Simple Thread

I’m the manager of electric transmission planning at Dominion Energy. My team is responsible for justifying transmission capital projects. We work closely with a regional transmission organization and regulatory entity to ensure the electric system's reliability.

Due to the volume that we produce and the regulatory nature of our role as a transmission organization, we have to abide by various federal and state-mandated rules and regulations. Therefore, we must have a project management system where we can handle project information, hand it to internal and external stakeholders, and ultimately for regulatory reporting — it’s critical for our daily operations and performance.

In the initial stage, we discussed with Simple Thread our existing tool, which didn’t meet our needs. We walked them through it and came up with high-level ideas on how to design the new cloud-based application. We decided to go through a discovery phase so we wouldn’t replicate what we had. Moreover, we wanted to ensure that it would be a functional and efficient tool for our processes.

We’ve worked with several core people. Justin (Co-Founder) is our main point of contact. He was the first person that approached us; we initially worked with him to develop the scope and the project’s structure. Then, he brought in more team members.

They were working with several of our peer groups, developing products for other engineering groups within the company. We saw some of their work and the UI and applications they developed. We also got great feedback from the other teams.

The whole scope of the project will be between $2 million–$3 million.

We started discussing the project in May 2021. However, we put the project together until early September 2021. We wrapped up the discovery phase in June 2022 and are currently in the development phase.

In the design phase, they created a clickable prototype of the app, developed wireframes, and helped us document our processes and workflows using Miro. Additionally, Simple Threads documented the workflows and circulated them with the users and participants to make changes, so the technology is very user-friendly.

They stick to the schedule and communicate through weekly calls with our team to set up the plan. We go through the progress of the development process and see the demo tool as it’s coming together. We also discuss the next steps, action items, and deliverables for the next meeting. Overall, everything is working smoothly.

Their customer service and responsiveness have been outstanding. They’ve asked great questions without being subject matter experts in the electric transmission business, which is remarkable. Their questions often would generate ideas in our heads to redefine and streamline the process, so they’ve helped us be more efficient. Overall, they’re a fantastic partner.

They don’t have access to our calendar, so coordinating meetings is challenging. Also, they don’t use our data and our company laptop even though we’ve given them access. Although it’s a minor thing, they should get more familiar with our company intranet.

You need to stay engaged. Simple Thread is committed 100%, so you shouldn’t be passive. If both parties give their best, the product will be amazing.

I’m the head of operations at Seasonal Roots; we’re an online farmers market. We specialize in sourcing fresh local produce and artisan goods and distributing them throughout the region.

We wanted to make our website more stable and build new components and features to help our employees and customers.

First, we provided Simple Thread with documentation regarding our original website, which we built six years ago. We also shared a backlog of information that outlined the work we’d done on our website since initially making it. Then, the team went through our existing code and identified some areas for improvement.

We’ve mostly worked with Mike (Senior Software Engineer), Brian (Director of Business Development), and Justin (Co-Founder).

Our previous programmer introduced us to Simple Thread when he left our company. Our CEO had heard of Simple Thread before, so we met with them in person and felt they could help with our development initiatives.

We began working with Simple Thread in July 2019; we’ve wrapped our development initiatives, but the partnership is ongoing.

We’ve been very satisfied with the results Simple Thread has delivered. They’ve significantly improved the speed of our backend reports, which has streamlined our workflow and enabled our employees to work more efficiently.

We’ve mainly managed projects internally, but Simple Thread has consistently delivered results on time and within budget. As with all software projects, there have been some delays, but the team has communicated openly and addressed issues efficiently. They’ve set realistic time estimates and been very transparent regarding progress. We’ve primarily communicated via Slack.

I’ve been most impressed with Simple Thread’s flexibility and dedication to our project. Our business needs have changed significantly throughout our partnership, and they’ve always supported us through potentially catastrophic infrastructure failures. They’ve even responded to critical requests outside regular business hours, which has been helpful. Simple Thread has played a key role in helping our business function.

There was some turnover with developers at the beginning of our partnership. Although it created a learning curve, they were very generous with us.

They’re great communicators, so as long as you express your needs, Simple Thread will provide you with the necessary support.

I’m the innovation manager at Dominion Energy, a solar development company.

We were trying to simplify and improve the way in which we monitor equipment ratings on the electrical transmission system.

Simple Thread is helping us develop a web app that uses a cloud database. The objective of this app is to allow users to interact with the website and manipulate cloud database information to better caption our equipment ratings.

Simple Thread’s team has fluctuated over our engagement. We usually work with 3–4 people from their team, but those resources vary and have included designers and developers. I know that they also have a lot of resources in the backend building the tool.

I don’t know how we originally found them, but they had done other projects for us, and they had a very good reputation for those past projects. Thus, we brought them again for this project.

We started working together around March 2021, and our engagement is ongoing.

What Simple Thread has shown us so far looks amazingly promising. They’ve made great progress very quickly, and we’ve been very impressed with how things have gone. The way they’ve structured the UI is extremely intuitive and easy to use, and the UX is dramatically better than what we had before.

Simple Thread has been very quick and efficient. They’ve been very good at staying in frequent contact and walking us through the progress to ensure everything is coming together as desired. In addition to Figma, which has been very helpful, we’ve used Miro for whiteboarding and taking notes. Additionally, we have a weekly Microsoft Teams call and share plenty of emails between calls.

