Lightmatter

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Process Improvement and Supply Chain Consultant of Hospital for Special Surgery

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Healthcare provider

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Lightmatter to accomplish?

• Uncover opportunities
• Process map current and future state
• Outline IT development work

SOLUTION

How did you find Lightmatter?

Online Search

Why did you select Lightmatter over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

What was the size of Lightmatter’s team?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Scope of work was to perform discovery discussions with various team members to outline the project scope, timeline, and estimated costs related to building out a product to address our users' needs. Deliverables included a project plan, cost and timeline estimate, resources (internal and external) required to execute the project, IT development roadmap, cyber security assessment, and process maps for current and future state.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Project roadmap
• Current and future state process maps
• Timelines for deliverables

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Lightmatter's team was excellent in communication, project management, and overall setting and adhering to expectations. The team was very thorough and their organization skills were top notch. Given our own internal time and team constraints, the Lightmatter group was very amenable and flexible to meeting us both virtually and in-person per our needs. Follow up discussions with internal team members consistently yielded positive feedback and an overall excitement to work with the Lightmatter folks.

What was your primary form of communication with Lightmatter?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The level of expertise, the depth of engagement, punctuality and performance, and overall deliverable quality.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Lightmatter could have done differently?

Not particularly. The entire team was fantastic to work with, and our stakeholders were happy with the work output.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of an EdTech startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lightmatter?

Lightmatter helped us navigate some of the initial processes at the very early stages of our company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I approached them because my company was going through a series of design processes. We also needed to come up with a no-code prototype in a relatively short amount of time and under stringent limitations on our budget because we were just getting started.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three people from their team.

How did you come to work with Lightmatter?

I heard about them several years ago when Greg (COO) and his co-founder were just getting started. I met them around 2015 and had a great interaction with them. I was in the healthcare space myself, so I knew them from those circles. 

When I started my own company, I thought of Lightmatter because I knew they had a variety of resources — I considered them a one-stop-shop. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent below $10,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement ran from November 2020–January 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were very happy with what they did, and we plan to continue working with Lightmatter. They accomplished exactly what we said in our scope of work.

They also gave me the ability to go out and recruit individuals in specific areas. We use a lot of behavioral science so I was able to bring in behavioral scientists to work on specific areas of our product. Essentially, the metric was them allowing me to get to the next stage of where I needed to be. 

How did Lightmatter perform from a project management standpoint?

The Lightmatter team had an amazing project management workflow. Despite my time not being flexible, they were able to accommodate my schedule. They were also organized and I was able to rely on them on presenting things that needed my feedback, specifically when we were going through the first few weeks on the design. 

They were great at allocating time for a designer and technical advisors to assist us in navigating some of our processes. They had an excellent way of walking a “new founder” through some of the project's steps. Most importantly, everyone on their team was generous with their time and attention. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Lightmatter was very transparent and was honest on the steps that we needed to achieve to get to the prototype stage.  The diversity of their experts really stood out, and there were times that they were able to answer even business questions. They also had an incredible set of experiences working with different companies, entrepreneurs, and businesses at different stages. I really appreciated their approach to things. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Perhaps, the only feedback I have was to amplify the work they do, which they have on their website. I liked their work and I believe where they’re headed is pretty amazing. I wish nothing but the best for Lightmatter.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It was helpful for me to get a sense of the key areas that I wanted to focus on. Since I had a clear vision, the engagement was very wonderful and it helped me navigate the project better. 

The team has a wealth of experience and in-house expertise and if you do your homework ahead of time, they’ll definitely match your needs. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re the largest and fastest-growing network of fertility centers in the United States, with 24 fertility centers under management. I’m the COO of the New York and Northeast regions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lightmatter?

We needed a full-scale web rebrand across all 24 of our fertility centers. Our company had acquired several private fertility centers that had their own preexisting websites over the course of several years. We needed to unify the brands under a single, scalable, and repeatable website platform. Our team needed the site to be able to showcase the local clinic while tying back to our centralized platform branding. They were hired for the design and development of the site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The product needed to be flexible enough to handle localization at each one of our regional clinics but also consistently enough to provide a similar web experience to users on any site nationwide.

