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Agenda:
- Executive Stand up
Takeaways:
- Pull all the embroidered couches and disposable couches - NOW
- Contact Zola about pausing partnership temporarily
- Support doesn’t get to handle account deletion requests for a little while
- Thea will be in Des Moines for the rest of the week
- Kate to make executive decision on the Dessert Machine vote
welcome to this startup is being recorded. This recording is improvised fiction. Similarities between it and the real world are entirely intentional. Now enjoy the recording.
Kate:All right. Uh, Hey everybody happy Wednesday. Um, I'm going to record this stand up. Uh, so I guess just before we get started, um, for anyone who's listening, we are a couch marketplace startup. Uh, our name's in flux, we were met a market. Um, but don't matter. I've I've realized it's not about the name. It's about the vision. And our vision is to change trade, give everyone a more comfortable seat at the table, and we will do that no matter what our identity is. Oh, uh, I'm Kate Blanchet. I'm the chief of staff here. I work under John. Um, John's not here. Uh, he's taking his normal a couple of weeks after MLK day, kind of around Valentine's day, a few weeks before spring break a vacation. Um, but yeah, let's let's go around.
Thea:Okay. I'm I am the chief creatives are at Metta market soon to be renamed.
Kate:Very soon.
Matt:Uh, I am, um, matt.yachts. Uh, that's also my domain where you can learn more about me and I'm the CTO here at companies seem to be centered in.
Kate:I know it was getting so much.
Barry:yup. Uh, Eric, Joy Carter, chief product officer at company to be re companied with renamed. Uh, yeah.
Kate:perfect. Um, well I know we all have a lot going on. Like, I feel like the standup could go super fast, frankly. Uh, so let's just like jump through the updates. Um, anyone want to go for.
Thea:I can go first. I just have a real quick update. We've been partnering with de Moines on a really great campaign. Um, a lot of people are moving out of the city into places like Des Moines because of the pandemic, uh, by big McMansions, that to be filled with a lot of couches. So we are. Targeting them, um, to get them to buy couches through us. This is super great because in six months, once they go to a state fair and realize that's the only social gathering of the entire year, and they moved back to those big cities, we also then reheat them to sell those couches on our marketplace.
Barry:Nice.
Kate:That is a much shorter like lifetime cycle then couches normally have.
Thea:Yeah. I mean, it's been really helpful and, you know, we, we know the demographics so we can just like consistently hit them. And we have been really successful in getting both the purchases of their couches and the selling of their couches, because it is a quick turnaround in Des Moines. Let me tell you.
Kate:cool.
Matt:Yeah. I wonder how long, uh, I mean, this isn't a projections meeting, but I wonder how long, uh, that'll last, you know, it feels like a short term bump, but then again, the pandemic was supposed to be short-term. Anyway, sorry. I'm I might as well go. I'm uh, exhausted. Uh, I'm on PagerDuty again. And, uh, we put up, uh, as you all know, we've been working on pulling out the hard-coded term meta market from the app, the servers, all of the microservices in the backend, uh, several different, uh, third-party services that we use. And I'm on PagerDuty this week. Uh, so I keep getting notifications, uh, anytime one accidentally pops up, uh, and, um, you know, not difficult work. I just get to take them and fire them off into our bug system. But you would be, oh yeah, there's another, um, I, I got, this is another one. Uh, somebody.
Kate:Okay. Okay. Um, Uh, I'll just go real quick. Um, obviously we're having the company voting contest about what type of dessert machine we should get. Um, right now it's kind of tied between crepe maker, a snow cone machine and a specialty soft serve. Um, I I'm just like, I'm really concerned about some of these options because obviously we have, uh, Jen who's allergic to dairy and we have. Uh, a few people who have claimed they're allergic to snow, uh, which I don't know how that's true, but I just am. Yeah.
Matt:That feels very contrarian.
Barry:Well, can we, can we, not do this? No cone maker? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. It's been, I've been assault a little salty. The last couple of days. I may have told some people to write in that they were allergic to snow. Um, I don't want that snowballs are, are personal to me, especially, you know, not having the knock-off of snowcones here. Uh, Which is normally a petty thing that I wouldn't, uh, wouldn't bring up, but I've just been dealing with this other issue that is, it's making me less joyful than I normally would be.
