Damage Control

Two Steps Forward

I did manage to accomplish an enormous amount of work Thursday and Friday morning.  Took a huge chunk out of the remaining list.  It is still very doubtful that we could launch by end of Sept, but I did an amazing job of closing the gap.  Mostly it happened because I wrote a bunch of tasks down on a whiteboard, drew lines between them...and then just sort of sent myself loose in the code and worked on all of them at the same time.  Not the sort of trick I can do in my day job, but I'll keep it in my back pocket.

Two Steps Back

Unfortunately I then discovered that the HTTPS cert that I'm paying for doesnt work on older android phones, so I'm fucked.  That alone could cost me an entire day.  Or more.  The only way to fix this without a lot of work is to convince the service I paid to sign with an older cert.

I Told You So

We've had a legal problem brewing for a year.  One of the other founders really liked this person that I'll call Sheila (after the Tank in Red vs Blue).  The founder thinks Sheila is a big deal in the industry.  To us she would be a marketing person.  I don't have the ability to verify how big of a deal she is.  I do know that a year ago Sheila thought her marketing impact would be too big to measure.  She wouldn't accept anything based on commissions because the people she told were going to tell other people.  She expected a cut of the profits.  We started working with her without anything in writing.

I've been telling this other founder that this is a major problem, but the other founder didn't believe me.

Fast forward to recently...this other founder and Sheila have sort of been working on some marketing shit where Sheila promotes us.  Nothing really explicit in writing of course.  And then Sheila went off and started this campaign offering our potential customers 6 months free.  Without really getting our consent first.  Fun fact:  we currently cannot offer 6 months free.  Implementing a coupon code system would take up valuable time that should be spent on thinks like getting SSL working, preventing injection attacks, preemptive database fixes, devices testing, adjusting the layouts for small screens...

So.  After all of us getting on a call, it turns out the damage is done.  The unauthorized promotion ran to its end.  Fortunately, even though a "huge" amount of people (5 or 6) showed some interest, no one has tried to take up the offer.  Because of the way it was structured, we will be in the clear in a few days.  Our official plan is to just hope that no one takes the 6-months-free deal, and if that falls through, I am in charge of dealing with it.

On the bright side, Sheila agreed to stop doing anything for us unless we have something in writing.  So that is a huge win.

Also this other founder feels bad for ignoring me for so long when it turns out they were so incredibly wrong.  Sadly mere vindication does not exactly make it any easier to implement a coupon code system from scratch.

Aaaaand now this other founder is bitching at me because I didn't sound friendly enough on the call with Sheila;  apparently I sounded like I was annoyed about something....