The engagement started with a 60-day exploration period, during which we sent them a list of our 5–6 main competitors and all of our existing websites. We sat down for several discovery sessions with them to identify what key messages we wanted to come through clearly on our sites, how our competitors were handling their sites, and how we could provide a strong patient experience to drive conversions through bookings.

Throughout the design phase, they were flexible in presenting us with several options for our final web product layout. For instance, they would show us different ways our headlines could look and various tools we could use to convey certain information. If a table or chart was needed to provide an easier way to digest a concept, they spotted the opportunity. 

The site was built on Wagtail, making sure that they selected a CMS that would be very easy for our team to update and add content to moving forward. Our leads and conversions data come from Wagtail as well, so they prioritized easy access for us.

What is the team composition?

Greg (CEO) has been my main contact, but I’ve also worked closely with Ben (CTO), Andrea (Creative Director & UI/UX Designer), and 2–3 developers. 

How did you come to work with Lightmatter?

We work with a creative marketing and branding agency that ran the RFP process for us, searching for a web design and development team. We selected them from the RFP process. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $450,000 in the end. Some one-off projects we did together may have pushed the total slightly higher than this. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We contracted them in August 2018. Our initial deliverable was provided in October 2019 and continuously refined until January 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re very pleased with them. I did a comparison over a three month period with our new website and our previous one. The new site received a total of 400 requests for appointments, and 100 of those requests converted. Of those who converted, 30% of the patients converted to a paid cycle plan with us. The previous site brought in only 117 requests, and a conversion rate of 15–19% depending on the procedure. 

Their work led to a dramatic improvement in the navigability of the site. The provided copy and content also allowed us to drive much stronger conversions within our consumer population. 

From a design standpoint, I was pleased with the flexibility the brought to the project. Their direction, image selection, and chosen iconography were great because they took the time to understand our brand. It was almost like getting to work with both a branding a tech agency.   

How did Lightmatter perform from a project management standpoint?

They did a great job driving the project forward. Most often than not, I held the process up by not having copy edited or image selections reviewed. They did a fantastic job of keeping us on our schedule to hit our deadline, so I’d compliment them on their project management skills.

I was able to reach them at all hours of the day or night. One time, a web page went down because of a hosting error on our end. Not only did they help us work with an outsourced developer to get the website back up and running at two o’clock in the morning on a Friday, but they did so cheerfully. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The entirety of the project moved forward quickly and productively, with no time wasted. Their depth of analysis and effort to segment our market was most impressive. They worked with us to customize different aspects of the web product to meet the needs of our specific constituents and market segments.

We’re in a very unique subsector of healthcare, and their team was very patient and thorough in their discovery phase to learn about us. They took the time to understand our patients and their journey, exploring each clinic and sub-identity of patients. For instance, the needs of a fertility patient performing an egg freezing cycle are very different in mindset than a patient seeking to get pregnant.

They really took the time to understand the difference between our patients and help us tailor our site to meet our audience’s needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Wagtail can be a bit restrictive. We’ve transitioned maintenance of the site to our own internal team, and Lightmatter has been helpful in tackling issues with the platform as they arise. It’s very easy to make simple updates to the platform. However, Wagtail is a bit inflexible for more sophisticated changes. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We focused on making our team available to Lighmatter during the discovery phase, coordinating interviews with patients, physicians, and practice administrators. That gave them a full understanding of what happens at each level of the market. If we had not done that, I don’t think this project would’ve been as successful as it was.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Founder and CEO of Cadence

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Lightmatter?

We hired Lightmatter to do our MVP, creating a basic platform allowing our users/investors to sign up/sign in, view investments, and ultimately make and track their investments. Behind the scenes there was an Admin Dashboard that we used to manage investments, users, and other administrative settings.

What were your goals for this project?

