Product decisions in time of crisis

Reading this article from Casey gave me mostly unpleasant flashbacks to the mid-March 2020, the early days of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown in the US. (It’s not you, Casey… it’s me.)

We did good at Wyndy (on-demand babysitters), but it was tough. I cannot speak to specifics, but tough, bold decisions were made quickly with “worst possible scenarios” about when families would need sitters again.

But even in our situation, there were people who couldn’t function without sitters, most notably healthcare personnel. We (society) needed them, and they needed us (childcare). So we moved as fast as possible and as thoughtfully as possible to put in place a special program into place.

These were the early days of the pandemic. This was still a time where we weren’t completely sure if transmission occurred both via touch and aerosols.

We added an advisor, Ellen Eaton, Assistant Professor in the UAB Division of Infectious Diseases. We crafted communications carefully with executive sign-off. We removed cancellations fees and other penalties that, in normal times helped prevent poor user experiences for both the parents and the babysitters.

We found ourselves, at times, discouraging using the Wyndy app (e.g. date nights in April 2020) for the sake of caution.

Anyhow… this article from Casey make me feel less alone.

Highlights & Notes:

• In wartime, you’re not hiring, you don’t have time to train or coach, and you make more top down decisions.

• When the downside is unknown and potentially disastrous, as Nassim Taleb would say, the only rational reaction is over-reaction.

• His response was basically, “Dude, you do ALL of it.” We could figure out which one mattered the most after we’re successful.

• We fired every bullet we had at the pandemic problem. We did not prioritize. It didn’t matter how much effort each activity was. We were going to do it all, and do it fast. We released things that would not meet our normal quality bar, because the only thing better than releasing these features for creators today would have been releasing them yesterday.

  • Note: Truly one of the few times where “Move fast and break things” is still permissible.

• You can’t do an experiment of results review on those tactics individually. You have to look at the portfolio.

• Quibi did everything to grow for its launch and burned through $100 million. It might have been better to do a smaller launch and iterate on content to find stronger product/market fit. Uber burned through billions for many years to try to both accelerate the size of their market and their market share within it, and it’s almost a $100 billion company.

  • Note: Love this example, because we’ve all found ourselves in cherry-picked debates with teammates.