Lakeview Labs

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder of a subscription media company. We're travel writers and photographers that create expert quality itineraries that help people explore their city.

For what projects/services did your company hire Lakeview Labs?

Prior to working with Lakeview Labs, we published our content on a simple wordpress website and were looking to create a mobile app that included new features.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to create a mobile app that helped our users find relevant content faster and create a user experience that centered around a modern map interface that allowed o consume our content easier.

How did you select Lakeview Labs?

We originally worked with a differetn off-shore team which we quickly realized was not going to work. Communication was difficult and the quality of work was not sufficient.

We then met with the Lakeview Labs team and immediately connected on the broader vision and found them to be excellent partners.

Describe the project in detail.

We engaged Lakeview Labs to help primarily on building the mobile application. The backend development and design work were done in-house. We had a series of discussion outlining the scope and how our teams would work together.

We setup project management environments to keep track of progress and be in constant communication.

What was the team composition?

We worked with two individuals on Lakeview Labs team. A mobile application developer and a project manager.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were incredibly happy with Lakeview Labs and encourage anyone working to develop a mobile app to work with them.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We used Slack and Trello to manage communications between the teams. It worked well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were really thoughtful and detailed oriented when it came to developing the application. They often raised issues and other items to address that we weren't considering before.

They were genuinely invested in the success of our app and they became trusted partners during the process.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nope

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Senior Director of Marketing at Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE), we are a nonprofit dedicated to funding patient-focused research to find a cure for epilepsy.

For what projects/services did your company hire Lakeview Labs?

We engaged Lakeview Labs to helps us create and manage the ongoing maintenance of our mobile app which allies us to stay engaged with our community. The app hosts epilepsy research news, and allows us to "push out" recent discoveries to our users.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to develop the app, ensure the push function worked, and was seamlessly integrated within Wordpress for easy management.

How did you select this vendor?

We sent out an RFP to several vendors, evaluated their capabilities, and selected Lakeview Labs because they were nimble, flexible, and had deep experience in developing and managing mobile apps.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we selected the vendor, we had several meetings to discuss our needs, our expectations on content, and timing to deliver in-market. The vendor was responsible for creating against our requirements, highlighting any issues that we hadn't considered that could be barriers to creating an app that met/exceeded our expectations. Lakeview Labs did an excellent of staying in communication, highlighting applications we hadn't thought of, and getting us to the final product.

What was the team composition?

The team consisted of a project manager and developer who worked closely with our senior manager, digital marketing. Our key contact was the project manager/owner, who met with us weekly.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Within the first two months of launch, our mobile app downloads actually beat expectations, which was incredible since we had spent little money on marketing. Feedback has been quite positive on both the app as a concept and in the execution.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had and continue to have easy access to the team. Even now, while we are in maintenance mode, we have a few issues with the Apple side of the equation which Lakeview Labs has been quick to help us resolve.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Lakeview Labs is nimble and flexible. I have found them to be very responsive to questions throughout the process.

Are there any areas for improvement?

n/a

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder and CEO of the Little Nugget app, a baby photo and milestone app that allows parents to create digital journals of their children.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lakeview Labs?

I needed to develop an MVP of my app idea to test its potential in the app store.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I provided Lakeview with some basic wireframes and a hypothesis of what I thought the MVP should look like. Their team collaborated with me, providing guidance and insight on what types of features were necessary in order to achieve my objectives within a set budget.

Following the conceptualization phase, they developed the UX, frontend, and backend of the app for iOS and launched it in the app store. Key features included individual profiles that allowed parents to create sub-profiles for each of their children. They also built in capabilities that allowed users to customize photos with text and artwork layers.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Patrick O'Brien (CEO, Lakeview Labs) and two developers on the frontend and backend.

How did you come to work with Lakeview Labs?

I created a post on the message board of 1871 Chicago's website and talked to many developers who had reached out before choosing to work with Lakeview Labs.

Unlike other vendors, Patrick wasn't willing to just do the work and send me the bill—he genuinely cared about the success of the app itself. He asked me great questions and played devil's advocate when it came to my hypothesis of the MVP I had envisioned.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent about $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started going over strategy in August 2015, kicking off development in October that year. We launched the app in December 2016, and they maintained the app through August 2017.

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

For an MVP, their team developed a very high-quality product. Within the first six months of launching, the app appeared in the top 20 list of paid photo and video apps in the app store. Overall, user feedback has been great.