Matt:oh,
Barry:Um,
Matt:what's what's uh, I mean,
Barry:So, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's my thing. And I'm glad we're all here to talk about it. Um, I could use another point of view. Um, so the investors, uh, Sent in a couple other requests, uh, to tie to the funding round, uh, as you all know, um, one of which was illogically to, uh, get our site compliant with GDPR. Um, even though we're not selling any couches or operating a marketplace in the EU, felt like it was important to prepare for the next round of funding. Uh, so, uh, Lars, uh, from engineering and, uh, David on our, on product, um, have been digging into this and they've just hit a complete impasse. Um, we tried to scope this down as small as possible, you know, put up the, you know, the slightly annoying cookies, dialogue, you know, the, the things things you have to do. Um, and I don't mean to pick on Lars Matt, but he has gone through. Every, every page of documentation out there on the law and the case law. And he keeps coming up with these ridiculous edge cases that we just don't have time for. And he's, he's just, I think he's just scared of us getting sued, which I understand, but
Matt:I mean, oh no, you weren't, you weren't at the meeting when legal, uh, talked with Deb about this. Um,
Barry:oh, no.
Kate:wait, Devin legal are not supposed to be alone together in a room.
Matt:Well, I mean, this is part of why. And, uh, I would say Lara's was, uh, asking some fairly good questions, uh, and he was punished severely for that. So, um, yeah, I'm not, I'm not too surprised. It's, it's a complicated situation, right? Well, you know, it's, I'm trying to see it from legal's perspective. Um, but I, I think it was unnecessarily. It's complicated stuff, right? Like we're already flirting with CCPA stuff and California's law is so close to GDPR that in many ways the same interventions are going to work. Um, but, uh, you know, kudos to Lars, he's really kind of shouldered a burden to, to learn this. Um,
Barry:and this is
Matt:I guess it
Barry:is why.
Matt:going a little far.
Barry:exactly. I want it. I want to reward Lars for taking this on so proactively and being a good steward of the company, but. It's getting to a ridiculous point. Let me just, the one we can't agree on is, so you can get a couch embroidered with your name. And Lars wants us to have a data, a personal data removal process for embroidered couches.
Matt:Oh,
Barry:So you can, you can ask to have your data removed. You can remove consent under GDPR, and he wants us to be able to have the name disappear off the couch. That's ridiculous nobody's ever got, nobody's ever going to ask to have their name on embroidered from the couch. We, we, maybe we just don't need to do this right now.
Matt:Eric it's um, I mean the, the bit of this that I've studied is, uh, Under the GDPR. They don't have to explicitly ask for the embroidery to be removed. They make a blanket request that Metta market deletes all of their personal information. And it's actually up to us to hunt that down, wherever it lives, uh, and destroy it. And if that means that that someone like put their spouse's name on a couch and then they, uh, through us, and then they also sold that couch through. Um, that's still within our chain of custody. Oh
Thea:we. We don't keep the couch. I mean, it is technically in the person's property. And so like, when we say delete the data, it would be only deleting the record that we would need for the name. Is that correct?
Barry:where it gets a bit complicated because we did also integrate the embroidery feature with the marketplace avatar feature. And so. Use our marketplace avatar program and you get an embroidered couch. There's a linking between the embroidered couch and the avatar and any couches you have in our little showroom online. So we can remove the name from the couch in the showroom. Um, I mean, that's still seems excessive, but, uh, we can, we can do that, but we can't go all the way to, to removing the name from the couch itself. That's.
Matt:Oh, and it, I mean, theoretically if the couch where to go to be put up, uh, to be resold through the marketplace and if we're to enter our custody,
Barry:Yeah, it could return.
Matt:our responsibility to, to find that out. But in order. To keep track of what couches we need to remove the embroidery from when they come in, we need to save a record
Barry:we have to hold on to the personal
Matt:of this person's data and
Thea:Do you think this is going to be a problem in Des Moines? Because there are a lot of, you know, in bordered cautious there. I mean, people, their rents are reduced. They've got money to spare. And I mean, like I said, they'd come back into the marketplace. I mean, sometimes within three to six months,
Kate:And we've started at like partnering with Zola to do those marriage couches so that, you know, happy. Holy matrimony, Sarah and Bryan.
