Polar Notion

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an owner of a real estate firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Polar Notion?

We needed to replace our existing website with a modern consumer-facing website within a specific time frame. The purpose was to increase web traffic and user interaction by allowing customer reviews and online booking.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired a company prior to them who was not able to complete the site due to a variety of reasons. Polar Notion inherited the project when it was 60% complete. The features intended for the site were custom aesthetic and functional improvements. The requirements being large and specific, we ultimately did not complete the website Polar Notion was building. We switched strategies and went with a different company’s off-the-self product in lieu of building from scratch. The former process would take longer than we needed and cost more than anticipated.

What is the team dynamic?

Morgan [CEO, Polar Notion] was our main point of contact. We also worked with a project manager, but he left the company before the project concluded.

How did you come to work with Polar Notion?

The former development company we hired recommended them. We trusted that recommendation and didn’t consider other service providers.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $35,000–$40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them for 4 months before switching to another company.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Had we continued to build the website from scratch, I’m confident it would’ve increased web traffic and enabled better user interaction. Everyone we showed it to was extremely impressed. Overall, Polar Notion was great to work with. We just realized it was the wrong decision for us to build a custom website when we could buy one. Morgan is an incredibly smart guy who knows what he's doing. I would certainly use Polar Notion again in the right circumstance.

How did Polar Notion perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed well and were easy to communicate with. In addition to email and phone calls, we used slack as a project management tool. I would reach out to Morgan once or twice a week.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Morgan is an intelligent and articulate person. He approaches every project with the mindset of trying to solve business problems instead of just building new technology.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Polar Notion stepped in and took over a project that was problematic. They did everything we asked them to do. Unfortunately, we changed strategies and it would be unfair to criticize them for that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give serious consideration to buying an off-the-shelf product versus building a website from scratch. We didn’t want a basic website, but one with a booking engine a lot of complexities to it. The scope of a project like that was larger than we had intended.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I operate a 501C3 not-for-profit business whose purpose is educational in nature. We seek to provide resources for individuals and groups to use around the revised common lectionary. The revised common lectionary is a schedule of readings that are used in a wide variety of Christian denominations for public worship and individual private devotion. The site is called dailylectio.net.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Polar Notion?

One of the services I provide is to present the daily readings. There’s a schedule that’s repeated over a three-year cycle that provides daily readings from the Bible for individual use. The challenge is that the daily readings are associated with the liturgical calendar, which is partly based on the modern calendar and on the ancient lunar calendar. It moves around quite a bit, so the challenge people have had is that providing the daily readings over this cycle required daily updates. I needed Polar Notion to capture the logic of the liturgical calendar in code, and it was an incredible technical challenge.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

This was a vision I had and they were able to completely capture exactly what I was hoping for. I believe they coded using Ruby on Rails. I wasn’t involved much in the code. The functionality is pretty basic. It’s a single file with the readings, but it changes every day at 2 AM East Coast time. The goal was the simpler, the better—I wanted a single file with minimal navigation. The real challenge was getting the calendar to work behind this so the right reading would be shown on the right day.

They were also able to help me with a logo and design for the website. I absolutely love the logo; it completely expresses what this website is about. They also thought of providing a subscription service so people can enter their email address, and we use MailChimp as a distribution system. That was a wonderful thing because we have captured those emails, and when I want to talk to the users about a new release, I can let all those people know.

We did have an original iteration that we used for a while with small groups. We let that go dormant. It had a slightly different purpose and this iteration became more of a priority. We plan to get back to that and revamp that website. We don’t want to lose our domain so we’re just sitting on that site called lectio.net. That site will direct you to the new site right now. Over time, there might be some maintenance that has to happen on the site outside of content. I’m making the content changes now. The big changes that occur to the site are the uploading of the daily content. The site provides a user interface that allows me to do that efficiently.

How did you come to work with Polar Notion?

Morgan [Developer, Polar Notion] married my sister’s daughter. I didn’t know he was in this field until he came to visit. I told him about a website I was designing for a church. I raised the idea of this new project and he seemed to be very interested in what we were trying to accomplish. I sent him a request for proposal with the requirements, and Polar Notion came back with a proposal in terms of how much it would cost and how it would work. The proposal seemed reasonable so we went forward with his firm.

