A (Failed) Launch Day

Grit / [ɡrɪt] / courage and resolve; strength of character.

(aka tough times ain’t quit and we ain’t quit)

In psychology, grit is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal. This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization.

Everything was going fine … until it was not. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were having our first shoot and taking pictures of the most stunning outfits. Everyone, including myself was so excited and eagerly anticipating launch day. August 22nd. The countdown was on. We started doing some pre launch marketing initiatives and I started interviewing for some new team members and doing some more pitches. The developers were getting on fine, or so I thought, and I was having weekly catchups with them to monitor their progress.

And then 7 days before we were due to go live, I tested the end to end process of the website. And it seemingly all came tumbling down. There were issues I hadn’t seen or picked up on before. All new and completely unexpected. Basic functionalities weren’t working. We spent the last couple of days fixing It. But on Friday 21st I tested It again. Nothing. The systems were still failing. Basically the front end of the website wasn’t talking to the backend and so customers would not be able to complete an end to end transaction. Then one of the developers said “I don’t think we can launch on August 22nd. Maybe another week or two to fix all the issues you found and extensively test them.” I got told that the day before launch.

I smiled. If there is one thing I’ve come to learn about myself on this journey — it’s that I have GRIT. That may just be what separates the wheat from the chaffs in entrepreneurs. Those who would accept things as they are or those that would will things into being. I would be the latter. I strongly live by the phrase “the best way to predict the future is to create it” and although I couldn’t ‘create’ anything quite literally at that point because I couldn’t code or debug the issues, I would find a way. If there is one thing about me — I will ALWAYS find a way. It would be this same grit that would deep dive into my “executionist” default to find a solution to this problem. So after taking a walk to clear my head, I reached out to a friend who works as a developer. I called him and told him I needed his help urgently to get to launch in 24 hours. He said it was going to cost me. I said I have money, just give me your time. (In fact I didn’t have the money, but money is always easier to get than time. I also live by Richards Branson’s quote — say yes and figure out how to do it later).

And so all of us were up all Friday night debugging and fixing the issues we could find. In web development, I’m finding that you’re never just fixing one thing. You’re fixing 1. 1(a). 1(a)i. 1(a)ii. 1(a)iii. 1(b). 1(b)i. And so on and therefore in reality everything takes longer than you would think. And as a non technical founder, it drove me crazy. I’m not as fussed about the process as I am result. Slow progress is still progress. I’m patient with the process but impatient with results. So not seeing results whilst acknowledging that progress was being made was a catch 22 that I was very uncomfortable to sit with. After getting maybe two hours of sleep, launch day was upon us and everyone on instagram got excited and started posting it to their stories. My heart was racing and I was anxious all through. I tried to keep it together, posting a sneak peek video on our instagram at 8am still in high hopes that we’d launch relatively soon and hoping I won’t have to put up a dreaded post of “We’re sorry to say… ” closer to the end of the day. I asked my friend if it could get done by the end of the day and he was mostly confident. Mostly. At this point I was still anxious but relatively cool headed. I didn’t care so much about the embarrassment but it was important for me to do everything I could to get it up. I have an obligation to do my best. To always do my best all the time. That is my default and there was no letting up. I was running on 2 hours of sleep, cramps and water but the game is the game and only the paranoid survive. Whether we launched at 8am or at 11:59pm, as long as it was August 22nd I would be happy.

But time couldn’t have gone any faster. All of my existing remote developers quit on me/ “took a break” at about 12pm and I was left with one which was my friend. I had heard horror stories of ghosted developers but seeing it happen right in front of my eyes was like a movie. Pure comedy. Only without the comedy. So my friend and I got on and stayed on Zoom from 12pm for about 18 hours straight. At some point we brought in the developer who actually created the website (he was unavailable before). I was helping out troubleshoot and test as we went along but I wished I could do more. I could not believe how fast time was going. I thought we’d be done at about 4pm. Then 6pm. Then 8pm. At 10.21pm I was starting to panic. I know I said slow progress is progress but we needed to MOVE QUICK. It felt like we were crawling slower than the pace of a tortoise. When we fixed one issue, we found like 3 more that needed fixing. I could not believe my eyes. It was working OK just last week! How could things have gone so wrong so quickly? Why am I just finding out all of this now? I broke down.

At 11.59 my friend said he was sorry but there were still more than a few things to fix, he couldn’t see the extent of all the problems so it could take another day or more. I put it up at about midnight — a version of the “we’re sorry we couldn’t launch today”. My heart was broken but I didn’t have time to sit and sulk. We were up for another 6 hours, me fighting back tears that eventually ended up fighting me. After we got off Zoom I wanted to sleep but my mind was racing so I couldn’t. I was so disappointed in myself. I had been working on this for more than a year only to get to the end goal and see it literally being snatched away from me so abruptly. I was completely blindsided by all the tech issues and I could not believe it. At this point I was running on probably 5 hours of sleep within the last 48 hours but rest would not find me. Having worked at two startups I understood that you have challenges that come and go but this one felt like a land mine I could not get over.

I would later find out that my remote developers didn’t really do anything for 5 weeks straight. They added one or two pretty features to make the site look nicer but they didn’t anything to get the website actually working. What they were showing me all the while was pieces of the pie but never the whole pie because that didn’t exist. I didn’t think that was possible but my friend showed me the developer log where all the changes they had made were and there was barely anything in there.

I prioritised what I absolutely needed to go live and decided we’d sort the rest later. After bringing in the original developer we found some more issues (shock shock) but fixed them a lot quicker which was good. And that’s when I started to see the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

So this is not the sweet ending you were probably hoping for; I know, same. I’d have loved to write this version instead:

“You may know how the story ends already. We made it just in time (literally 11.59pm!!) and everyone loved it. The messages and calls of “this is amazing, I’m so proud of you!” started pouring in. I was happy but couldn’t take it in. I was screaming internally on what had just happened the past week but especially the last 24 hours. Surreal.

And yet, we finally made it. Ideally I wanted to launch in the morning, but in the end I’m grateful we pulled it off.”

But I’m learning that you can do everything right and still get it wrong. That’s life. And that’s OK. I’d live to learn another day.

Launch and iterate was always the plan so there’s still work to do. We haven’t launched yet, and we still have a way to go because of all the issues that wasn’t sorted those 5 weeks, but with me, everyday is Day 1 and I’m always a learner. So I’ve taken from this experience what I can do, what I know now that I didn’t know then, what to do and not to do in a state of crisis, and I’ll reflect on it when difficult moments present itself in future. I’ve audited my mistakes and failures, and like I say, failure is just an acceleration of growth. I have GROWN from this experience, even if the growth has come from pains. Growing pains is part of the journey but all day everyday, we keep moving!