LaunchPad Lab

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director of operations at an education company focused on employment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Launchpad Labs?

As a scrappy little startup, our first challenge was redoing our pilot website. Once we had proven the marketability of our vision, we needed a website that would help establish a strong and credible presence online.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I had a good sense of how I wanted the website to look, so I provided some sketches for Launchpad's team to work off of. Through an iterative process, they created a new website on Wordpress that showcased our product offering.

In a second project, they built out our online database, which houses our qualified applicants.

What is the team composition?

The three people I communicated mostly with were Scott Weisman (Co-founder and Developer, Launchpad Labs), Monique Marchwiany (UX & UI Designer, Launchpad Labs), and Ifat Ribon (Developer, Launchpad Labs).

How did you come to work with Launchpad Labs?

As soon as I came onboard, getting a solid website up and running was the most important task I had assigned to myself. I did a ton of research on top website design companies and had conversations with half a dozen vendors. Ultimately, I felt Launchpad understood what we were trying to achieve and were the most flexible. They really believed in our mission and wanted to deliver a great end product, and they were willing to work with the budget we had available at the time.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together on the website in the Summer of 2016, followed by the database project in February 2017. While we don't have any active projects in the works now, their team remains available for website maintenance and to answer any questions we may have.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Launchpad was able to transform the very basic sketches I sent their team into a beautiful website. I'm 100% happy with the final product—they knocked it out of the park.

We get so much great feedback on our website from both applicants and potential partners. It's really helped us get a leg up in this space. The database that they built out has been a key resource in keeping our partners engaged and excited to work with us. It's very user-friendly and intuitive.

How did Launchpad Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

I loved that it was a very iterative process, with lots of back and forth and conversation throughout. They were extremely collaborative, even as I continued to blow up their inbox with various ideas and design changes. Open and receptive to my input, they worked in every detail of the website I wanted and took a hands-on approach to getting it all done.

We communicated mostly through Basecamp once the second project started, and they've always been great about getting back to us within 24 hours. If for some reason they predicted a delay, they were transparent about it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate their willingness to engage with me on every minor detail of the website. They've been incredibly collaborative in everything they've done for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They're on top of everything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don't be afraid to show them a really basic idea of what it is that you want, even if it's just a sketch on a sheet of paper or mockup in Word. It helps them understand that end product you're envisioning that they can help make a million times better.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of operations for a facility services company. I assist with all of our accounts throughout the country and I’m currently spearheading the development of our product with LaunchPad Labs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with LaunchPad Lab?

At the start of every contract for employment, we give our employees a schedule that tells them what they need to do and at what time. A lot of schedules were lost or thrown away within the first week in that system.

We needed a platform for continuous communication with our frontline employees where we could push out schedules and information. This would help ensure that the scope of work is met on a nightly, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with brainstorming sessions to inform LaunchPad of the gaps that we had. We asked our employees, supervisors, leads, managers, and customers about what’s important to them. LaunchPad did their own interviews with many of our stakeholders and brought common themes to the table. We developed a plan based on what themes were most important to us.

They took a lot of our programs and streamlined them in a few phases, starting from scratch. Different systems talk with one another and pull into one system, which was our ultimate goal. We wanted to work smarter, not harder. We’re still adding features.

The web-based platform also gives our supervisors and our managers personal cell phone information for every employee that reports to them so they can easily communicate if needed.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Ifat (Software Developer, LaunchPad Lab), Scott (Co-founder and Developer, LaunchPad Lab), and one other person.

How did you come to work with LaunchPad Lab?

We met them at a tradeshow.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They’ve been able to do all the work that we’re looking for in our platform. A lot of our sites are already testing the system out in the field. We’re getting some feedback about things to improve and we're testing every feature to make sure there are no issues. It’s been going really well. As of now, it’s exceeded our expectations.

With what they’ve put together for us, we’re able to communicate to our staff what’s expected of them. 