Thea:Yeah. And we found, I mean, the rash of post corn team, like post vaccination divorces was, I mean, really high we've had seen a lot, a lot of those couches pieces.
Matt:Uh, nuts.
Thea:I bet. This is also a really bad time to talk about revenge and bartering to
Matt:uh, what's um, what's revenge embroidering.
Thea:you, um, put, you know, somebody who brought you secret isn't bartered in the couch, and then you kind of basically catfish them into buying that couch and seeing their shame.
Matt:Oh, Is, um, what kind of moderation tools do we have on this? I mean, could people be doxing folks through our couch embroidery system? We haven't seen, please tell me we haven't seen any evidence.
Kate:me, I mean, we can, can we just pull up real quick? Like some of the most recent embroidery
Barry:Yeah, that's a good idea.
Kate:let's just go there if you, I, I bet these cases like never happened, you know, we always think of things. Really our,
Barry:How, how has that three of the first 10 results are phone numbers
Matt:oh
Barry:who would put a FA up? I guess I got promotional FA couch would want a phone number, I guess.
Matt:yeah. Hang on. Let me
Barry:What else?
Kate:yeah, Maybe
Barry:a weird
Kate:commercial phone
Matt:I'm doing a reverse lookup of, um, a hole that is not a commercial number. Uh, yeah, no, this is, um, a person who was, uh, being doxed, uh, politically. Um, wow. Uh, they were running for city council and, uh, opposition. Uh, yeah. Um, it
Thea:Wait in opposition to.
Matt:you know, looks like it was left out of this article. I just have this little snippet from, uh, I don't even recognize this town.
Kate:Wait,
Matt:code looks like it's near.
Kate:how exactly. Did bug speak at, on the ballot for the city council of Cedar rapids
Thea:Oh, I mean, bag speak was just inspired by the couch to get into the political.
Kate:and then bugs be used our platform to docs his opponent.
Thea:Listen, we, nobody here is nobody here is saying that right. For all we know bugs, we ran a very clean campaign.
Kate:I'm just putting pieces together. I've just.
Thea:I get, I agree. The evidence is a hundred percent thing.
Matt:I mean, these other two phone numbers in the, in the top 10, these are also 3, 1 9 area codes.
Thea:Why would bugs be, do that? Bugs me bugs me has the merits of himself. I cannot teach my son to cheat.
Kate:It's technically not cheating. It's just like a terrible tactic that people use now. Um, let's go through a few other, can you pull up the next 10, Eric? I just, when need let's solve one problem at a time.
Barry:I these look like he's with like Twitter image links. I,
Matt:oh,
Barry:I,
Kate:Great. Someone, someone
Barry:I feel like the more we look into this, the form, the more we look into this more, the more we're incriminating. Bugsby I?
Matt:I'm going to hang on. I'm going to open a private browser. Actually. I'm going to open up a Tor browser window.
Barry:Yeah. Okay. Um, if I look, if I look six months ago, I start to see normal. Normal first names, neural first and last names. A couple, couple names. Um,
Kate:Okay.
Matt:some of these early ones. Sorry, I'm
Barry:looks totally fine.
Matt:Kind of update the Tor browser. You have there's some key ones. Uh, people moved in together, anniversaries, uh, you know, together forever. Very cute.
Barry:very, yeah, reasonable. But the last two weeks
Kate:or more interesting.
Barry:that, yeah.
Kate:Uh, sorry, circling back to like a little while ago, you mentioned something about CCPA and like, we have to follow that. So when we get a lot of support requests that are people, like I would like to delete my account and, uh, we usually say, okay, it's been deleted. Um, but we just changed their password. They can't get in is that it's not, not really.
Matt:uh, yeah, no, no. Um, under, under California privacy law, um, I mean, technically, if they are not a resident of California, we don't have to honor that request. Um, it's rare that companies would choose not to, uh, we're supposed to delete any records associated with, uh, that person, at least in so much as they, uh, contain identifying information. Uh, and there's a pretty broad definition of identifying information.