While the app experienced a number of bugs initially, their team was quick to fix them.

How did Lakeview Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

I talked to their team twice a week on the phone and almost every day through Slack. They were very responsive throughout the engagement.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Acting like a true partner, Patrick was very invested in my business succeeding. For that reason, he asked tough questions to make sure we were always moving in the right direction.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Once the app was officially launched in the app store and we were in maintenance mode, there were slight delays in getting bugs fixed in a timely manner. That's the only element that could've been improved.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and managing member of Octothorpe Plus. We sell a white-label mobile app plugin that allows brands and businesses with physical locations to reward on-premise consumers for taking and sharing branded selfies to social media.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lakeview Labs?

The previous development team missed multiple deadlines and eventually delivered unusable code. I had impatient clients waiting for my product and needed a team that could quickly standup a stable version. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first goal was to develop the product using what workable code was left from the previous developers. After the product went live and my customers were happy, the second goal was to sit down with the CEO and review the product features going forward and then we initiated a new design phase to improve UX.

What is the team composition?

The team has four people including the CEO, who acts as project manager. I talk to everyone directly, especially the developers when I have urgent questions.

How did you come to work with Lakeview Labs?

I found them on Clutch during an online search and reviewed their profile and website. Their portfolio and the CEO’s candor both impressed me.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Work started in June 2017 and is ongoing.

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

The team excels at strategizing workflows for an MVP, identifying what’s urgent and what can be done later. Lakeview also helps analyze the market as we move forward with development ideas. To that end, they modernized the product with updated design language to enhance the 2-year-old program.

How did Lakeview Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

I’m in touch with the team daily through Slack and texts. We have 30–60-minute meetings every Wednesday when developers ask questions and review updates. The CEO and I meet for 15–20 minutes afterward to discuss top-level concerns.

Lakeview sticks to deadlines and budgets. Surprisingly, they’ve cautioned against features my clients have recommended, arguing that it’s not worth the money. While it’s unusual for a development team to not want more money, their attitude impresses me greatly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their wealth of knowledge is quite beneficial. The team has a lot of experience in the location and photo spaces, which are integral to the product’s photography functions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO and founder of Checkli. We're a SAS software company that has a checklist application.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lakeview Labs?

We wanted to develop a mobile app to work in unison with our web application. We wanted a clean tool that also included a few unique features to set us apart from our competitors.

What was the scope of their involvement?

As a startup, I wanted to test our app on the iOS platform to ensure success before investing in an Android version. I created some basic wireframe and design mockups, and their developers used these to create our iOS app.

The development involved a number of challenges. For one, the application allows users to sign up with preexisting, third-party accounts, be it Google, Facebook, or email. We also wanted our app to help both consumers and businesses, so we made it easy for businesses to upload branded checklist templates that users can easily download and use. If you’re taking a trip to Italy, for example, you can download a checklist created by a reliable travel agency.

Lakeview Labs' team also worked alongside our web app developer to ensure the two platforms worked in sync. Any changes a user makes on one platform reflect automatically on the other.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a team of two or three individuals.

How did you come to work with Lakeview Labs?

We met at a networking event in Chicago. I hired them early on to work on our web application, but we eventually handed this over to our in-house developer. I reached out to them with our mobile project and they provided a detailed summary of their process and cost estimates. I was satisfied with their brief, so we decided to move forward.

How much have you invested with them?

Between $10,000–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2015 and our relationship is ongoing. Lakeview Labs is my first choice for the follow-up Android development.

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

We’re still in the early startup phase, but we have a rapidly growing number of memberships. Users find the app easy to use. This is key in the competitive online marketplace, and we regularly receive feedback that we’re one of the easiest options available for making checklists.

Bug reports are extremely low, though Lakeview Labs receives an email alert and responds immediately if any issues arise.

How did Lakeview Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through Slack and they’re highly responsive, addressing any concerns within the hour. We used Trello during the beginning of the project, but we now largely work through our own checklist application.

One of the things I like about them is their independence. I send them a list of tasks through Checkli and they accomplish every one to perfection within two or three days. I don’t need to hold their hand through the development process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

As a small agency, they don’t have the same overhead costs as their larger competitors. They work remotely instead of investing in a central office space, and this allows them to offer the same quality as larger firms, but at a significantly cheaper rate. On top of that, they offer better customer service.