How did LaunchPad Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

Ifat and Scott have been intimately involved throughout this whole process. They were great to work with. They’re on the same page with us for anything we need or ideas we have. When I tell them my vision, they see that vision in a developer’s mindset. I tell them what I’m looking for and they explain to me exactly what I’m talking about. I can log in and see the features on the development site prior to them being pushed out.

Their communication and timelines have been spot on. They’ve exceeded our expectations in how quickly they developed the various aspects of this platform. When I send a message, Ifat usually responds with new materials within an hour.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their strength is their phenomenal ability to take our vision, understand it, and develop it. They’ve been a wonderful extension of our staff. They found a way to implement our vision of the platform. They’ve been able to tackle everything that’s been thrown at them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and share your entire vision with them. Don’t try to hold anything back because you think they can’t accomplish it within your budget. Tell them exactly what you want and what your end goal is and they will work within your budget parameters. Don’t think any project is too big for them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO and co-founder of a university recruiting platform. We help colleges standardize and distribute student information to employers for hiring purposes and organize their recruiting practices.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Launchpad Labs?

Our company is relatively new to the market, and there's not a lot of technology in the university recruiting space. We hired Launchpad Labs to develop the initial app. When I first engaged with them, it was still just an idea, which they helped flesh out and develop.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Launchpad Labs conducted product discovery and customer interviews starting from day one. They asked all the right questions to figure out what I wanted. The web platform's design was based on wireframes developed by another vendor. Since this was my first foray into tech development, they knew exactly what I hadn't considered. They helped me figure out problems that I didn't even know existed, which was really helpful. In the long term, that saved me a lot of time grappling with first-time entrepreneur or tech founder problems.

What is the team composition?

One of the great parts of Launchpad was that I knew exactly who to speak with about each type of feature and problem we ran into. I had contact with one product manager and one developer who was the technical lead. I'm aware that other software developers were also working on this project. At one point, there were different product managers for respective features, but it was great to only have two points of contact. They dispersed information wherever it was needed.

How did you come to work with Launchpad Labs?

We first found them via a Google search. As a senior at Purdue University, I’m relatively young. I couldn't relate well to the management of several other development companies I spoke with. They were much older than the young group of people who run Launchpad Labs. We held several meetings before starting a formal relationship, so I was really able to get to know them. Since we were going to be working together for a long time, it was important that we got along well.

How much have you invested with them?

I've invested around $85,000 in their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2017, and they started development in late February or early March. They were able to create a prototype within six weeks, by April, and finished most of the development by October 2017. We're still working with them a bit here and there. We've brought development in-house, but Launchpad Labs is still a resource for our developers to reach out to and ask questions about the initial architecture and features they worked on previously.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They've built a great product. Two engineers who work for us now, very talented developers, have said that the work Launchpad Labs did was incredible. They're really glad they did much of the initial heavy lifting. The team took care of the core architecture, which was very time-consuming. That work made it much easier for developers to focus on critical new features.

How did Launchpad Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

The team was very responsive and upfront about the cost and number of hours they thought it would take. We mainly use Basecamp as a project management tool.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their greatest strength was their ability to execute on what they said they were going to do. They clearly laid out what they were capable of, and gave us a reasonable price. It was very simple to engage with them, and they delivered a product rather quickly. There wasn't much more I could ask for.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a private equity firm focused on investing in middle-market companies. I am an associate in the marketing an investor relations role. I am in charge our engagement with our investors. We raise outside capital and then invest it in public pension funds, private wealth managers, and things like that. We invest, on behalf of them, into relatively large, private companies to help improve them operationally, and then ideally sell it at a profit, then return the capital back to the investors.

I engage with investors on a pretty regular basis. I’m in charge of giving them the information they need on the portfolio companies and giving them updates periodically. We wanted the information we gave our investors to match how we showed ourselves externally, so we decided to update our website. That’s how that digital marketing aspect came in.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Kohactive?

