Feb
24

2016 State of the Union

CLIENTS, CREW MEMBERS, FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND FELLOW AMERICANS: WELCOME TO LUNARLINCOLN’S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS (2016 edition).

If year one was a quiet tiny team of two, and year two was a crazy rollercoaster of growth, year three was a lot of figuring out the finer points of business and moving onward and upward. What comes after the giant hurdles? The answer is hundreds of tiny hurdles. (And overcoming those tiny hurdles is surprisingly painful – similar to stomping on Lego’s in the dark – who knew?). But now that we’ve stomped all those hurdles and arrived here at 2017, I have to admit looking around that we did a pretty awesome job. We built so many new things this year, in so many different areas. We got smarter, we got stronger, and we even made a teeny bit of money in the process.

 

But I digress, let’s get down to our favorite thing every. single. year. The Work!

The Work

We added several new and diverse clients: Bkon, Camping with Dogs, GoNoodle, HealthHere, Lasso, TReAD Lab, Pacecoach, Oak Hill School, Revl, Subpac, Synchronous Health, Tandum, and VDCI …whew I think that’s it. (Totally didn’t realize it was this many clients, holy crap you guys!)

With these guys (and gals) we got to work on all sorts of new things:

Some have shipped and are available for your pocket computer right now. Some were featured and reached #1 app in Apple’s App Store. Some were used at events with tens of thousands of attendees. Some helped people do their jobs better than ever before. Some help you get out there and get moving.  Some are still in progress. Some we haven’t even mentioned above because they are too cool and top secret to be hinted at as of yet. We’ve added many of them to our Work page with greater detail, along with our amazing clients saying amazing things about yours truly. Check it out!

The Team

You can’t do the work without the team, and we’ve assembled a stellar team….I would almost say they are rockstar developers…but I won’t because that terminology is stupid. They’re really, really good. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

This year, we had our first interns (MLK class of 15) and we welcomed Cory Wilhite to the crew. There were many Friday lunches, a single ice cream truck quest (found it after weeks of hearing it!), several arguments over code abstraction, and as always: general hijinks.

 

The Community

We wouldn’t be here without the love and support of the Nashville community, be it developer or mobile dev aficionados. This year we put our money where our mouth was and sponsored several events. Some of which we spoke at and some of which we merely cheerleaded from the audience. Each of these events and groups are great examples of creativity and innovation that is flourishing in Nashville.

The Future

So what’s next? Definitely more of the same and hopefully more of better things.  In the meantime we’ll keep building, keep coding, keep working with the community, and we’ll keep checking back with you as the year progresses.

Here’s to LunarLincoln in 2017!

Love and gratitude,

Jennifer, Wiley, Travis, Patrick, and Cory

 

 

Apr
25

Working to Live not Living to Work

“Startup Life” – everyone knows this means long hours and intense work schedules right? It’s all about doing more with less, and if you’re not putting in more time than everyone else you’re clearly not cut out for startups right? Right?

Working to live at LunarLincoln

A little known fact: LunarLincoln has a 35 hour work week.

We also let our crewmates work whatever hours they want to. Why? For so many reasons. Because we want to create a sustainable work environment for our crew. Because we know we get better quality work when our dev’s are fresh and in the proper mindset for the task at hand. Because sometimes you hit a wall and just need to take a break to clear your head. We don’t put in “Let’s check Reddit since I have 30 more minutes till 5pm” time, and we don’t put in “I’ve already worked 50 hours this week on this project but have to put in 10 more to push it across the finish line, who cares about code quality at this point. Get. It. Done.” time.

http://alifeofproductivity.com/number-of-hours-work-a-week-to-be-the-most-productive-35/

Graph courtesy of http://alifeofproductivity.com

We only require 32 hours because our crewmates are individuals who deserve to be husbanded and treasured. They aren’t expendable and they’re not interchangable. We aren’t a code factory, we’re a small shop of craftsmen. (Plus there is some science to this madness ^)

Do your work. Do it exceptionally well and be proud of what you’ve created. Then go home and enjoy your life. If that life is learning more about mobile app development or building your own apps, awesome. If it is going to concerts and throwing dinner parties, that’s awesome too. We want our team to take that time and recharge and refresh, and most importantly we want them to live their lives.

But wait, you said a 35 hour work week, what are those 3 extra hours?

We want 32 hours of client-billable work. The work that supplies the paycheck. But you know what not only helps our crew but the final client product too? The time to learn new things. Learn the best new techniques, programs, and languages so that we can be more efficient, effective, and on top of our game. Those three hours are for personal development, whether that is reading blogs, using some extra time to try a new thing, or going to an event in town. It’s important and nonnegotiable.

While there are many approaches tech companies take for “salaried” workers we feel that this equation works the best. “Startup Life” doesn’t have to equal epic burn out.

200a

For us, “working to live” makes for a happy balance and keeps us excited to build new things each and every day.

Feb
16

Startup Growing Pains and Working on my Google-fu

You see in the news all the time “Startup acquired in $$$$ deal” or “Local Startup hires 2983742742 new employees”. But how do those companies get to that point? Growth is hard guys. Can’t we just work in our own little bubbles?

When starting LunarLincoln, we knew some of the basic things we needed, and we knew we wanted to be one of those companies in the news with fantastic results, but connecting the dots from point A to point B – well, we weren’t so sure about how that worked.