How much have you invested with Polar Notion?

We’ve spent approximately $10,000 over the course of our relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May 2015, and the project was completed in October 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The readings can now be provided daily without anyone having to manually select and change them. Their ability to do this was a wonderful thing for us. Polar Notion was able to solve the technical challenge that’s related to the idiosyncratic nature of the daily material. If you search for a daily lectionary, you find lectionaries that people give up on because they haven’t been able to automate the process. Because they were able to automate this complex dynamic, I think that will promote the longevity of the service I’m providing, which will really differentiate me from all the other ones. When I talk to people, they are amazed that we were able to capture all the idiosyncrasies of the liturgical calendar on a daily basis in computer code. Polar Notion tested it going hundreds of years out to make sure it was accurate. We now have about 550 subscribers, which is amazing. We haven’t done any promotion at all, so it’s all by word of mouth, and we get new subscribers every day. We had 450 a month ago, so we’ve gained 100 subscribers in 45 days.

How did Polar Notion perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication was exemplary. The fact that they understood what I was trying to describe to them was great, as well as the questions they asked. I liked the way Morgan or his team would explain how something would work while showing me mockups.

What did you find most impressive about Polar Notion?

They’ve been great to work with. I’m utterly impressed with their ability to solve this issue. The ability to automate this idiosyncratic, complex process is something that I was doubtful that anyone could do, but their team accomplished it. The website is very simple, but it’s following this really unusual calendar. I would bet that they’re the first people in the world that have been able to capture this in code.

Are there any areas Polar Notion could improve?

The communication and collaboration were good, and it helped them understand what I wanted and let them give me options. I think they could probably have more communication in terms of setting expectations of how the development process flows. They could give me a timeframe of when certain components will be done.

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

Even if you have an extremely odd idea, explain it to them and I think they will be able to tell you whether or not it can be done. Dream boldly and have bold conversations about what you want to do. They can make miracles happen in terms of coding.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Tenrocket builds web and mobile applications for startups in 10 business days. My name is Chris Turner, and I am the founder and CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Polar Notion?

We employ freelancers and established development shops to match them with the startups which reach out to us in need of applications. Our job is to manage projects and guide their direction. We reassure the developers that the client will pay for the service, and also reassure the client that the developer has solid skills, communication abilities, and that they won't disappear in the middle of the process. Polar Notion is one of the developers in our network.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Polar Notion has developed several applications for our clients. We have also used them for ourselves on one occasion, for building the 10rocket website. We took our own medicine and decided to build our website in 10 days. We'd had tremendous success with Polar Notion, and they were also a local firm in Atlanta. It was nice to speak in-person to the team. Morgan Lopes, one of their founding members, was the first developer from Polar Notion which we onboarded when we decided to build our network.

Our site was built using Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, basic HTML, and CSS. It has an administrative dashboard for managing our clients, Stripe payment functionalities, as well as a built-in bank authentication service called Plaid. We can create client projects, matching and managing them with the developers on the network. Partners can also sign up to our network using the website.

How did you come to work with Polar Notion?

We posted a job opportunity to join the 10rocket network on a local blog in Atlanta. Morgan responded through an email, and we chatted.

How much have you invested with Polar Notion?

This is confidential. [The regular payment for a 10-day project is $10,000. For our website development, we acted like a normal client for Polar Notion and eliminated our normal commission.]

What is the status of this engagement?

Our website built had a 10-day run plus an additional five days for quality assurance. The development started in July 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We wouldn't have been able to do what we do without the application built by Polar Notion. It has very much streamlined our process, allowing us to eliminate much of the paperwork which typically centered around projects, just by using our website. It's been a night-and-day experience.

How did Polar Notion perform from a project management standpoint?

Polar Notion's team has solid communicators. They provide us detailed daily updates and are always willing to hop on a chat and talk through things. Slack has usually been our preference, but Polar Notion is usually available for calls and texts. We also have some bug-tracking tools set up on the backend.

What did you find most impressive about Polar Notion?