We’re a middle-market firm focused on investing in sustainability and wellness companies. We hadn’t updated our website in at least 10 years, and it really needed a facelift and an update to coincide with our brand, how we wanted to be perceived in the world, and who we thought we were. We wanted to give it a fresher look to match how we perceived ourselves and how we wanted others to perceive us as well.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They just did the website redesign, and they did a really great job. We were very happy with how it worked with them. They were very engaged, very responsive to our emails. They came up with a lot of really creative ideas and really listened to what we were getting at. When things didn’t go how we envisioned the first time, they took a second crack at it. They were really great in that regard. It’s an information site built on WordPress.

How did you come to work with Kohactive?

I talked to a few different website developers. We decided to go with Kohactive for a number of reasons. A co-worker at the firm has a friend who had previously worked with Kohactive and highly recommended them. They were reasonably priced compared to their competitors. Looking at their work, they were doing exactly what we wanted for our own website.

How much have you invested with Kohactive?

I don’t know off the top of my head.

What is the status of this engagement?

We had a pretty short, three-month timeline from start to finish. We launched it in October or November of 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I am definitely satisfied with their performance. They’re still very helpful when something isn’t working right or we have questions. They’re very responsive to our emails. I think it was a very successful project. They’re great to work with in general, very helpful, and just a really good team.

We have annual meetings when all the investors come, and we present to them about annual updates on our portfolio companies. We launched prior to our annual meeting, and we got a lot of positive feedback from our investors. We’re not a consumer-oriented company, so we don’t expect a lot of traffic to our site outside of potential investors or portfolio companies that might be interested in partnering with us. So, we have a limited number of people who look at our website. The website has been operating smoothly since the launch.

How did Kohactive perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very responsive, and they made sure we stayed on task and on budget, which was very important to us.

What did you find most impressive about Kohactive?

I think they’re very creative. They sat down with us and listened to how we viewed ourselves, in order to put a pen to paper and put it on a screen. I think that was very helpful. They put together something I don’t think I could have done myself in terms of vision. I think they were really great in that regard.

Are there any areas Kohactive could improve?

No. I think they were really great.

Do you have any advice or suggestions to help other clients be successful when they work with Kohactive?

It’s important to have a clear and concise vision of what you’d like to see on your website and how you view yourself, then communicating that to them very clearly. This will help to avoid confusion and assist them in taking a great first crack at it. In our case, they did a really great job, but if you’re not clear and communicative, there could be issues.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

FanMatchup.com is a startup gaming site that combines daily fantasy sports with confidence pool rules. I have arranged it like DraftKings and FanDuel where users can create contests, and the site makes money by taking a percentage of the entry fees. That's the long-term goal. Right now, I'm doing free contests to try to increase interest.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Kohactive?

I'm trying to break into the industry. I have an original intellectual property concept that I designed over the last few years. I chose Kohactive to build the site. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I spent a lot of time putting the design together in Photoshop and other programs. Kohactive took my design and built it exactly the way I wanted. They're always adding and changing things. They had to create a home landing page. Kohactive used Ruby on Rails and Ember to build the app and deployed it on Heroku. We do Facebook and Twitter, but they're not really doing much of the marketing.

They built the platform for football. After football season ended, we wanted to continue, so they added baseball. Right now, we're doing baseball contests, but the main goal is having the site primed for football season this upcoming year. In the daily fantasy sports world, football is the dominant participation. Eventually, I would like to do football, baseball, hockey, basketball, and golf, but getting the stats for all of those is pricey, and I really want to have clients first.

How did you come to work with Kohactive?

I interviewed a number of companies when we were deciding how to build the site. Kohactive came up through my searches for firms in Chicago. I met with 5 or 6 people in the area, and they seemed to be the most reasonable. Other companies said they couldn't take on a project like this, and 2 others asked for higher prices. Kohactive had a whole startup section targeted at building a minimal viable product (MVP) within my price range.

How much have you invested with Kohactive?

