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Congratulations! So happy for you. I'm sure others in this community are too. Some Qs: In as competitive a space that Amplitude operates in, what were some de

Congratulations! So happy for you. I'm sure others in this community are too. Some Qs: In as competitive a space that Amplitude operates in, what were some decisions the company took during tough periods or in anticipation of dooms-day scenarios that you think proved invaluable? Consequently, what moments do you think would have killed Amplitude if not for luck or execution or vision or hardwork? What is that unique insight the competition still doesn't get? Thanks.

sskates 5y ago
Overall success or failure rarely comes down to a single decision or single event. It's more about having enough compounding success and avoiding compounding failure. Probably our worst failure was our 2016 outage where we were down for an entire week. I remember thinking we would lose a big portion of our customer base. What we did really well was our outage response and customer communication. We proactively reached out to customers, fully owned the mistake, and were very transparent about what was going on. As a result we didn't churn a single customer! I later heard that some investors passed on our Series B as a result of our outage. Which is so funny to hear that now because it's such a stupid criteria to evaluate a company. It just goes to show how much sheep mentality there is in the investing world. Here's the retro: https://amplitude.com/blog/amplitude-post-mortem https://amplitude.com/blog/amplitude-post-mortem Product/product management is a new buying center in the enterprise. There will be a giant company built around selling to that function.
- raywu 5y ago
  patio11's story on his idempotency issue which led to repeatedly calling customers' customers comes to mind [0]. He personally called all affected customers! [0] https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1405704339969220615?lang=en https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1405704339969220615?lang=...

sskates 5y ago

Overall success or failure rarely comes down to a single decision or single event. It's more about having enough compounding success and avoiding compounding failure. Probably our worst failure was our 2016 outage where we were down for an entire week. I remember thinking we would lose a big portion of our customer base. What we did really well was our outage response and customer communication. We proactively reached out to customers, fully owned the mistake, and were very transparent about what was going on. As a result we didn't churn a single customer! I later heard that some investors passed on our Series B as a result of our outage. Which is so funny to hear that now because it's such a stupid criteria to evaluate a company. It just goes to show how much sheep mentality there is in the investing world. Here's the retro: https://amplitude.com/blog/amplitude-post-mortem https://amplitude.com/blog/amplitude-post-mortem Product/product management is a new buying center in the enterprise. There will be a giant company built around selling to that function.

raywu 5y ago
patio11's story on his idempotency issue which led to repeatedly calling customers' customers comes to mind [0]. He personally called all affected customers! [0] https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1405704339969220615?lang=en https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1405704339969220615?lang=...