Kate:okay. Okay. Well,
Barry:so this is the kind of stuff. Yeah. This is the kind of stuff that I was excited about. Lars, uh, working on
Kate:Uh, we
Matt:I've never, you know, I haven't audited this stuff. Do, do we not have, uh, like customer data deletion functions? I really
Kate:R R yeah. The admin tool was pretty limiting.
Barry:It's very manual.
Kate:yeah, I just, you don't think it's a problem if we like changed all the passwords to you, two password, right?
Matt:I'm sorry. You.
Kate:We find that not very many people use password as their password, some do, but not many. So we think that's a safe password to change their password to
Barry:how do we know?
Kate:uh, in the admin tool, there's this table with user data. So we just like go in and look at their password to change their password to something else.
Matt:oh my God.
Barry:oh, no.
Kate:but.
Matt:not, no, that can't be right Kate, because the login system, I mean, I've looked at this schema before I'm looking at it. Now we clearly hash their passwords. Uh it's. It's exactly how, like I'm looking at the code when they sign in. We check this, this table. Yeah, it looks good. And then, oh, what the F what is this? And when there's a successful login, we write an initial.
Kate:we
Matt:What's
Kate:like a while ago where we didn't know what to change their passwords to because we would change it to something that was already their password, like 1, 2, 3, 4, and then we just thought the solution was to know their password, to change her password to something else.
Thea:I feel really bad about this because it used to be the creative team's job to come up with creative passwords that you could replace them with. And we just, you know, we've been working too hard on the name and Bugsby to really like, provide that service to.
Matt:Um,
Kate:I mean, it's okay. It's, it's super easy for our support team to, to, you know, be able to go in and.
Matt:it's uh, yeah. Okay. Kate, what, what other steps do we have when we off-board a customer like this? Um, we changed their password. Do we also make sure to delete their, uh, saved addresses or any payment methods that they've stored with us and, uh, social media account that they've tied in?
Kate:Nope. Uh, none of those things. Um, but, and it's because we want to. Try to get them to be users later, you know, at one point, uh, we wanted to do surveys for people that had offboarded. And so we have a weekly email survey that goes to them, a monthly mailer, um, bi-weekly text message campaigns to try to re-engage them. Uh, I know I, this might be new to you, but I just thought the support team could do more than we were. And I thought you guys would appreciate.
Matt:Um, uh, okay. I, I don't know that we're going to resolve this here. We're getting away from a standup, but, um, this is very bad. This is extremely bad. Um, by changing people's passwords to, um, very easily get. Uh, passwords, uh, automatically guessable passwords. Um, we're opening up their accounts to, uh, all kinds of malicious hacking, uh, or if they have, uh, any stalkers or, uh, prank pranksters, uh, it makes it very easy to get into their account. And because we haven't deleted any of their payment information, uh, they could be, there could be a whole underground market using reset password accounts. To move couches or,
Barry:back and forth,
Matt:transactions.
Barry:back and forth in Iowa.
Matt:Oh,
Kate:Wait, what are you
Matt:the large cities
Barry:yeah, maybe there's
Matt:and back again.
Barry:a bot network.
Matt:Well, look, we have this table of passwords. I might as well.
Barry:way more couch sales than you would expect for that number of people.
Matt:right. Yeah. So we have from, from users this password, let's go ahead and join this table, uh, who have sold a couch. Wait, who have bought a couch in the last 90 days. And then who sold it again within the last well, uh, 90 days to now, uh, the previous login activity did not match before the password change. Oh, Califia what were the numbers we had on,
Thea:yeah, we
Matt:two Moines? Hot swappers.
Thea:yeah, we had about, um, 3000 active. Who did both? Uh, it was 3,102, um, active who both worked with us to buy a couch and sell a couch in the past six months since we started the campaign.
Matt:okay. Um, I'm seeing about 2,900 couches, um, moved by deleted accounts, uh, in that time period.
Kate:so this is, this might be not relevant, but I feel like I should bring it up. I did. I read an article the other day about kind of like the uptick in. Illegal drug trafficking in Iowa and the methods of moving it, uh, primarily being like household, um, seating.
Thea:this would explain why. I mean, the couches, in most cases, I just assumed that, you know, And New York, like couches would sell at a premium, but there is generally a large, uh, change even from a new to use couch. Like most people are making money off of selling their couches in Munich.