Besides being good developers, Polar Notion has good business sensibilities. They're able to help us think through business solutions, design, and development, instead of being yes-men for building out features. This makes Polar Notion very powerful as a technology partner.

Are there any areas Polar Notion could improve?

No, I have nothing to suggest. The reason for having Polar Notion on our network is that they're one of the best options out there.

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

It's important to set expectations clearly upfront, regarding budget, timing any anything else, eliminating the variability of what can happen in a project as much as possible. We do this at Tenrocket since that is what causes projects to derail. Concepts like scope creep and feature changes which happen along the way can frustrate every side.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Growing Leaders is a nonprofit based in Atlanta, Georgia. We focus on youth and young adult leadership development, both in the US and internationally. We are focused on the K-12 sector, working with schools in providing curriculum for facilitators, teachers, and coaches to use with students and athletes.

I am the operations manager of the organization. I help oversee all our intellectual property, making sure it is delivered to partners in an effective, timely, and useful manner. I also oversee finances.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Polar Notion?

Our curriculum was in book or DVD form. As we were starting to work with larger organizations, delivery became a challenge, as did intellectual property management. When a school wanted to use our curriculum schoolwide, they needed to purchase DVDs for every single teacher, as well as teacher's guides, which was becoming costly. Also, when updating stories in the teacher guides or when we found new video clips, we wanted the ability to provide them in a real-time fashion, and, at the same time, manage our content and keep it secure.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Polar Notion built a web application which allowed facilitators and teachers to log in and access our resources digitally. They could see the teacher's guide, with all of its notes, as well as watch and play videos for students and themselves. We also have an embedded PowerPoint presentation which can be used when working with larger audiences.

We can provide custom content for certain organizations, as well as 12 different Habitudes books, which is the name of our curriculum. Each book has different teaching elements, and they are all available online. Several hundred organizations are using our platform at the moment, with thousands of facilitators overall, both in the US and worldwide.

For our particular build, we worked with three different people from Polar Notion's team. They have a great cadence in entering us into the conversation through general guidelines and without drilling down too much on specifics. They can guide us through the scope of a project and make sure that our wishes for the end results are heard. Polar Notion will bring in expertise on user functions regarding color schemes, button shapes, and so on, but they also bring in technology knowledge. Polar Notion has made recommendations for specific technologies in order to account for our bandwidth, for example. It's great working with them, knowing that Polar Notion has our best interests in mind and that they will provide a functional product.

Polar Notion has helped us fix WordPress sites for other products, and I believe that Ruby on Rails was used for our main platform.

How did you come to work with Polar Notion?

Polar Notion was the sole vendor involved for the Habitudes online project, which is the platform I mentioned. They were referred to me by some friends I've known growing up.

For the new website and two phone apps being developed now, we preferred Polar Notion because of our prior experience, but we did reach out to four other vendors at the same time, in order to have more bids for the project. Polar Notion remained at the top throughout because of their expertise and capability. Beyond knowledge, they can provide useful solutions. Cost-wise, Polar Notion is also very competitive. They have a great mindset behind how the platform is to be built. They came in under budget intentionally, so that, as we built further iterations, we could stay within our scope, and not blow everything on the first swing.

How much have you invested with Polar Notion?

The cost of Polar Notion's work on our first project was between $50,000 and $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Polar Notion in March 2015 for the first project, and had a short turnaround, delivering the first version in April or May. We kept adding new features to the website and reformatted as we grew. We knew that we would solve a problem, but didn't know if we'd be able to capitalize on it and transform it into something as big as it eventually became.

We are about to move forward on a much larger project, building another website and two different mobile apps.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Increased revenue is one thing we've been noticing after the launch of the platform. It's an important metric for us since we've created a whole new line item.

How did Polar Notion perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the things we've appreciated about Polar Notion is that they're local to us, so we've been able to have many in-person meetings. We also collaborated through phone calls, Dropbox, and Slack. Our team has adopted best practices from Polar Notion and have used them for our partners. They're timely, give us regular email updates, and never made us reach out to them. Polar Notion has a proactive team, which puts me at ease. Everything was turned in on time, and I was kept up-to-date throughout the project.

What did you find most impressive about Polar Notion?

