Lucidchart: The Startup Sidekick

I was first introduced to Lucidchart during my last semester of college. I had to create a value stream map (VSM) for my MGT 5730 class. What I thought would be a simple assignment, turned into nearly 2 hours of work. I felt frustrated because my time was spent inefficiently drawing, redrawing, and reorganizing a specific workflow. I expressed this frustration to a classmate and (while laughing) said, “You should have just used Lucid.” So I signed up for a free student account and the next three VSM assignments were a breeze. But after graduation, I completely forgot about Lucidchart.

Fast forward nearly 2 years. I had a new business idea and it required a team of software engineers to build the web platform. To reduce costs, I decided to outsource the coding to a foreign country. Outsourcing overseas has its pros, but it comes with a handful of communication obstacles. Explaining a complex business idea to my team at 5:30 AM over a laggy Skype call was challenging, especially because English was not their first language. So I began writing, drawing, and even using photoshop to better explain my thoughts. My ideas still felt misunderstood and I became frustrated – similar to the frustration I felt while doing the VSM assignment. I knew there had to be a better way to communicate my idea. That’s when I remembered Lucidchart. 

I immediately signed up for a basic account and started mapping out the “complex” workflow. In what felt like minutes, my complex idea was simplified and unmistakably clear. I sent the diagram to my team and from that moment on, communication was smooth. I continued to rearrange, remove, and add pieces to that workflow. I fell in love with the interface and the user experience. Everything related to my business became a diagram and Lucidchart became an intricate part of bringing my idea to life.

Fast forward to today. My idea is now a sophisticated p2p platform called “Lystant” and I’ve been reflecting on what it took to get to this point. Well, I can tell you one thing – it took hundreds of diagrams built with Lucidchart. Without their product, outsourcing overseas would not have been possible. Taking an idea from your mind to paper is one thing; making your idea clear and understandable is another. Lucidchart does that.

So if you’re a student, or a startup, or even a Fortune 500 company and you haven’t used Lucidchart yet, do yourself a favor and go sign up for an account. All great products deserve praise – so here was mine!

Thanks, Lucidchart.