Background: Building Smarter, Not Bigger
Impulse Lab is a fast-growing web AI agency that builds custom applications powered by automation and intelligent tooling. Founded in early 2025, the company operates with a clear vision: stay lean, stay fast, and stay focused on delivering high-value work — not on micromanaging hours.
At the center of that philosophy is CEO and founder Leonard Roussard, who transitioned from a freelance web developer into agency leader. From the beginning, Leonard recognized a key challenge: how do you accurately track and optimize your team’s time without burdening them or compromising agility?
“I want to keep the company small and agile. That means investing in tools that save us time instead of hiring more people.”
That’s where Rize came in.
Before Rize: Manual Tracking and Lost Time
As a freelancer, Leonard had already discovered Rize. He used it not to bill hourly, but to understand where his time actually went — especially since his schedule didn’t follow typical 9-to-5 patterns.
“I was working evenings, weekends, all over the place. I needed to know when I hit my billable hours, and Rize helped me do that without any friction.”
But when Impulse Lab launched, Leonard faced a bigger problem:
How could his growing team track time across multiple client projects without disrupting their flow or requiring them to manually toggle timers?
“If I go to my team and say ‘you have to spend hours setting up a new time tracking app,’ they won’t use it. That’s just reality.”
Other tools had failed Leonard in the past. One app bundled in with a macOS subscription required too much manual setup — and frequently lost hours when someone forgot to restart it.
“Even just clicking resume tracking annoyed people. The byproduct was lost time — a lot of it.”
Rolling Out Rize: Easy Adoption, Zero Setup
When it came time to formalize time tracking across the agency, Rize was the obvious choice.
“It was almost zero setup. I named the project after the GitHub repo, and Rize just figured it out. Even localhost URLs were tagged correctly — I didn’t have to do anything.”
Impulse Lab rolled Rize out to the team with little to no friction. And because Rize runs silently in the background, it didn’t require behavior change from developers already focused on building.
Leonard’s favorite part? He forgot Rize was even running — until he checked back weeks later.
“I installed it and forgot about it for two weeks. When I came back, everything was tracked. I could trust the data completely.”
That trust is critical for a founder looking to build intelligent systems, not processes. Leonard’s vision includes building an internal operating system that links Rize data with other tools like Linear and GitHub for full observability into projects, blockers, and scope creep.
Business Impact: Better Planning, Less Waste
While Leonard admits Impulse Lab is still early in its use of Rize’s full potential, the benefits are already tangible:
- Accurate time logs across all client projects
- Visibility into how long features or internal tools actually take
- Ability to assess scope creep and planning accuracy over time
- Reduction in untracked or “lost” work
“Even now, we use Rize to know: ‘We spent 30 hours on this and got this result.’ That’s powerful when you’re working lean and launching quickly.”
More importantly, Leonard sees Rize as a core pillar of the agency’s future operations — one that will allow him to avoid unnecessary hiring while still scaling output.
“We’re not trying to cut costs. We’re trying to spend more on automation so we don’t have to hire more developers.”
As the agency builds toward integrating Rize into its broader AI workflow and client reporting stack, the long-term value becomes clear: better planning, better decisions, and more reliable delivery.
Why It Matters: Solving the Agency Time-Tracking Problem
Rize solves a fundamental pain for agencies: the mismatch between sold time and actual time spent.
“The biggest issue for service businesses is linking time to work — features, bugs, pull requests. That’s where you lose money, time, and trust if you're not tracking well.”
For Leonard, traditional agency models often fail in the long tail of maintenance and support — where tracking becomes murky and processes break down. Rize fills that gap.
“Maintenance is hard to staff and hard to track. If you don’t know how long a bug took to fix, you can’t price or plan properly.”
Rize ensures that every hour is accounted for, and that team members can stay focused on building — not fiddling with timers or spreadsheets.
Looking Ahead: Deep Integrations, Smart Reporting
Impulse Lab isn’t stopping with passive time tracking. Leonard and his team are working on building AI agents that live inside Linear, automatically pulling time data from Rize to connect issues with time spent — without any manual effort.
“Eventually we’ll link time directly to issues, so clients can see whether we estimated correctly. That will create trust — and help us avoid scope creep.”
This vision highlights a key value of Rize: it’s not just a tracker — it’s an input into smarter business operations.
Final Thoughts from Leonard
“If someone in my shoes asked whether to use Rize, I’d say: absolutely. For agencies, it’s a game-changer. You’ll save time, money, and your team will thank you.”
Ready to modernize your agency's time tracking? Download Rize and start tracking your time automatically today.