How do you get from the beginning to the end?

200

Things we knew to do:

  • Register a company
  • Pick a name
  • Build a website
  • Get some clients through word of mouth or past contacts
  • Promote on the interwebs
  • Go to events/meetups
  • DO GREAT WORK

But doing the work is the easy part. We knew how to do that, whether it was code or design.

But how do you do all that other stuff that gets in the way of work?

Things we had to google in the past year during super-growth-time (and are still not sure we did it the “best” way).

  • How to rent commercial office space
    • What’s a CAM?
    • Why are there no office/commercial spaces that are small/medium sizes and NOT in a coworking space?
    • What are some commercial real estate sites that AREN’t horrible to use?
    • What do you mean we have to build the office after we rent it?
    • Where do you buy office furniture? Should we even buy “office” furniture?
  • How to properly interview developers
    • Average salaries for developers in the southeast
    • Good interview questions
    • How to fire an employee
  • How to write an employee handbook, offer letter, contract, etc
  • How to find a lawyer
    • How to negotiate contracts
    • How to leverage your legal team when problems arise (Why can’t you pay on time!!!)
  • How to find an accountant
    • How to use Quickbooks
    • Why is Quickbooks the devil?
    • Alternatives to Quickbooks
  • Do we charge sales tax in Tennessee for development?
    • Why do we have to pay tax on our stuff (I’m looking at you Schedule B)?
    • Payroll taxes, sales tax, federal tax, unemployment tax – why so many taxes?
    • How to not miss a random tax payment
  • How to buy small business and health insurance
    • Tech insurance
    • Dental & vision insurance
    • Rental insurance
    • ALL the stupid insurance (I left out workers comp, short term disability, & long term disability ugh)
  • How to set up a company 401k
    • Why are 401ks so expensive?
    • What is a simple IRA?

That list above – there was hardly ever a simple google answer. The internet always had 200 different ways to do each task. What was right for us? What was right for Nashville? What was right for a tech-services company?

Late at night after sifting through the conflicting advice and moaning “whyyyy, whyyy” at the wall about the most recent puzzling question, we would joke that there had to be some sort of AA meeting for startups.

200-4

So, my lovely internet peoples. I would welcome with open arms any of the following:

  • Not a tech mentor, not a design mentor, but a small business mentor. A fairy godmother of answers. A veritable Ask Jeeves
  • Some sort of “How do you do this business thing?” Question-Time Meet-up
  • A wonderously detailed forum or QA series on a local tech site so I can quit trawling page three of the Google search results
Maybe these things already exist…
…but, I’m just too tired to google them right now.

I just want to get back to the work part of work.

Sep
23

Just get it done, dammit – To-Do Apps

We’re busy, you’re busy, everyone has shit to do. But the real question is – how DO you get all that stuff done? Magic? Mary Poppins finger snapping? I wish.

marypoppinssnap

For me, I am old-school. I love nothing more than making a list at the start of each day and checking things off on a pad of paper. Each little checkmark sends a tiny bit of dopamine coursing into my brain. (Sometimes I’m guilty of even half x’ing a box when I’m in progress on a task and want to congratulate myself on being “mostly” done). This works for me. It helps me sort and prioritize my day and gives me a historical list of things done and not done.

Others may want a more high-tech approach. Enter “To Do” apps. Everyone and everyone’s cousin has an idea for a good to do app. “It will revolutionize your world!”.

No. No it will not. It is just an app.


Screen Shot 2014-09-23 at 12.12.27 PM

But, there are a lot of them out there – you almost need to make a list in order to find one.

  1. Make list of what would be helpful
  2. Research top to-do lists
  3. Download 15 to-do apps
  4. Spend hours procrastinating by testing out apps in order to find “the ONE”
  5. Enter half your information in several apps
  6. Cry as your phone explodes with endless notifications
  7. Spend all your time dismissing notifications and not getting anything done.


As you can see – its a lot to think about. However, what will be most effective is an app that MOTIVATES you. Me? I’m motivated by getting to check boxes. But….
some may like it to be a competitive game (HabitRPG)
some may need threats (Carrot)
some may need a pretty app to look at their list in (Clear)
some may just want an app that consents to their procrastination (Procrastination)
some just want to use what everyone else is using (Wunderlist)

Ironically, Wiley has “writing a post about to do apps” on his to do list – I’m not sure all these fancy apps are helping him DO it though.

(Further disclosure Wiley has used the following in his search for “THE ONE” : Wunderlist, Things, Omnifocus, To-Doist, Checkmark, Clear, Carrot, Free-time, Lift, DOOO, 30/30, Nobze, EasyTask Manager – THIS IS ONLY ON IPHONE)

How does LunarLincoln, as a company, handle to-do lists? Drum-roll please: JIRA. JIRA is the grandfather of development to-do lists. It provides bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management functions and is where we spend ALL DAY LONG. It also keeps us on track, our clients on track, and sorts through the hundreds of storyboards we are constantly creating.  JIRA is the un-pc shortening of Godzilla – and is made by Atlassian.

We’ll cover more about JIRA and it’s sister program Confluence next week. For now I’ll leave you with Travis in a godzilla costume, showing how much he loves JIRA:

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