What made you choose to go down the road of an open sourced mold frame?

Honestly, price was a big factor, also the ability to do something unique and fun, and still get something that's really fun to ride.  The price factor also meant that if it turned out to not be so fun to ride, I wouldn't be feeling horrible about it to have to pivot to a more conventional frameset.

Was there back and forth directly with the manufacturer or did you just go onto the website and press ‘buy it now’?

It was all email, from the initial hello, all the way through the purchase process.  I think there were just under 50 emails back and forth?  I had a dedicated person (Carol) who helped me through the whole process. 

It was about a week before I got around to building it.  The build took me 2 days, I guess (probably 3-4 hours each day).  There was a major-ish glitch where LightCarbon offered me a bottom bracket for $10, so I took it, but I didn't pay enough attention, and it turns out they sent me a BB30 bottom bracket (30mm ID), not SRAM DUB (28.99mm).  After a couple of days of me wondering why I sucked so bad at adjusting a front derailleur, I noticed the print on the bottom bracket (BB3047), which told me it was the wrong size.  Took me a few days to source a DUB BB (shout out to Revolution Bicycles in Kingston for having one in stock!).  

Other than that, the only thing I had too much trouble with was the internal routing, which wasn't too horrible (I have one of those magnet and string doohickeys), and I had the wherewithal to get some foam liner for the lines, so it was pretty smooth.  I worked at a bike shop in high school and still remember enough to get by.  Stuff like bleeding brakes isn't too hard after a couple videos, and really, to quote the owner of the shop I worked at in St. Louis (Rich Morris of Maplewood Bicycle), the Hammer's the ultimate tool, the harder you hit it, the more fixed it gets .... wait, that's the wrong quote >>> bikes haven't really gotten that complicated, some of the materials are just different now ;-) and that was in 1990 when taiwanese factories were trying to get their heads around 1-1/8" (dia-comp aheadset) and 1-1/4" (Gary Fisher) head tubes, and screwing up the machining left and right (Some things never change?)

Any strange noises coming from the frame lately?

I overtightened the headset and a little squeak when turned more than 20 degrees?  Also, I was lazy and didn't put the sound deadening foam in the handlebar/stem, so that will rattle a bit untill I get annoyed enough that I'm willing to re-bleed my brakes to make it go away :)

Anything you think they could have done better with the build quality?

Clear coat ... I even offered to pay for it, but they were strong in the ways of ignoring questions with requests they didn't want to accommodate!  Ultimately, I am really happy with the apparent quality of the frame.  I didn't scope it or anything, but I didn't notice any overspray on and of the bearing surfaces, and all the threads (except the rear derailleur hanger) were super-clean. they didn't face the caliper mounts, but my understanding is most domestic brands don't do that on even their highest end bike frames, so ...