Our Pivot Inspired by Frustration with Sign Up Genius

In the Fall of 2022 I got an email from my kids' school that had links to seven different Sign Up Genius forms. When I started using SignUpGenius, I was disappointed by the out-dated the interface and frustrated to see so many ads all over the form pages. Schools and youth sports teams use these forms for wholesome purposes like volunteer organizing, game day snacks, and parent-teacher conferences. It was an aha moment for Lome.

My co-founder Eric and I started working full-time on Lome in August 2021. From the start we were convinced that there was an opportunity to build technology tools for families and communities that truly were helpful for daily life. We knew the software that so many parents were using in the workplace could be leveraged for families and non-work relationships to great effect if it was carefully designed and intentionally implemented for the right use cases.

We know how stressful and difficult it can be to manage the day to day chaos of life but we believe there is nearly unbounded promise and potential in a household that's working all together supporting one another in a fabric of mutual knowing, loving relationship. And we have witnessed the beautiful symbiotic relationship between such flourishing families and flourishing communities.

Initially we built Lome as a family organizer - an operating system where one family could make sense and keep track of all of its most important rhythms and routines. Hundreds of families used the platform and loved it - many still use it today. However, the experience I had with SignUp Genius opened our eyes to an even bigger opportunity. So we did what startups do - we pivoted. For a startup, a "pivot" is a change of strategic orientation - sometimes these changes involve massive restructuring of team and product. In our case, the pivot was more subtle. In fact, we still offer our family organizer platform, and our new product direction leveraged everything we'd built to date.

Our pivot was simple - we were going to build a better sign up form experience for the millions who use Sign Up Genius simply because they "have no other option." We then would add functionality from other well known apps like Meal Train, Paperless Post, Evite, and Facebook Groups - so that families and their communities could have an all-in-one app for their needs.

Out of our frustration with older software, we built a next generation sign up and RSVP app for today's communities. Lome sign ups are beautiful and visual, they're intuitive and fast to create, and they're easy to share and respond to via email, text message, QR code, or via any other connected platform.

The pivot is working for us as a company - it generates revenue and is aligned with our initial founding mission. It also is working for our customers - today thousands of families and communities use Lome to organize everything from potlucks to prayer meetings. Eric and I are grateful for that Lome is a tool that is equipping and inspiring so many toward engagement, service, and ultimately, healthier relationships.