Coronavirus update (7) - In Amazon We Trust - March 25, 2020

Hi everyone,

Thank you for answering Lindsay’s questions in the wellness survey. It helps us to understand how this situation is affecting you as a group, and where we should be focusing our attention. Sincerely, thank you for giving us that important insight. We received 43 submissions, and I’ve attached the results so far at the bottom of this post. 

Unfortunately it looks like this quarantine / lockdown is going to be around for at least another month. Premier Legault has closed schools until “at least May 1”. Premier Ford says that kids “won’t be going back to school on April the 6th”. I think these dates have been something like cold water for people who were holding out hope that this would all be over in 2 weeks. I wish it was better news :(

Most of our internal communication so far has been focused on how we as individuals should behave. Staying home, washing hands, socially distancing, etc. As this situation transitions from short term to medium term, I think it’s important for us to address some of the existential fears that I think some of us are struggling with.

How is Vanilla doing?

We’re fortunate, as a SaaS company, to have a stable base of recurring revenue. We’re not running a restaurant or a store, where our daily sales need to hit a certain number or else we run out of money. A good way to think about this is that our new sales fund growth, not keeping the lights on. Customer churn is what would threaten the company’s future, and we have a team of charming individuals whose sole purpose is to prevent that.

We believe that the current situation should make our value proposition stronger, not weaker. With most of the world hiding in their homes and avoiding offices and physical meetings, online collaboration and knowledge sharing are some obvious answers to the question of how businesses should continue to function, remotely. Now more than ever, Vanilla’s message about the importance and value of online communities should resonate with our existing and potential customers. We’re already seeing evidence of that in new leads, quick launches, and in changes that existing customers want to make to their communities to address their newly distributed user base.

Despite the sad consequences for the world, its people, and the global economy, we think that Vanilla is well positioned to weather this storm and protect itself (that means all of us!) from financial harm. We have a strong customer base that we are actively supporting, and a very healthy bank balance to smooth over any unexpected, unforeseen expenses. Things like panic-buying 12 bottles of hand-sanitizer and 12 boxes of Lysol wipes at Amazon’s inflated prices…

Right now, the management team is confident in Vanilla’s short and long term future. We’re trying to be intelligent about where we spend our capital, but hiring is continuing and we’re not anticipating the need to make structural changes to the company. We have tried very hard to budget conservatively throughout our history, which means that we aren’t currently financially vulnerable. March has been our strongest month of the quarter.

How are Vanilla’s people doing?

Most of us seem to prefer seeing other humans on a daily basis. Weird. Working from home presents quite a few challenges and not all of them can really be solved, but just need to be tolerated until we can get back to normal.

Most of us are probably sitting in a guest bedroom on a not-that-great chair, sharing space with a dusty Bowflex, or perhaps camped out at the dinner table trying to ignore children, pets, spouses, or loud neighbours. I’ve complained about this before, but my downstairs neighbour is coping with quarantine by playing loud music on a bluetooth speaker on his patio, starting at 8:00am and ending at about 7:00pm. 

We want to reduce that stress and discomfort a bit, so we invite everyone to expense up to $250 on things for your home office. Maybe a better chair, some noise cancelling headphones, a desk? Maybe just a long stick to fend off unruly kids. It’s probably not enough to build the perfect working environment, but it should get you part of the way there.

There are a couple of guidelines we’d like you to keep in mind as you take advantage of this:

• Limit yourself to sane home office items. Don’t buy a Kindle or a supersoaker.
• Don’t buy anything from a physical store. This isn’t a license to stop social distancing. Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart online, etc are good options.
• If you’re not sure whether something is a good idea, check with Lindsay or your manager.
• Expense these in the usual way. We’re coming up on the end of the month, so it’s a great time.

If you’re looking for some excellent headphones, I strongly recommend Sony WH-1000X M3. These are noise cancelling bluetooth headphones with a built-in microphone. Sound quality is phenomenal, battery life is very good, and they work *amazingly well* for voice calls.

We're thinking about you all every day and trying to find ways to make this situation easier and smoother whenever we can. Thanks for being such good sports about this crappy situation. I know that I probably speak for many of us when I say that I am really looking forward to the day we can go back into the office. Expect a party, thats for sure!