The original MVP was $30,000. Since then, we've added close to $6,000–$10,000, so I could be at $40,000 pretty soon.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the work in last September. It took few months to get everything running the way I wanted. The site is currently live. I post new contests every day to get people interested. It really is going to be an evolving process. Right now, the startup is just me. Hopefully, Kohactive will maintain responsibility for changing and adding to the existing site until I can hire a CTO or bring in some coders.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The website looks the way I wanted it to look, and it's working the way I wanted it to work. Kohactive did a great job with the coding. Their MVP met my goals and can accommodate add-ons. I want to add 5 new things to the site already, as well as continual adjustments.

We've been testing the site with about 50–60 people. During the last 4 weeks of football season, we had about 20 people enter. Since we went live 2 weeks ago, we're pushing it on Facebook and Twitter and trying to get more users. 

How did Kohactive perform from a project management standpoint?

They responded to emails quickly and did everything they could to make me happy.

What did you find most impressive about Kohactive?

Overall, I'm happy with Kohactive; they did what I needed. This was their first time doing a daily fantasy sports site, and they have been helpful when something needed to be changed.

Are there any areas Kohactive could improve?

A minor negative is their design abilities. if you want to build a totally original design or concept, more preparation really expedites the process. When Kohactive had to design something like my homepage, it took too many hours. Besides that, I think they're bright coders, and the owner, John, is receptive to ideas.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Kohactive?

Try to be totally prepared with your design. The more prepared you are up front, the faster Kohactive can work. If you leave the design to them, the hours could add up.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of marketing at a nonprofit that does sexual assault prevention through live and online programming.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with LaunchPad Lab?

We needed a new website. We had rebranded and our old site wasn’t mobile-friendly. Also, our previous site was all built on Flash, which means you can’t measure or track anything. It was chaotic, and we didn’t really understand what was being communicated on the site, so it was time for a change.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

LaunchPad Lab created the framework and the look and feel using branding we provided. We gave them information about what we wanted on the site, and they restructured the entire setup. They built it from scratch using the Locomotive CMS. We do the SEO and content marketing ourselves, but they built the site to allow everything to be tracked.

We wanted a clear and fresh look. We have different sexual assault prevention programs for military, college, and corporate audiences, so we wanted a clear message about the programs that are good for each group. LaunchPad built a way to see all programs together, but also filter the programs for a specific audience. It’s an easy way for a user to see programs based on individual needs, instead of browsing through the entire website.

We already had a blog page, but it was very chaotic, so LaunchPad put an emphasis on being able to find all blogs within a certain topic.

How did you come to work with LaunchPad Lab?

I checked out a couple companies at the time. I felt that LaunchPad really understood our ideas, and they were in the right price range for us.

How much have you invested with LaunchPad Lab?

I think it was $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started January 1^st, 2015, and the site launched in July of that year. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I don’t have the stats available. As we couldn’t track anything on the old site, we didn’t have a clue about how many visitors we had. However, I believe there was a 225% increase in usage over the first couple months. I think people are staying longer on the site now.

How did LaunchPad Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great for the first six months, but they’re not as fast in responding now. Sometimes it takes them a while to get back to us.

What did you find most impressive about LaunchPad Lab?

They’re easygoing, and it’s pleasant to work with them. They give us great advice. They have a lot of ideas on social media and how to track our numbers.

Are there any areas LaunchPad Lab could improve?

We chose Locomotive based on their advice, but I don’t think we would make that decision again. We’re not really excited about the system. Their response could be quicker. But I do think they’re a great company with super-nice people. They deliver nice work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Prevent Blindness is a nonprofit founded in 1908. We’re the leading eye health and safety advocate for patients and consumers. We focus on eye disease, eye health education and awareness, vision screening for children, and policy advocacy issues relating to eye and vision health. I’m a senior director of marketing and interactive communications. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with LaunchPad Lab?

