Stay calm. Be positive.
#16 • Stories & Lessons of Founding Baron Fig
Emails were flowing like water in a river. My inbox looked like a bacteria reproduction simulation; first a few, then double, then double that—yikes. Each email was a new order notification.
It was March 4, 2014. The day we launched Baron Fig’s full site.
Adam and I were in the corner of our oversized, empty studio. He was standing at his desk—he always pops up when he gets excited. I was caddy-corner sitting at my own desk. We were alternating between periods of silence and periods of repeated Holy shits.
I had never seen an email count rise so quickly. And each one was a sale, no less. If the successful Kickstarter wasn’t already an indication that we were doing something right with Baron Fig, this sure was.
At some point we stepped away from our inboxes. We were on cloud nine, pacing the studio and talking through next steps: customer order confirmations, shipping fulfillment, follow up thank you emails, and so on.
Then my cell phone rang. (Back in the day, when you called the company you were really just calling me.) “Baron Fig, Joey speaking,” I said.
A kind woman on the other end told me her name was Marta. She said she was having trouble buying notebooks. I asked her a few questions to make sure she was doing things right. When I realized it wasn’t her fault, my stomach dropped.
I ran over to my desk. The last order was six minutes ago. We’d been getting six orders per minute. Something was wrong.
Adam caught on to our conversation and went to our site. He tried to place an order—no dice. All he got was an error. Something was very wrong.
I called up a friend at Squarespace, the platform that powered our site. I got a quick, “We’re aware of it. Working on solving the problem.”
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s the day we broke Squarespace*. No one could buy anything for exactly 1 hour and 18 minutes. And there was nothing Adam and I could do but be patient and wait.
We tweeted an update, then sat back and breathed deeply. I hate to think about it, but we probably missed out on dozens of orders that day. On the flip side, we placed several hundred.
*Note: Squarespace is fantastic. I’m a huge fan. As far as I know, this is the first and last time this has ever happened.
Joey Cofone is Co-Founder & CEO at Baron Fig. The Founding of Baron Fig shares the stories and lessons learned on the journey of creating our startup.
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