One of Simple Thread’s most impressive talents is how good they are at designing usable and intuitive apps — they’re very good at understanding how users interact with the tools they create. The UI of our app and the thought process behind it is one of the best parts of our experience with this project. They’re not providing us with an off-the-shelf solution; it is a solution tailored to our needs.

No, they’ve been stellar.

When building a custom tool, it is necessary to be involved in the development process. Be available to answer questions, explain things, and help them build what you need. They’re very good at taking notes, but they need your honest feedback.

I work at our company in the power delivery unity. We handle electrical transmission, distribution, and generation. I work in the transmission organization where we’re focused on physics-based modeling and simulation of the grid, time-series, data analysis of the grid, and data-driven operational support for real time operations.

In general, they’re fulfilling a latent need to address the sustainably of a lot of custom tools that we build internally — specifically web tools. Additionally, they’ve helped us follow through on several ideas that we hadn’t built ourselves yet, spanning several use cases.

In terms of specific projects, they’ve worked on a number of efforts, including an operational planning platform and API that allows engineers in our control room to do high dimensional analysis of different scenarios on the grid. Other efforts include a telescope project, a mobile app development project, and a facility ratings application. All of these tasks require robotic process automation and knowledge of the process management space focused on the performance of teams. In total, they’ve delivered or are delivering six or more distinct digital products.

In the 3–4 years we’ve worked together there have been around eight people we’ve interacted with directly. These peoples’ positions run the gamut from owners and business development resources to members of the design team and developers and project managers.

I met their business development lead through a friend, who told him about the number of tools my organization uses and the help we needed. Our engagement blossomed from that conversation.

We’re approaching the $3–$4 million dollar mark across our six deliverables

We’ve been working together since May 2018.

I built the original platform, and before Simple thread came in, it only had about one user. Now, our entire team uses it, and no one can figure out why they didn’t use it earlier. It’s gotten to point where it’s a running joke about how great it is. We can’t imagine a world without it.

I don’t have any complaints about their project management. Our organization doesn’t move very fast, but there haven’t been any bottlenecks with Simple Thread. If anything, they keep us in check.

I remember working with them for the first time and being scared to hand over control, but we were thoroughly rewarded. Simple Thread knocked it out of the park and have since built a high degree of trust between us. We have a lot of complicated processes, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable handing them over to just anyone.

I can’t think of anything because everything has been amazing. I would ask them if we could double their abilities so we could produce to solutions at once, but that’s all. Honestly, if you doubled their size, then it would change them as a company. I can’t think of anything to really help them with here.

If you’re having cold feet about the collaboration, you can always set up a discovery and design project at first without committing to building what you design. Once you go through the discovery and design, you’ll have so much confidence and consensus around your next steps that deciding to move on to development will be a trivial choice.

I’m the founder and CEO of Magazine Jukebox, Inc., a digital magazine rack for commercial spaces. Users can scan our code, use our technology, and enjoy a nationally known magazine without having to download an app or without providing any personal information.

We wanted Simple Thread to help us produce our product’s MVP because we didn't know how to create the software and code for that. After creating the MVP, we also needed them to help us launch it.

Since our product didn’t exist in the market yet, my wife and I put our product into patent pending. Then, Simple Thread began writing our platform’s code, which would allow for the integration of digital magazines. While building the MVP, they created mock-ups and wireframes so that we could see the flow and functionality of our product. Once they created the demo, they ensured that our platform was operational once it went live.

We’re working with Brian (Director of Business Development), Marie (Delivery Manager), Derek (Senior UI/UX Designer), Robert (Software Engineer), and Drew (Software Engineer). Brian is in charge of liaising between our teams, and Marie ensures that their team is on task. On the other hand, Derek is in charge of the website, and Drew and Robert are in charge of the backend integration. I’ve also had a lot of interactions with the founders of their company.

I found Simple Thread through a gentleman I met in 757 Startup Studios, an ecosystem of founders in Norfolk, Virginia. He gave me a list of 10–15 different businesses, and from there, I got a hold of Brian. I also talked to different companies, but their price wasn’t that competitive and they wanted part ownership in the company. Meanwhile, Simple Thread understood my budget and what I needed.

We’ve spent $175,000.

Our ongoing partnership began in February 2021.

We use Amplitude to show our traction to clients, and Simple Thread has been pivotal to our business and we’re not where we are today without them. They’re also quick to resolve any issues in our project. However, we really haven’t had any major issues. Overall, their team is absolutely trustworthy and incredible. In the future, we’ll potentially move the website to WordPress, and they’ll be able to help us when that time comes.

They have a perfect project management process. I’ve had a pretty strict budget, but Simple Thread has been able to adjust to that and has helped me achieve my goals. Their communication skills are also superior, and they’re good at estimating timelines.

They’ve made it easy for me to understand their work. Furthermore, their honesty and transparency are impressive. More importantly, they allow us to save a lot of time and money, and that’s important for a startup like us.

No. We value them as part of the company.

Establish your plan and understand that everything costs money. After that, reach out and talk to Simple Thread because they’re good at providing estimates. Their team is also good at listening, and they don’t charge you additional costs unless you make a change order.