T&M, deferred payments, and similar schemes which are all just attempts to lure the bait. You will find yourself close to bait and switch schemes being played and please be wary of these types of approaches by him and his company. In our case he quoted an X amount, and later said that offer is over and baited towards the next scheme with Y amount. We had the same requirements and nothing had changed, in fact had more documentation from our end. Still his reply was we were too late to take the previous offer !

Project Estimation & Trello: Very poor in Project Estimations. All the time that were estimated failed…failed very badly. Never was on-time. He will insist on Trello and make you walk on it very precisely. Always create your own Trello board and add him as recipient and not the other way around. We did that mistake. We found the project management and estimation skills to be very weak. He will talk to get anything to get the deal closed but you will miss that hunger after closing.

Skype/ Google Hangouts: Kurtis generally comes on Google hangouts but will never show his face. Insist Kurtis Jensen to come on Skype and face-to-face (even remotely) for your meetings. He will deny and give excuse of his system (desktop / laptop) not having a camera or he is outside or some other excuse. (Really ! In this day & age).

We burned our fingers badly with Kurtis Jensen and his company. While giving this complaint had requested for a meeting on phone/skype since Oct 22, 2017. He does not come on phone or skype for an explanation...

Details:

Concepts Collective : https://info.conceptscollective.com/ or www.conceptscollective.com

Name: Kurtis Jensen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtisj/)

Also operates as kbuilds LLC / Tax ID Num : [protected]

Kbuilds LLC : https://www.ohio-register.com/3955024-kbuilds-llc

Address operated from: 2412 Euclid Heights Blvd, #402, Cleveland, OH 44106

New Address shared: 9215 Wilson Mills RD, Chesterland, OH 44026