After spending >$3M and ~5 years, we will no longer be working on @conveyor. Nobody was fired. Nobody got a pay cut. Nobody failed to raise a Series B. Instead, we set out on a journey together that was made possible by bootstrapping profitably and putting people first. A thread:
Before I dive in, you can read @cnagele’s post on making tough decisions and the lessons learned on the Wildbit blog: wildbit.com/blog/2020/06/2…
First and foremost, I want to thank all the teams that supported us on this wild ride. You gifted us your time, your energy, and your feedback. We learned so much from you all. ❤️
And I especially want to thank our amazing team. @isabanin, @DmitrySabanin, @efedorenko, @jeremypolley @chrisbowler, @thebriankerr, and many others. Chris and I are eternally grateful.
The Innovator's Dilemma played out pretty strongly for us. A mature, thoughtful, experienced product team failed to build a small, scrappy, nimble product. We aimed for perfection when we should have solved one small problem at a time.
The biggest takeaway: we didn't make this decision sooner. We saw early signs that our path forward was too much for our team. We built an incredibly solid, super fast product. But we didn't get the product/market fit we needed to change perceptions and keep pushing through.
The beautiful thing about Wildbit is that we get to make these kinds of decisions, experience these failures, and live to see another day. We never bet the farm. We took a risk, learned a lot, grew a lot, and walked away unscathed.
These challenges aren’t unique to our team. They’re all too common, and yet there aren’t enough people talking about the hard parts of building products. I'm looking forward to sharing our experience with the world.
A core tenant of why we exist is to create a world in which people can be their full selves. To explore new areas of interest without risking their future. Conveyor allowed our team to experiment, to play, to push past personal boundaries. All within the comfort of home.
Since making the decision to stop working on Conveyor, we've started two new projects that have been incredibly fun and rewarding. @peoplefirstjobs is the direct effort of @efedorenko and @chrisbowler, and @isabanin jumped into DMARC Digests (launching publicly tmw!)
I don't know what's next for Conveyor. We'd love to find it a home, but we also know that any transition will need to be seamless. There are more options and innovative ideas for product teams than before, but still not enough. Maybe there’s something we haven’t considered yet.