As a nonprofit, we don’t have a lot of money for marketing, but we wanted to create an appealing consumer- and patient-oriented site with our available funds. LaunchPad Lab seemed excited about our mission and was willing to help us revitalize our web presence and update our online technology. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve helped us with multiple projects, including our main website redesign and a number of interactive tools. We’re now working on the third project with them, and it’s been very rewarding.

We have a large website presence that includes hundreds of pages on eye health and safety issues and promotes our news and events. We’re a national and affiliate organization: the national organization runs websites for a number of affiliates in different states. We had a fairly large CRM challenge to make the site available to our affiliates, allowing them to do independent updates and administer edits on their own. Creating a site that can accommodate that CRM need was a challenge, but LaunchPad Lab found a good solution at a decent price.

It’s a Drupal site, and they updated that platform for us. They used a number of plugins and some custom tools. They really did it from start to finish. We had a logo, basic branding guidelines, and some requirements to ensure accessibility for people with low vision. LaunchPad Lab did everything from there—all the site design and concepts. They also helped us with SEO.

How did you come to work with LaunchPad Lab?

I was looking for vendors for a potential app targeting people with age-related macular degeneration. I found them and got some good recommendations for their work. We did that project and asked them to give us a quote for the website redevelopment. Since then, we’ve expanded on that initial project. We’re now working on a guide for people with diabetic retinopathy. LaunchPad has also worked with us on a number of interactive eye disease guides plus the national website.

How much have you invested with LaunchPad Lab?

The investment is in the $50,000 range for all of that work.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in 2015, and the relationship is ongoing. The current project is almost complete, and we’ll probably ask them to do another project within the next three to six months. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

LaunchPad Lab produces excellent results. We get a lot of good feedback from our constituents, partners, donors, and sponsors. The interactive guides they created helped us connect with new constituents. Their work has helped us with donor and constituent acquisition. We’ve definitely seen an uptick in web traffic on the national site and most of the affiliate websites since launching. It’s a good marketing tool for potential sponsors, partners, and donors.

How did LaunchPad Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

The projects were delivered on time. We had some flexibility in the first project, but the website redevelopment was on a strict timeline. They’ve been good about getting the projects done within the timeframe we created. The current project is ahead of schedule.

What did you find most impressive about LaunchPad Lab?

They have a proactive approach to making recommendations they think will support our goal. Their quality control and review is very strong, and I like their design work. It’s been a pleasure working with them.

Are there any areas LaunchPad Lab could improve?

They’re a small organization, but they give us a lot of personal attention. I never felt that they were struggling to find time for our project. I assume they’re still growing, and they have all the challenges of being a small organization. They’re trying to grow at the right pace; so far, I think they’ve done a very good job managing their resources among their different clients. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Cobalt Solutions designs, develops, and delivers mirror-processing cloud applications for the human resources market.

What is your position?

I am the founder and president of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with LaunchPad Lab?

We had begun working with a different development team that was not performing well. I wanted a fresh start.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

LaunchPad Lab jumped in, put a team on our project, and did a phenomenal job. They not only organized content and understood the problems we were trying to solve, but they also saw our vision in terms of design, which they carried over into a holistic product.

How did you come to work with LaunchPad Lab?

I knew one of their founders and contacted him directly regarding the current opportunity. I had seen the previous products built by LaunchPad Lab, understood their process, and knew that they could get the work done. I didn’t go through a rigorous selection process but rather gave them a chance to jump in and fix the work done by the previous team.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The total project cost is anticipated to be around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with LaunchPad Lab in November of 2015. The project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics or other feedback from this engagement?

The quality offered by the development teams has been top-notch. The graphical user interface and frontend portions have been completed. The software is very responsive; it works quickly and delivers on the vision of creating a simple-to-use application for the average end user, unlike many other software applications.

How did LaunchPad Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very good at communicating to the client what it is that they need to work on. Any changes to scope have been documented, and the work product is outstanding.

What distinguishes LaunchPad Lab from other providers?