They’re excellent communicators and bring fresh ideas to the development process. Their knowledge of mobile applications made my life easier. I could explain a component I wanted to include and their team knew exactly how to execute it.

I would hire them again and again, given the opportunities.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I'm a big advocate of transparency, which I think every vendor could improve upon. Understanding how my billed hours are being spent is crucial.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

inRentive was a real estate data company that dealt with real estate rental listings. We were working on making the apartment renting process easier and less expensive, not only for consumers but also for the building and management companies involved. It’s now defunct. I was the chief technology officer. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Lakeview Labs?

We hired them to build an iOS application that was an extension of our platform. We needed a way to capture, organize, and store photos of apartments in a way that was user-friendly for apartment building staff. It was a way for people to manage the multimedia content of the market portion of data that they had in the full platform. We talked about building an Android version, but we never got that far. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The whole team was made up of myself, doing project management and design work; Patrick [CEO, Lakeview Labs], doing project management and overseeing his developer; and the iOS developer himself. He went through two iOS developers. We started out with one, and Patrick switched us to a more experienced iOS developer early on because the first developer discovered he was out of his depth with the project.

How did you come to work with Lakeview Labs?

Our company was in a startup accelerator when we did this project. We were getting referrals from contacts in the accelerator, and Patrick was one of those referrals. We had gotten one or two other quotes from other people (whether they were individuals or teams, I don’t remember), and he was the third quote out of three. The deciding factor was competitive pricing, but also Patrick’s attentiveness. He was focused on the project proposal, and I couldn’t really say that to any great degree with anyone else.

What is the status of this engagement?

It was for about two or three months in 2014. 

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

We got what we needed, stayed on budget, and stuck within our timeframe. It allowed us to get an initial version out to our customers for validation as quickly as possible, without too many bells and whistles.

They built it to stack, so the app functioned and worked the way that we’d dreamed that it would. It needed to sit inside a very specific Workbook and onboarding process that we had designed for our customers, and it achieved the goals that we set. I couldn’t really tell you about any financial success because the company started experiencing financial troubles of its own right after that app was finished. We never really got it into the hands of customers for any extensive amount of time. All the management of the company was very pleased: a subsequent company that one of the co-founders started after inRentive used Patrick as well for the project since she was pleased with what he did for inRentive.

How did Lakeview Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

The inRentive project was on Skype, so we had a couple of groups going there. That was the primary communication outside of weekly calls. Periodically, they would come into the office. Patrick was here in Chicago, but the developer was in California. Whenever he was in town, they would both come over, and we would do an assessment and talk about how things were going. He made sure that we got face time.

What did you find most impressive about Lakeview Labs?

The chief thing is their consistency. Patrick is very dedicated to his methodology of how he goes about scoping a project and managing it, so that's really nice. Whatever the meeting schedule would be, he's very disciplined about making sure that they happen and that all the people involved, from management on the client side all the way down to the most junior developers working on his side, had their chance to talk about if they're getting blocked by anything. All that gets communicated, and it's all out there in the open on a regular basis.

Are there any areas Lakeview Labs could improve?

When we first started working with Patrick, he had just started this development shop, so things were pretty scrappy and coming together. That would be the only potential negative. As a startup person myself, I know that it's not a negative; it's just a fact of life when you're starting out. Having worked with him then and knowing how he has worked on subsequent projects—because every now and then he'll look to bring me in on a project because I can contribute some design work as a contractor myself—I know he's gotten a lot more polished since then. That would be the only criticism, but take it as a very light criticism of a company just starting out. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of a mobile-based educational platform. Our solution helps people learn all the intricacies and nuances of home selling in a quick and convenient manner. It teaches them the pitfalls and major mistakes that people typically make in the process of home selling. However, it’s not a platform for selling a home. It is more of a resource, a tool, that helps you make the right decision when trying to buy a home for the first time. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lakeview Labs helped us with the design and product development of our app and then the production of our commercial website. The site is simple and includes a link to the App Store. Initially, we spent a lot of time doing customer research. Lakeview Labs was involved in some of the early designs that we used to conduct customer interviews. The actual product development slowly started in late 2015. We ramped up the work as we clarified and improved our design in the second quarter of 2016, and we launched in July [2016]. Lakeview Labs now provides support for the product, managing issues or failures.

I believe there are 4 engineers who are involved in backend and frontend work. I only interact with a couple of them.

How much have you invested with Lakeview Labs?