For me, communication is everything, and I've found Polar Notion's approach to be respectful and helpful without being too technical. Their work and friendliness as an organization are incredible, but I've also enjoyed Polar Notion's expertise. The sky is the limit when it comes to web application, and they made us feel that anything could be done. Polar Notion brought in best practices knowledge based on other products that they developed, and they constantly researched new ideas.

Our new project was kicked-off partly because one of Polar Notion's principals showed me an app which looked like the phone version of a comic book. It was the exact thing we'd mentioned as being a pain point for us, and it kick-started the idea of using the concept in our context.

Are there any areas Polar Notion could improve?

I have not run into anything which made me wish that Polar Notion had additional abilities, either in terms of expertise or communication.

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

Come to the conversation with an idea in mind for the problem to be solved, and allow Polar Notion to generate approaches and best practices. Also, clients need to trust their cadence with the planning, and not go too far, too fast and have to spend additional money rebuilding or adjusting things which could have been done right from the beginning. Polar Notion has some great analogies for making us understand the roadmap, and they never tried to push anything on us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a co-founder of a company called Aggregate Law.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Polar Notion?

We were looking for Polar Notion to develop a legal services web application. What we were trying to do was build a site that would connect law firms, practicing attorneys, and in-house legal departments with project attorneys on an on-demand basis. We worked with Polar Notion to develop the app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

My partner was the one who had the initial interactions with Polar Notion. I was still involved with the process, but as far as the technical types of programs my partner may know better. They did everything. We met and had an initial meeting with them about the scope of work, setting forth everything we were looking to do. Polar Notion took our notes and created an outline of what we were looking for. We agreed on that, and they started building it. The process went relatively quickly, agreeing that they would build it over a two-week period.

We did mock-ups of particular features and page designs we were looking for. There was back and forth with Polar Notion about our style. They asked, "Does this feel right? How do you like this image?" They worked on a similar project before, and so they brought that knowledge and expertise in helping us shape our site. They built the site, we tested it, and they went in and made revisions to the site based on what we found. Since then, we’ve had a fully operational website and an ongoing relationship with them to help us maintain and tweak it. We’ve made functional improvements to it.

Our primary point of contact with Polar Notion has been with Morgan Lopes [Developer, Polar Notion], along with other members of their team as well.

How did you come to work with Polar Notion?

We didn’t get directly introduced to Polar Notion. There was another intermediary company that connected businesses with developers, and they made the connection for us to Polar Notion.

How much have you invested with Polar Notion?

The initial scope of work was under $10,000. Since then we’ve added some new features, making the total amount currently over $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We initially met with Polar Notion and started the project in September 2015. It was really quick; the first live version was operational within a few weeks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

What was helpful in dealing with Polar Notion was that they’ve been patient throughout the process. We had no expertise about any of this. They did a pretty good job of communicating the technical knowledge into lay terms. I felt like they’ve been a real partner for us in developing this. Polar Notion took our ideas and ran with them. I don’t feel like it’s just their idea or our idea—it was definitely a team effort.

How did Polar Notion perform from a project management standpoint?

There were bugs, but that’s typical. I wouldn’t say there was anything atypical about it. Even coming from my profession, it was a tough thing to get used to. There are going to be bugs to work out because it’s not going to be perfect. They’ve been responsive about fixing anything that’s been brought to mind.

What did you find most impressive about Polar Notion?

They’ve been pretty giving with their time; in other words, I don’t feel like we’ve been nickel-and-dimed at all with them. We paid for certain services, and I feel like they’ve provided gratuitously in other services.

Are there any areas Polar Notion could improve?

As far as improvement goes, the only thing I would mention is response time. I know they work on multiple projects and are certainly not captive developers. But at times, it’s been tough to get a quick response when we needed one.

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

Set expectations and timeframes on the outset. Explain how are you going to work and how you normally work. Because they work with multiple clients, they may not respond right away. For lay clients who are coming into it, bugs are normal to expect. It’s not going to be perfect right away. It’s a work in progress. We figure out where the flaws are so they can work to fix them, and that’s perfectly normal. They could communicate more about how they and the industry work, because the people using them may not necessarily be familiar with that process.