Agency Archives - LunarLincoln

Aug

Celebrating 10 Years

Half a score and 1 month ago our forefathers (well, Wiley-father and then later Jennifer-father) brought forth, upon this continent, a new company, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all work is not created equal. (Some apps are just better than others, ideally the ones we make.)

Guys…guys…did you know…you can just start your own business? Really. It seems like you should have to take a class, or go to business school, or maybe have wealthy parents. But no, 10 years ago we decided on a business name, bought a URL, and filled out some paperwork downtown and BAM – we were a business.

Next came the slightly harder part. Convincing others that we were a business as well. Give us money to do work for you. We promise it’ll be great. We DO know what we’re doing, but we do not have any examples of this work. Trust us.

We needed to be legit. 2 LEGIT 2 QUIT. Luckily, Wiley had engendered some good will at his former agency and made some good community connections at the local chapter of Cocoaheads. And with a new website and a lot of un-earned confidence (and some definite anxiety-driven what am I doing nervousness) – the sales started to trickle in.

Early clients of the newly formed LunarLincoln were the lovely folks at Emma Email Marketing (now Campaign Monitor/Mailchimp)and were a catalyst for future clients. So many wonderfully, brilliant people in the Nashville tech space got their start at Emma and then went on to start or lead or steer other local companies which allowed our work to also grow and spread. (It didn’t hurt that we got to work with all of these great people repeatedly over the years). To show our appreciation, we sent them a rocket piñata filled with hot chicken gift cards…and they smashed it in the parking lot on film. See…great people.

We added Jennifer full time, instead of week nights. We added our first employee Travis, who had to work in a 100 sq. ft. closet (I’m not joking, it was 100 sq.ft) with Wiley over at Center615, which he handled surprisingly well.

We got a new office ten time bigger (1000 sq ft baby!), we got more clients, we added more people (Todd, Jack, Patrick, Tyler, Armando, Cory, Ben, Nate, Joe). We had interns (Logan & Dheeraj). We had parties and hosted meetups and met tons of new people.

But LunarLincoln isn’t just the people we met along the way (who am I kidding, it totally is). It was also the work. So. much. work. Over the past decade we’re built dozens of apps for the following things:

*takes deep breath as I scroll the depths of our Confluence spaces to remember them all*

Apps to…

To meetup at music festivals
To share your medical records between doctors
To review how your email campaigns did
To share photos across groups at weddings
To track data about your life
To rideshare on golfcarts
To track visitors with bluetooth beacons
To run your choir music setup
To share sales PDFs
To practice shooting
To keep track of Magic the Gathering decks
To adjust music speaker backpacks
To get gas station rewards
To poll for elections
To research addictive habits
To organize music catalogs
To call HVAC field techs
To sell mobile homes
To track time
To get kids dancing and moving
To share contact info inside an organization
To measure Wagyu beef quality
To fill out medical paperwork
To share local coupons
To offer tickets to events
To learn about local restaurants and shopping
To run a radio station
To share gifs
To save for college
To help veterans in need
To track medical sales
To entertain toddlers
To record adventure sports
To adjust studio photography lights
To get therapy when you need it
To control smart locks
To control smart screens
To call real estate leads
To keep track of pesticide applications
To collect apartment trash
To share physician credentials

So many different industries and tasks and features. And we love it. It’s never boring, never repetitive, and we hope to continue to do it for a full “score” upon this continent. (or maybe other continents). LunarLincoln global domination.

In the meantime, we’d like to step away from our desks, take our hands off the keyboard and have a moment to celebrate a decade of apps with all of you. The clients, the team, the community organizers, the fellow devs, and also just our friends who have had to hear us moan and brag and speculate about various projects at LunarLincoln.

Please join us on Wednesday, August 23th after 4pm at East Nashville Beer Works. There will be free beer, free pizza, and free playgrounds for the children you have all acquired over the past decade as well.

May

Copious Communication

I take a lot of notes. You’ll never find me in a meeting or a call just sitting there nodding – nope. Also, you’ll never have a meeting with me without getting a giant email afterwards detailing pretty much everything we covered.

Why? Jennifer, why are you such a crazy chronicler? Do we really care about what we talked about at lunch? Why are you listing out what goes into the Settings screen – isn’t that obvious?

The reasons I do these things, and why I’m so militant about taking notes and asking others to refer to/read the notes is because communication is key to a successful product.

Notes are a great reference point for what we’re thinking, problems we’ve worked through, and decisions we’ve settled on. While some people might have amazing eidetic memories, most of us don’t and that’s where the notes come in. BAM! Here’s a note on what features we want in the Settings screen, or here is a note from a user interview we did last June where they asked for 3 new features, or here is a note where we decided to delay push notifications until V2 so let’s stop arguing about it for the 1 millionth time.

At LunarLincoln, we use a little tool called Confluence to keep track of notes, plans, etc. This isn’t necessarily the best tool or the most elegant tool (but it works with our ticketing system JIRA and user system so it’s fine). Some teams use Google Docs. Some teams use Notion, or Basecamp, or Asana. Sometimes I even use regular pen and paper *gasp*. (And then later I type it into Confluence so it’s searchable). These all work.

Notes may seem not important when you’re first starting out – I know everything, I’ve got it! But when it comes time to add new team members, or when you’ve put a side project down and then you want to resurrect it 6 months later – you’ll come to appreciate the time savings of having notes about where you were, what came next, and why in the world you decided that the menu needed to be at the bottom instead of the top.

So “notes” is kind of a vague term. I mean, I get the concept but what exactly DO we consider useful notes at LunarLincoln?

Things I find myself referencing, creating, or wishing I had later:

Feature Lists
Goals, Audience, Problems
Names, Marketing Phrases, Short descriptions of the Product
Meeting Notes / Decisions Made
Credentials, Key Roles, Terminology
User Stories / Development discussions
Business Plans / Monetization
Drawings / Doodles / Whiteboard Photos / Designs

Typically if you have detailed content for these areas – you are on your way to having STRONG plans for building a product. These are the kinds of notes that allow you AND your teammates/contractors/helpers/investors to have CLEAR VISION and to be on the same page. (It also majorly cuts down on the number of questions you get and having to repeat yourself over and over)

So yeah – NOTES. A super basic thing, that you should do and make a habit of. We love it and hope you’ll learn to love it too.

Celebrating 10 Years

Copious Communication

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