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Wake Up and Smell the Crisis

55 points| jmalter | 13 years ago |founderdating.com | reply

Nick Mehta (LiveOps, Accel) tells the true story of how LiveOps nearly went under and what he didn't realize.

15 comments

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[+] sswaner|13 years ago|reply
Great post. As a LiveOffice customer during the time Nick described (and currently), we had no idea they were that kind of crisis. Had we known, it could have prompted us to move our business elsewhere. The archiving that LiveOffice provides is very important in meeting regulatory requirements. I think a key requirement for a company in this situation is to not lose credibility with your customers. For example, if Nick had called us and said "You always wait to the last minute to pay, can you pay us today? We are running out of cash." it would have immediately prompted us to re-evaluate our contract.
[+] smirksirlot|13 years ago|reply
Great post. Love the point about switching personas to deal with crisis situations. How do you know when to switch though? Sounds like it'll be exhausting to sustain a switch over a long period of time.
[+] nrmehta|13 years ago|reply
That's a good question and thanks for reading it (I was the author). I don't have a magic formula but I have concluded that when I decide to switch, the switch needs to be binary not gradual. I do agree you can't sustain it for long periods of time - I have another blog post in my head on that one related to other crises :)
[+] zabbyz|13 years ago|reply
very insightful article about how to deal with crisis.
[+] jjacobson|13 years ago|reply
I'd be interested in knowing what the tweaks to the billing process were. It's a great and terrifying story.
[+] ealeyner|13 years ago|reply
Super interesting, and quite applicable to any crisis in a company.
[+] mcfazeli|13 years ago|reply
I do think there are some specific considerations for cash flow related crises. They can completely shutdown operations and it's not always straight forward when you need to procure bridge loans to keep the lights on. All in all, it's a great example of switching gears to handle a crisis.
[+] zabbyz|13 years ago|reply
i was thinking the same thing. its really just sound advice on how to 1- admit to yourself there is a crisis, and 2- focus to solve it. definitely taking notes and using these strategies in everyday life!!
[+] larrik|13 years ago|reply
As soon as I saw "Zuora" I knew this would be a disaster...
[+] nrmehta|13 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, the mistakes that happened were completely on our end (actually I take full responsibility as they were under my watch). Zuora was nothing but amazing in supporting us to get us back to health. Luckily, thanks to Zuora and my team, we were able to get things going great. And the team (even post-acquisition) still uses Zuora to this day.