The platform for users/investors had to be responsive and easy to use. The UI/UX had to be implemented according to spec, and QAed to ensure it performed as expected. The Admin Dashboard had to be scalable to incorporate new features and functionality over time. This was going to be an MVP so speed was of the essence and it would be what we launch to our users with.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had been introduced to Lightmatter through a mutual client of ours from my past company. They displayed a clear grasp of what we were trying to build, maintained all on-shore developers, and were also local and so we could take meetings in person as needed. Their experience across traditional web application development and blockchain was what set them apart from any other vendor and we could rely on them for a one-stop solution.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We provided the UI/UX and specifications, along with full product designs. In turn, we walked them through all the features and workflows to ensure there was a complete understanding of what the platform was supposed to do. They broke it down into sprints and managed the process very seamlessly. Estimates were hit and any delays that occurred were from our own doing (adding features in, tweaking things after we saw the development environment, etc.). They were able to recreate our designs perfectly, a rarity for any development shop.

What was the team composition?

The CTO of the company was on our team given the complexity of the project and we also had another developer and project manager. The team did not change in size over time although we did re-engage with them at a later date to make additional enhancements and we swapped one of their developers for another given the staffing situation on their side at the time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

What was supposed to be an MVP has actually carried us through the entire year following the initial release. We've made iterative improvements and enhancements on our own based on user feedback but the core is still very much what the Lightmatter team built. The site has handled over $80M in investor capital being deployed, 74 different investment opportunities being run, and thousands of users signing up.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

They were very effective at project management. We used Slack, GitHub, and Pivotal to communicate and collaborate. Sprints were set very clearly, leaving room for ad hoc work as needed, and we shipped a full fledged platform in 3 months, which we were very pleased with. Features that were expected to be released in a sprint were released on time, if they weren't, we were informed well in advance of the sprint ending, and we could plan accordingly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were incredibly easy to work with and their ability to hit deadlines is second to none. Even though they didn't have a strong financial services background coming into this project, they adapted and rose to the occasion. I was pleased with the timing of delivery, the communication throughout, and their ability to ship as complex a product in such a short period of time.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Given that this was meant as an MVP, this isn't a knock on them by any means but the scalability of the system had to be reworked since we were not anticipating the platform they built would still be in use a year later. Some of the code was pulled together quickly in order to help us meet that 3 month deadline and much of that had to be rewritten given the business need as it evolved.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of Coterie. We’re a direct to consumer party supply business. It’s an e-commerce site for all of your party decorating needs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lightmatter?

We needed a partner to help us on an ongoing basis because our first tech team focused on launching companies. We were looking for general tech upkeep.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lightmatter was mostly in maintenance mode. They updated our Shopify site based on branding changes. Their team made little tweaks and fixed any bugs that arose. They also helped us to launch new products and added functionalities.

Over the course of our engagement, we had three major pushes. During one push, Lightmatter made major changes to the website to optimize it for mobile. We went through a whole process of redesigning the site for mobile and implemented the platform with Lightmatter. In another push, we completely revamped the way that customers shop for our products based on in-depth user experience surveys and walkthroughs.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 2–3 people from Lightmatter including a project manager.

How did you come to work with Lightmatter?

Our investors introduced us to Lightmatter and we liked them as people. Their team was nice and easy-going, so it seemed like it would be a great collaboration. They were also excited to work with us.

How much have you invested with them?

When in maintenance mode, we spent about $5,000 a month. When we ramped up, we spent closer to $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in 2019. Our engagement’s ongoing but we had to scale back on everything because of the coronavirus.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our conversion rate increased by 60%, which was really great. That was one of our big pushes with Lightmatter because so much of our traffic came from mobile. And then, they helped to fix our customer flow for purchasing our party sets. Those initiatives combined helped to increase our conversion rate. Overall, we’re really happy with their dev work. They worked with us to find solutions that were cost- or time-effective. It was great to have people who understood our budget constraints.