Having a diverse team has made a difference. Their project manager has made sure that the work is on track, they have a very good graphic designer who has delivered a clean user interface, and their developers are very good at getting things done quickly. LaunchPad Lab uses the most modern technology prevalent in the industry today, instead of leveraging on platforms they’ve been using for a long time.

Is there anything LaunchPad Lab could have improved or done differently?

They’ve been solid in terms of what they’ve delivered. We sit at the top-end of the estimates in terms of what it would take to build a 1.0 product. The project has required more than we initially thought, but we’ve also taken the product further than we had ever envisioned for an initial release.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are called Can Do Inc. We have designed and created a mobile application that connects a college student with a problem to another student within the same campus who can solve that problem.

Whether they have broken their phone screen or need to put together some IKEA furniture, they can log on to the app, create a job and, from that, seek someone on the campus who is able to fix it. We receive a 15 percent commission from each job provider, after its completion. Transactions are done entirely through the app, and it is a free download.

What is your position?

I am the president, chief financial officer, and one of the founders of the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with kohactive?

We needed help in developing our application. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They've facilitated the development of the app for iOS, working with our creative designer to implement a prototype. They've worked on the creative design of the app to a limited extent. We're also working with kohactive on website design for our company.

[Editor's Note: The project also involved UX/UI work and was completed using Ruby on Rails and Heroku.]

How did you come to work with kohactive?

We reached out to five different development companies in the city of Chicago. We met with each one, going through a discussion process around the application, seeing if they had any ideas for it and what their level of interest was.

After that, each company submitted a proposal. Our team assessed which of them had the best input as a whole, and kohactive were chosen as a result. We liked them and thought that they understood our idea. They were eager to work with us on the project. 

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The total development cost so far has been between $50,000 and $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Work on the application is almost finished. At this moment, we're in the middle of developing our website. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

They were helpful and accommodating with everything that we needed, and worked with us in coming up with solutions to initial design issues we had with the application.

We sent out 250 to 300 different renderings of our app to kids on college campuses as well as having an initial think tank about the idea itself. The satisfaction rate has been around 80 to 85 percent.

How did kohactive perform from a project management standpoint?

kohactive hit the nail on the head with every task we gave them, taking our initial renderings and functional specifications producing the final product we were looking for. They reached out to us, sending constant updates of different variations that they proposed.

What distinguishes kohactive from other providers?

They were very helpful and committed to each project. They never treated any task as if it was inferior to another. As a small startup company, we felt that kohactive, being a small company themselves, would be more inclined to understand our motivation. They understood that we function within a competitive market and have pushed us to the next level.

Is there anything kohactive could have improved or done differently?

At times, there was a bit of a lack in communication, from my standpoint. There could be periods of two days without talking, in the midst of the project. I would have preferred to stay ahead of these things. Otherwise, they were great.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

My idea started a few years ago: collecting and crowdsourcing the content that is generated in federal labs around their intellectual property. I thought this information had tremendous commercial potential so I decided to start a business around the idea.

What is your position?

I am a cofounder with one other main person.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with kohactive?

We hired kohactive to build a platform for collecting and aggregating intellectual property, which we ultimately push out and move to the private market.

We wanted to make things more efficient and provide access. We do a lot of work with the Department of Defense and the Air Force. They are seen by their national and local communities as a kind of black box. As taxpayers, we spend billions of dollars in R&D [research and development]. There's been a lot of research that has been deployed to our military to serve war-fighting needs, but there's also a lot of economic value in those inventions. kohactive has helped us take that information, shed light on it, and use local incubators, accelerators, universities, serial entrepreneurs, and investors to add valuable knowledge to the markets where those inventions can be repurposed.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

I brought the architecture of the software to them. I had an idea of how I wanted it to operate, and they started building it in sprints, which we'd deploy to our customers and users. kohactive did some design work, and a lot of back-end work. It's a very complex piece of software with many user roles and permissions. We have many stakeholders in our user base that have different reasons for using it. They helped design the best UI [user interface] and UX [user experience] for our needs at the time.

They did some front-end design as we rolled it out to more users. It had to look a little bit friendlier than a minimum viable product. They didn't do any training for the software. I handled that myself.

[Editor's Note: The project also involved UX/UI work and was completed using Ruby on Rails, Anjular, and Heroku.]

How did you come to work with kohactive?

I had been working with a few freelance developers. They were terrible. I had project requirements that I delegated to a few people and, typically, things didn't work correctly, if at all. It wasn't up to my standard. I had one freelancer who was basically a fake. We kept spending money, and I never received updates. That was the last straw.

My business partner also suggested we should hire a development shop as this was going to be a bigger project than we'd thought. In March 2015, I started looking up web development firms on Google. I saw that kohactive had been rated best in the previous year. I spent a couple of hours on their site, looking through their testimonials and previous work. They worked with startups and built minimum viable products, which they actually called minimum lovable products. That term really stuck out. I would be having people using it, so it shouldn't look crude. I wanted it to be loved and to be able to log in and play with things.

I sent them a message on Sunday afternoon. I didn't expect to hear back, but I got a note that night, and we had a meeting the next morning.

I looked up John [Koht, principal and creative director of kohactive] online, and saw that he was a whiskey lover. I picked up a bottle of Chicago Whiskey, and brought it to the meeting, saying I was in desperate need of their help and wondering if they could work with me. We worked it out and signed a contract the next day.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

To date, we've invested $70,000 to 80,000 into the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in April 2015. The work is ongoing. We have kohactive on a monthly retainer.

We have a minimum viable product and people are using it, but we've had a lot of notoriety within the federal lab system because of kohactive's fine work. We've won many awards for our platform on a national level and more people want it. kohactive continues to enhance the existing features, and also add new things.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The Air Force Research Lab is our biggest client. They have an unusual legal structure for doing business. You have to go through the right channels to transact with the federal government. We work with many partnership intermediaries across the country. Last year, one of the labs that we were working with won a few awards for the process that we deployed with them. That was the basis for a lot of the software that we built.

This year, the executive director of the entire Air Force Research Lab [Doug Ebersole], who has around $8 billion to $9 billion for R&D available to him, has endorsed our platform and will be using it in 2016 across multiple labs. We're also getting a lot of traction with multiple Department of Defense labs for deploying it within the universities and the various communities with which they work.

This isn't the most glamorous field. We're inputting intellectual property and dissecting inventions, and doing this with Excel spreadsheets can be tedious. kohactive made that fun. I have a few administrators for the platform, who add inventions, labs, and edit features of those inventions. They love it. We're making something that was tedious before seem fun. The labs we work with didn't actually want to do any of this before.

How did kohactive perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Trello for project management. I have access to the codebase, too. I can change and edit things, so I manage the project with John and his team in parallel. That gives me a greater feeling of control. This is our software, we've invested much into it, so I don't want to hand it to someone and not get what I expect. I appreciate the processes and tools that they use, which allow me to achieve the outcomes that I want.

What distinguishes kohactive from other providers?

They spend much time with me and have the right tools and processes in place. I want things deployed very quickly, and there's a necessary process for each step. I talk to John on a weekly basis and meet him face to face. He gives me plenty of time for expressing my concerns, not about the team, but about what I'm trying to get done and making sure that I'm meeting objectives within my timeline and budget. His team has always been able to resolve this. Communication is always good.

I appreciate what John and his team do. This kind of business is very people focused and many engineers and developers tend to have their heads down and build things without trying to understand what you're trying to achieve. John has spent an extraordinary amount of time with me, making sure that they're building exactly what I need. He even challenges me.

There are things that will cost a lot of money – features that I get enamored with. We sometimes have to take a step back and ask if we really need a particular feature and if there isn't something more important to the user base that we can roll out. kohactive knows much more about the technology side and ensures that I achieve my outcome. I've come to appreciate that.