Matt:Uh, and there's a handful that seemed to be a nexus for this activity, kind of a hub that many of these couches of past. One or more times.
Kate:w we can, let's just change their passwords. It's just something else.
Barry:or we could delete the account.
Matt:uh, it's, it's a database. You delete, you delete stuff from it. Um, I mean, I could do that now. Um, we'd be potentially wiping out records. Self-dealing drug trafficking and credit card fraud.
Barry:oh, okay. Let's.
Thea:I mean, I, I am just, obviously there are so many issues with the optics of this whole situation. Um, but I think also we should just remember that on de Moines, we ran on like Nancy Reagan ask, say no to drugs, really strict campaign. Because of these issues. And I mean, that's why bugs. We was riding in Cedar rapids. We found it so effective to be the face of drug-free couches that.
Matt:here's I think I can, I think we can knock these two birds out of the air, uh, with, with one thrown couch. Uh,
Kate:are you leaning towards throne?
Matt:do y'all? How, oh, no, no, no. Like, like, like, uh, the past tense of the throat, um, Eric, how do you like this? We solve the embroidery problem. We flag every couch that we've embroidered or not, uh, especially any in the Des Moines area to come back through our facility. We tear those things. if there are drugs inside, we dispose of them. I guess. I don't know that's going to be, it's going to be up to the warehouse team.
Kate:you definitely. I mean, what are some ideas of how to dispose of drugs? got
Matt:don't know. Everything burns.
Barry:yeah, w we've we've we've we've dealt with more difficult contraband before, so, um, yeah, so we we'd just be out the cost of the shipping. Um, that's a small price to pay for, for dealing with this. And, um, we can, we can just turn off the embroidery feature. For awhile, let's take, take that away. People will maybe hit our net promoter score, but we can solve that problem in a few months and then we
Matt:Yeah, I mean,
Barry:GDPR.
Matt:you know, we let them know we it's for their privacy. Right. We're doing
Barry:Exactly. It turned into a feature. There you
Matt:a compliance issue.
Thea:I think you can do. Spin it as once one for the privacy, but too, like in this world of constant change, we know nothing's permanent.
Matt:Hey, there you
Barry:That's some teamwork. Okay.
Matt:All right,
Kate:Oh, maybe this is a good time to introduce our disposable couches with that campaign.
Matt:well, can you remind.
Kate:Yeah, no, we were, we thought what's the best way to sell more and it's just, if people don't have couches that lasts very long. And so the idea is that after a month or two, your couch, um, actually kind of turns into. Options do you a bonfire, right? Like people like couch bonfires anyway. So, um, there's a sort of a, a cool chemical. We found that, uh, turns would weigh more flammable, uh, and it sort of a delayed release thing.
Barry:When, when was that going on?
Kate:What we did over the holidays, you know, and we had a couple of weeks to just like play around while a lot of people were on vacation. Uh, yeah. Disposable, flammable couches were one of the
Matt:sorry, are we, are we shipping these?
Kate:just in beta.
Barry:yeah. When did the, when did the beta start?
Kate:it was, uh, w we were sort of getting organic demand for it before new years when we started kind of regroup. Social media campaign. I know this is like pretty much all of your guys's domains that we probably shouldn't be doing it, but
Thea:Could we check the bug speed couches, please. I don't want to think the worst about, about, you know, our mascot. It's sad, but could we just check what type of pouches bugs bees got embroidered?
Barry:yeah, let's, let's pull all the embroidery couches. Let's pull all the disposable couches. We did a big marketing campaign with flakes by Georgia, which is also flammable. So this is not, not, not a good common.
Thea:I I had to spend a lot of time on a boat to get flaked by Jorge,
Barry:Jorge. I'm sorry.
Thea:It's okay. And if they find out that we potentially put them in another flaming light fire liability, I mean,
Kate:The idea is people move the
Thea:at sea here.
Barry:we've got to pull it all back. We've got to pull it all back. We settle down and.
Matt:uh,
Barry:Hold off on new ideas.
Matt:one of the beta couches was put through the embroidery program.
Barry:Oh,
Matt:I'm pulling those now. Okay. We definitely have our phone numbers are in there, um,
Kate:Okay.