How did Lightmatter perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project manager was a great liaison between us and their teammates. He was on every single call and maintained organization. He sent recaps to our weekly meetings and agendas for the following meeting. He made sure that we were on schedule. They were also real through partners, which was important because my co-founder and I aren’t technical. It was great to work with a team that communicated processes clearly.

The majority of the time we hit the timelines that we originally set, which is incredible. Their team was proactive about bringing up any issues with the site. They were awesome.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Lightmatter was able to scale up to become a full-time tech team quickly. Their team was able to scale from one day a week to five days a week. Then, they were able to scale down to maintenance mode. It was important for us to be able to control that budget. Their flexibility is really amazing, and the engagement ran smoothly.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I had a really positive experience with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communication is important for all tech teams. You have to be clear about your expectations and goals. Whenever we had a sprint, we drew out the details. This ensured that our development teammate didn’t need to spend time clarifying.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

A few years ago, I founded a company called MeterX, which is a product aimed at creating visibility into the time and cost associated with corporate meetings, and I am the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Lightmatter?

They worked with us throughout the process of developing our company’s MVP to show angel investors and then building out and maintaining that product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lightmatter turned my vision for the product into a working prototype from the ground up, handling the initial technical scoping of the product and then developing the database, algorithms, security, and UI/UX. Their main focus was on the capability to pull metadata out of the Google Calendar system and matched it with salary information within a company.

That data was then displayed on a dashboard as a snapshot cross-section of metrics such as meeting hours per employee per day, cost per meeting, meeting efficiency rating, and a variety of other statistics. We had to do a lot of security work to protect all of that information before being able to market it to companies that had to give over those personal details to the software.

After an initial round of investment, they turned our MVP into a functioning SaaS product. They used a number of different technologies, predominantly including Python, Django, and React. Those enabled an incredible level of data visualization for our dashboard, as well as a surveying mechanism to include anecdotal feedback from attendees of corporate meetings as well.

What is the team composition?

We had anywhere from 5–6 people working on the project at any given time. Ben (CTO) and Greg (CEO) were the main drivers of the work, and then they had a project manager, UI specialists, and developers as well.

How did you come to work with Lightmatter?

I was referred to Lightmatter by an individual I had worked with at a previous position who had only great things to say about them. I got to see some of their work, which was really impressive, and meet Ben and Greg who demonstrate a level of optimism that makes a huge difference in any business relationship, so I knew that they would be a good fit for my project. I had them vetted by a CTO that I trust who spoke very highly of Ben’s technical acumen, so we moved forward from there.

How much have you invested with them?

In total, we spent about $300,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

The bulk of the work lasted from January–July 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As someone who has worked with a number of different dev shops both domestically and internationally in the past, I can say that their work was absolutely top-notch. On top of that, Andrea’s (Creative Director) design and UX work helps to deliver the quality of their code in an even better way.

I’ve referred them to two large companies that I’m affiliated with who they are now doing regular work for, and I’ve heard incredibly positive things from both of those organizations. I think the fact that I referred them to people that I know and trust is really the best testimonial I can give about my satisfaction with their work.

How did Lightmatter perform from a project management standpoint?

Their whole team is made up of great communicators. One of the things I love about their team is that they don’t give you unrealistic projections. They always tell you how much something is going to cost and how long it’s going to take, and that level of communication really helps to keep the project on track. I’m not used to receiving deliverables ahead of schedule and at a higher level of quality than I expected, which makes them feel like an extension of your own company.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They don’t just have the technical side of things covered; they really make sure they provide all of the services you need for your product to be successful. One of the main reasons we were able to get so many high-level customers using our product was because of the delivery on all fronts, particularly security, that they facilitated.

They went out of the way to get on the phone with legal and security departments at some of our potential user companies and answered detailed questions from them, all of which are really things you couldn’t expect from your usual development shop.

Are there any areas they could improve?

From my perspective, I honestly can’t think of anything. I would definitely work with them again on any future project that I have.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Rely on their ability to be your company’s tech team. Their size allows them to be very agile and quickly deliver projects while also flexing up to handle the demand of larger companies, so it’s a pretty easy relationship for anyone to manage.