MLK Week
January 17, 2025 (Review of Week
3)
I’m still processing what’s going on on the national stage – I feel like the fact that the 2nd Trump inauguration coincided with MLK day deserves some comment, but I am not equal to the task.
Circumstances at the moment are such that we don’t have any hard deadlines for the moment.
I think it’s important that we all use this comparative slack to refocus on building good muscle memory for process. Let’s try really hard to do things according to plan and on schedule! Huzzah!
Metrics
- Unique Buildings: 5,942 (December, +52 MoM)
- Annual Run Rate: $1.29M (no change MoM)
- Monthly net burn (accrual basis): $100,775 (3-month avg through Dec.)
- Year-to-Last Month net burn (cash basis): $120,533
- 2025 Transaction fees to date: $0
- Outstanding invoices as of today: $128,489 (-$42,900 / -25.03% WoW)
Last Week’s Highlights
- Izzy’s moving quickly on the AI building guesser and demoed the progress thus far for Marc who was blown away. (JB)
- We had multiple conversations to confirm what’s needed for Generic Programs v0. Thank you Jeremy for dissecting what you heard initially for discussion and refinement. (JB)
- A short-term lowlight hiding a long-term highlight: Fly’s service disruption caused churn on the team and disruptive slowdowns for our users, but it exercised our incident response muscle and showed the team’s ability to get to the bottom of obscure system behaviors caused by external systems. (FH)
- This is a this week highlight, but we closed the 2024 books and can now get started on our FY 2024 reporting requirements (EP)
Any missing highlights? Please share in Slack comments.
Crow’s Nest
Looking out for icebergs: What are the risks on the horizon that we’re watching for and navigating around?
François’ List
- Topics from previous weeks are still top of mind (RFP uncertainty, large technical changes needed and on their way). Not repeating myself.
- Fly hiccup: we have often had to select up-and-coming cheaper/scrapier versions of more established product (Almanac vs Notion ; HyperDx vs DataDog ; etc). This gives us more runway and offers bang for the buck, but every once in a while we pay a price. Almanac pulling the plug on us a while back caused churn, last week it was Fly’s cavalier infrastucture change that set us back multiple days of work. Silver lining: these smaller solutions are often hungry for our business and bend over backwards to earn our business.
Jason’s List
- I’m eager to see how the advanced planned for Generic Programs will impact the end result. I know it’s too soon to tell, but I’m hopeful.
- Which RFPs will come our way? This is going to be on the list for a while.
- When we will actually receive a 2025 contract from Willdan? I fear it won’t be until after the NYC Accelerator RFP is submitted. My main hope is that it’s a straightforward subscription renewal, without any shenanigans trying to change our business model.
- What will learn from the upcoming conversations with Service Providers? Whatever it is, this will probably have a big impact on our revenue and roadmap.
- Figuring out a sustainable sprint planning routine. This week’s release is late due to a confluence of things, but I think it was clear in the retro that we need to make some changes to the routine.
Bomee’s List
- We have a list of things that we need to get done before we start on any RFP work. I’m hopeful that we can get through it all WHILE establishing habits we can depend on for when we do get busy!
- We need to redouble efforts to curb spending that isn’t supported by revenue. We can reassess once we know what RFPs have come through, but for Q1 we need to hold back on spending.
- We’re wobbly right now on release timing and process.
Erika’s List
- Still looking at the onboarding process with Chelsea, the HR consultant from CEN, and how we could improve things like feedback during the onboarding process and delivery of information to new hires. We know this is important, what I am thinking about is making sure we have our updates in place before we start to bring on additional folks.
- Quarterly goals need to come together before the quarter, in general. This is something that will be improved moving forward. Right now, as folks get their work plans updated (you’ll see a message from me in Slack) we can start to compile all the goals in Claude and make sure they ladder up to what we are trying to accomplish.
Marc’s List
- Blindspots around who are users are and what they need still nag me. Jason, Kate and I have a plan to interview ~15 users and prospective users in February to more systematically get a handle on this issue.
On Deck for This Week
Please Leave Feedback
Please note your reaction to this update in the Slack channel. It helps us to know what is resonating, what is unclear, etc. Thanks!
- What are your highlights / lowlights?
- Did we miss a highlight? Something else you want to react to?
Jeremy (Coder) Jan 22nd at 8:32 AM
Who are the Service Providers we’re having conversations with? That sounds exciting.
I’m also curious to see how Generic Programs v0 epic goes. We did similar planning for “Headless CFHF validation” but we pivoted away to different work before we finished it. I’m hopeful this time we’ll get it shipped. :crossed_fingers: