It's interesting that in the same article they also mention they are hiring for new positions. I can't imagine how this feels for both departing employees, and the ones who remain. I don't know much about the situation, but I am interested in how flash sales staffing requirements differ so much from standard catalog-based eCommerce hiring needs.
I know it just isn't possible in many situations, but transparent support goes a long way in avoiding situations like this. Zendesk has tried this out with fully visible support chat, and it's worked well for them.
It's always interesting when a common theory for an occurrence or a causality is overturned. It reminds us to keep questioning accepted beliefs/axioms/rules.
If that's well known then I wonder if they've actually done an "expected value" of cargo lifted into space by these rockets. For example, 0.9valueofcargolifted - 0.1costofcargoandfallout
Great, level-headed outline of the key steps in this situation. Clear communication seems to be a common theme among people who handle these situations well.
A temp way around this is to enrol in a university for one credit, and then drop out shortly after. You'll have full access while you're an official student.
The most interesting thing is that now she can make company policy changes and people engage in lengthy debates about how revolutionary (or not) each decision is. This seems to be pretty important in positioning her has a strong leader who is willing to do things that haven't been tried before.
What this usually gets used for is hiring sales staff in advance of having the revenue that allows it. Acceleration is really the key thing that this capital is looking to accomplish (in theory).
I think that as the technology (i.e. software, testing, etc.) improves that people expect more reliable product. It makes sense to hold the aircraft to higher standards as they are flown less and less by humans.
I think where this could save more time is if you thought about ways salespeople could close sales easier, since they require signatures so frequently.
If this product is just for me (i.e. the person who installs this extension) then it's only going to save me time. How often does the average Google Apps user need to sign something? And how often does a salesperson require a signature from somebody using Google Apps?
Just was thinking about where the real pain/problem exists here. And by that, I mean that it's important to consider where does the problem occur the most and have the most impact.
Can you provide some more detail on the initial page? Definitely interested in this, and I'm sure quite a few early-stage inside sales teams would be too.
The word "startup" means you're looking at a company that hasn't found its business model (which can scale) yet - at least that's how I interpret it. Important to clarify this first.
As a startup, money should only be spent on making sure that the product and vision are geared towards solving a problem that a lot of people have. If your product isn't solving a problem, then you can spend more of your cash on trying to figure that out in iterations. If a company is iterating in this customer discovery phase then their burn rate should be fairly low.
Once you're convinced that your product resonates with your intended customers (i.e. people have paid you, signed up, or some other KPI has sufficient momentum) then you can start to spend to accelerate marketing and sales in order to "fill the sales funnel". This spending is usually through hires, paid clicks, other advertising and PR.
Spending to accelerate marketing and sales prior to ensuring that your product solves an important problem for a lot of people is a great way to blow through your $1m or more.
In summary, great founders spend their seed money making sure that they have their product aligned with a bit/important problem, then once that is found they spend to accelerate marketing and sales.
I deal with loyalty programs on a daily basis. While they have much more leniency in terms of fraud and security, you still want to know what happened at every interaction with the main balance.
A rollback is dangerous in a loyalty program because when scams happen they become very difficult to trace. I totally agree with the policy of never erasing a monetary debit or credit.