Lua

Lua was conceived to fill a market gap in reliable mobile messaging for businesses, which was only text messaging at the time. We saw the need for quick and secure communication on the go, where as the leader Slack, was primarily a desktop solution. Our goal was to be the most consumer friendly mobile-first option, but secure enough for the enterprise. I was the Head of Product and Marketing - leading both the roadmap of the product and the 360 on marketing.

After a couple of years of mild success and limited penetration to the enterprise, I lead the product into a strategic pivot. Through data analysis and user interviews - our happiest and best customers were in healthcare. We developed features that powered their workflow and made their jobs easier. We discovered that putting the patient at the center of care was paramount, and Lua was the glue that held the team together around the patient. We became one of the first dedicated mobile messaging apps to be HIPPA compliant. We were also one of the first to introduce telehealth.

From there we had a meteoric rise to become the top mobile messaging in healthcare, powering hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of users each month. This rating came from leading industry analyst firm Klas Research based on overall product features and customer rankings. No start-up was ever in KLAS rankings and we held that mantle for 2 years until we were acquired by Life Biosciences in 2018.

A core reason we were successful was that we not only interviewed to our customers, but we actually listened. This was a strategic concept from launch. Every customer network had a Lua customer support representative inside their team - so help was always just a simple message away. No other solution offered this level of custom service.

Another reason for our success was the fact we were always mobile first. Our customers relied mostly on their mobile devices and we crafted an experience with mobile always our top priority (which we then continued to the desktop).

We also attributed our successes to a focus on analytics from day one. We had a robust admin portal with numerous ways to slice and dice data about the solution. Admins could easily share metrics on why Lua was working and even help increase adoption.

Finally we pioneered unique features that truly resonated with our users. We allowed healthcare organizations to message patients - this was unheard of in 2015. We then expanded this external communication to include on-demand video messaging without the need for a download. This is still something that isn't easy to accomplish.