So far, I have spent at least $35,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement started in the summer of 2015, probably in August. We're currently monitoring the success of the iOS launch and preparing for the development of its Android counterpart. We expect Lakeview to have no problem replicating it for use on other devices. 

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

I would say we have seen moderate success so far. Currently, the app is only for iOS devices, but more features will be added in the future. For the next few months, we have metrics to hit in terms of customer acquisition, and then we will have a better picture in terms of what our product development roadmap will look like for 2017. So far, we know it is going to include the addition of a few features, including a functional version for Android. Lakeview Labs is going to be an integral part going forward since they built the iOS version.

They are also good at marketing. Starting this year, they are going to focus on selling that side of the work, too. Patrick was instrumental in helping me with our entire launch plan. They have a good handle on the various social media platforms and how to leverage them for news, engagement, and revenue generation.

How did Lakeview Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Pivotal Tracker mostly, but we also use Slack and Google Hangouts and have in-person meetings. These different tools have made it easier to keep track of issues and monitor progress. They've always been responsive to questions or concerns we levy and we can feel comfortable calling or emailing them at any time. 

What did you find most impressive about Lakeview Labs?

Lakeview is an Agile shop. They have a pretty good, lean business model that keeps their costs in check. That, in turn, keeps costs in check with their clients. I see a lot of growth for them, especially in the Chicago market, which still does not have many mature development agencies. Lakeview Labs is a pretty strong player when it comes to balancing cost with expertise.

Are there any areas Lakeview Labs could improve?

Not really, though I do wish they would get some bigger contracts that will allow them to grow.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our aim is to create a matching service between people looking to learn tennis and people that want to instruct. Through our software, we handle everything from scheduling lessons, making payments, to posting reviews. We're based in Chicago, Illinois. I am the founder of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lakeview Labs?

We needed expertise for managing developers and strategizing our online presence. Because our business was going to be technology-based, we needed to ensure we were positioned well for growth. I knew very little about this area, so it was important to partner with a company that had the necessary expertise.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lakeview Labs' team has provided coaching and created a technical roadmap for our group. We have an internal team in charge of development.

How did you come to work with Lakeview Labs?

I met Lakeview Labs' principal at a startup event in Chicago. I did some research and discovered that he has expertise in not only managing a team of developers but also in the strategy around e-commerce businesses. He has a vast background with many success stories, so I knew that Lakeview Labs would be able to elevate our company to the next level. I also researched other candidates, but meeting Lakeview Labs' team in person seemed much more useful than looking for developers online.

How much have you invested with Lakeview Labs?

The cost of Lakeview Labs' work has been around $10,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

I initially started my conversation with Lakeview Labs 2-years ago. It was for a different website with a similar purpose to the current one. We started the current project at the end of 2015.

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

Lakeview Labs has created an end-user roadmap that has allowed our own clients to reach the point of purchase a lot quicker. The flow and functionality of our website have definitely improved for our users. Visually, it’s easier to understand where to click in order to advance the steps towards the final purchase.

How did Lakeview Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Lakeview Labs' strength sits in project management. Developers speak a different language than managers, but Lakeview Labs has assigned middlemen for ensuring that we're running an organized project and prioritizing the appropriate tasks. This has sped up our process and ensured that we're not moving forward until all issues have been resolved. We used Basecamp initially but we have moved to Trello.

What did you find most impressive about Lakeview Labs?

Lakeview Labs' website makes it easy to understand where their business expertise lies.

Are there any areas Lakeview Labs could improve?

With any vendor, we want to have more affordable prices, but this is a subjective issue. Lakeview Labs has a good rate relative to their work.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Recipe Revolution is a food science company that creates applications for recipe conversions related to dietary restrictions. I am the President & co-founder.

For what projects/services did your company hire Lakeview Labs?

V1 mobile interface design

What were your goals for this project?

To design out our core product into a consumer friendly and usable mobile application.

How did you select this vendor?

Referral/existing relationship with one of the principals.

Describe the project in detail.

Built out screen mocks to implement in our development of the application. New branding/color palette, alpha testing etc. The designs were then integrated into our development for launch.

What was the team composition?

Project manager and a dedicated designer.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

In progress, but the end-user feedback has been positive.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication was spotty and inconvenient at times from our two project leads, but both parties were responsible for that. Some personal life scheduling was made aware to us, so it was not intentional.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their talent sets them apart.

Are there any areas for improvement?

More regularly scheduled meetings.