Matt:though there there's Twitter image links, uh, gosh, I forgot to open that. I think my tour browsers updated, so. You know, and actually I'm not going to look at that during this meeting and that's, we'll just assume. Um, okay. Yeah, I think, I think, uh, what is the time clock on those Flambeau accounts?
Kate:Two months. Um, so it's been about a month, which means they'd be at like 50%, uh, flammability at the
Thea:So they would go on flame two weeks before city council elections.
Kate:Yeah. I mean, they will go, they won't flame by themselves a hundred percent. It's only if they're, uh, in a environment that's like 75 degrees or.
Thea:That just makes it worse. Kate.
Matt:That's a Cate, that's a regular room temperature. A lot of rooms are that temperature.
Kate:No, no, no, no, no. Winter. Everyone keeps it at like 62, 63 for short
Matt:That's absolutely not true. And if it was that cold, then they would put electric blankets and other things on their couches. The unit, the human body is 98.6 degrees and sitting on a couch will warm.
Thea:Oh, God.
Matt:Okay, where we're recalling the beta couches. Um, I'm flagging all of these password accounts, uh, for deletion as soon as we can securely save their history somewhere. Um, and, uh, rather than have a K I know. You are excellent with the responsibilities. And I do not want you to hear this as taking something away from your team, but I would like in lieu of, uh, customer service, handling those, uh, two, please forward those to dev until we have a tool built for you to delete people's data.
Kate:Okay. Okay. We can do that. Um,
Matt:Oh God. Okay.
Kate:cool.
Thea:Um, we'll be out of the office for the rest of the week. It's come to my attention that I think the Cedar rapids campaign team greatly needs some attention. Um, so I will be out there.
Kate:Okay.
Matt:okay. That's um, that's not officially company business, right? I mean, books, bees emancipated.
Thea:I know this. I understand if you want me to take it off his personal time, I'm happy to take it off his personal style, but I mean, it was run. It was run through our, our services. Um, bikes be still is. Our mascot for the time being. And if you remember what I was saying, that these are the dangers of having a mascot who, you know, um, has a mind of its own. So I, I feel like this is a pretty pretend big potential for a PR disaster, um, and just a parenting disaster. So I'm just gonna go and have a talk.
Kate:Yeah.
Matt:Oh,
Kate:Okay. Well
Matt:I just got to, oh, sorry. It's uh, another hard-coded Mehta market popped up. Um,
Kate:much less important
Matt:somebody's, somebody's looking at our privacy.
Kate:Okay. Okay. Well, On that note. It seems everyone has plenty to do so maybe we should wrap this up.
Barry:Yeah,
Kate:Great.
Barry:no snowcones please.
Matt:we at least get like those Italian flavored syrups then I just want this.
Barry:Oh yeah, the syrups are great. Okay. Yeah.
Kate:would you do with those by themselves?
Barry:Uh, put them in soda water, put them in coffee, drizzle over a piece of cheesecake,
Matt:Oh
Barry:of things.
Matt:yeah.
Kate:Okay. Maybe our dessert bar will just be soda flavors.
Matt:And I'm okay with that.
Kate:Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. One thing resolved a few, a few to go. I'll stop the recording.
Ben:This meeting has ended. To subscribe to this startup is being recorded. Go to the podcast player of your choice and tap a button that likely says subscribe. More content is on Twitter at startup recorded, or shoot us an email with ideas, feedback, or your personal startup horror story. At hello@startuprecorded.com. Kate is played by Valerie Garrison. Valerie is a health tech product manager and regularly plays with the improv troupe letters to chicken online. You can find her on Twitter at thevalgarris eric has played by Barry wright Barry is a product manager at Spotify and a co-founder of Highwire Improv. Find him by his name on LinkedIn, where he holds regular office hours or at highwireimprov.com. Matt is played by Martin Mcguire. Marty is a senior web engineer and improviser in New York city. You can find Marty's comedy code and cats on his website at M M G dot R E. Calathea is played by Robyn Stegman. Robyn is a digital campaign manager for ocean Conservancy and is a comedian mostly found at Highwire improv. You can find her on all the social medias. And she does mean all at rsteggy thank you for listening.