COMPANY ARCHIVE / 2015—2019
Landing Lion was a website builder for marketers.
I co-founded the company in Atlanta in 2015. I served as COO and lead engineer. We wanted people to build and test pages without needing a developer for every change.
STARTING THE COMPANY
We learned by building the real thing.
Landing Lion started while I was studying computer science at Georgia Tech. I took a two year break from school to build it. I returned and finished my degree in 2016 while the company was still growing.
Craig McCown built the backend. I built the front end. We had met at Georgia Tech and had already spent years making web products together.
The early versions were rough. We watched people use the product. Then we rebuilt the parts that got in their way.
WHAT WE BUILT
The page was the interface.
People could start with an empty page and build directly on the canvas. They could publish it and test it and understand what visitors did next.
- 01Visual page editor
- 02A/B testing
- 03Attribution
- 04Session playback
- 05Analytics and billing
- 0638 marketing integrations
MY PART
I built the front end and helped run the company.
I built and oversaw the front-end application. I also led six software engineers and three product designers and three digital marketers.
My work moved between engineering and product and operations. I wrote code. I helped set direction. I kept the product team connected with the rest of the company.
ATLANTA / 2017
We joined Techstars and found a tighter rhythm.
We worked from Ponce City Market. We presented at Demo Day at the Tabernacle on October 10.
- 300+
- active users
- 98%
- retention
- 400%
- MRR growth during the program
- ~1000
- total users by November
- 10%
- on paid plans
Photo by Jenni Girtman / Life on Film Photography.
FUNDING AND CUSTOMERS
We raised a $500K founders round in 2018.
Our customers included Cox Enterprises and Cushman & Wakefield and Caterpillar.
Working with larger companies changed what we needed to build. The editor still had to feel simple. The systems behind it had to handle analytics and integrations and account management and billing without making the product harder to use.
WHAT HAPPENED
Landing Lion was acquired in 2019.
That sentence makes the story sound cleaner than it was.
We were young. A lot of it was messy. We built the product while we learned how to build a company.
I learned how to lead a team while still doing the work. I learned how much care it takes to make complicated software feel simple.
That part has stayed with me.