The Hard Launch (Startup Hearts #1)

Chapter One

LACEY

It goes like this: a hard-working team is nearing the finish line on a big project after toiling for ages. They’re presenting their work to the entire company for the umpteenth time, trying to build awareness and excitement for the upcoming launch.

Then, an executive happens to look up from his phone for once during the All Hands meeting.

This executive decides he has opinions about what the team has built.

After tons of work and customer interviews and user behavior analysis, this guy wakes up and pays attention at the very last minute, for just long enough to suggest they change what they built.

We call it a Swoop and Poop: they fly in at the last minute and shit on everything.

I’m standing up here in the large conference room in front of everyone, all nineteen of us employed by Lettercat, smashed into this one room.

I’ve completed the walkthrough, and now I’m reminding them that, as the product manager, I do the talking, but this has been a true team effort to build.

And then I hear it. It’s coming from the back of the room.

“Um. Lacey?”

All seventeen heads in front of me swivel to look at him.

Jude Mulholland, Lettercat’s founder and CEO, our fearless leader, stands near the door in his usual jeans and company tee, shoeless, his arms folded across his chest. He has a few too many days of stubble on his face and he needs a haircut: just zero effort.

Meanwhile I’m over here looking adorable-yet-professional in a skirt, wearing a shirt with actual buttons on it.

Plus, I got my bangs trimmed ahead of this presentation and texted my sister three different options of red lip so she could help me select the one that most successfully conveys Innovative and Skilled Product Person. But please, go ahead and interrupt me.

“Yes?” I say.

“Can you go back a couple slides? To where you show the Publish screen.”

I click back to the place in question so the large screen next to me shows the last step of the newsletter creation flow. Jude scratches his stubbly neck and studies the screen. All eyes are on him.

“So you said there’s greater engagement with newsletters that have at least one image.”

“That’s right,” I nod. All the heads turn back to me as I explain that newsletter emails with high-quality, relevant images have a thirty-eight percent higher click-through rate.

That’s why my team is adding a Find My Image button that uses AI to scan the text and suggest an image based on the content.

“But you chose to make image an optional field,” he states, still looking at the screen, not me. His face is starting to go red under the stubble. How can a person be this upset over a field setting?

“Correct. We did an A/B test in beta and found it’s a barrier to publication if we require it.”

I’m using my best patient and collaborative tone, bottling up the frustration about how I’ve been up here talking about this three times this quarter, explaining this very thing. Maybe his hair was all the way in his eyes on those days. More likely he was on his phone.

“Yeah, but like this it’s buried. We need to train our customers to use the features that are going to make them more successful,” he says.

So now the man who hasn’t spoken to a customer in years is publicly telling me what they need.

I see two of my engineers, Dave and Ingrid, roll their eyes at me. I’d love to roll mine too, but it’s my job to create alignment across departments and communicate effectively with stakeholders. Also, my boss is watching this whole exchange.

“Okay,” I say. “We can definitely look into that and get something on the backlog.” This is my classic yes but no answer, designed to make people feel heard while also letting my team ship the goddamn feature.

“I think you should do it before you launch. Just pop a modal up before they publish, and put the suggested image right there. Make them say no to it instead of yes, and I bet you’ll get a lot more adoption.”

The heads in front of me tilt as they consider this, then nod in agreement. I feel the wave of approval and admiration that was lapping at my feet slosh over to Jude, who has now stolen all my team’s thunder and made me look like I’m bad at my job.

“Got it,” I say. “Anything else?”

“It’s a great feature,” he tells me. “Really nice work. Can’t wait to hear the outcomes.”

He swooped. He pooped.

I smile, though it feels like a grimace, and sit down to let Kate give the customer success update.

We’ve all returned to our desks, which are currently arranged by department.

Each time there’s a shift in engineering leadership, whoever’s newly in charge decides it’s the seating chart causing all the inefficiency.

If we’re sitting by department, we need to sit by project teams. Six months ago, the new CTO decided we all needed to sit by department, so here I am in the product team pod.

“Have a minute?” Glenn asks.

I’m gritting my teeth while I make wireframes of the new flow, hoping to get it to the engineers this afternoon so they can tell me how significant the delay will be.

“Sure,” I say, getting up to follow my boss into Stanhope, the small conference room.

I don’t close the door behind me, because there is no door; here at Lettercat we have an Open Doors policy because we believe in transparency throughout the organization.

This mostly means that we do a lot of whispering.

“Are you okay?” Glenn asks quietly. He looks worried, but then, he always looks worried. He’s the Head of Product here with a lot on his plate; twin toddlers at home, and a third baby due very, very soon.

“I’m fine,” I lie, because I don’t want to add to Glenn’s stress.

He takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I know you think you’re helping me, but it would be more beneficial for us to talk it through, instead of you going back to your desk and stewing in your juices,” he says.

Glenn knows the best and worst of me, so there’s no point in hiding it.

“I’m not stewing. I’m rage-writing user stories.”

He laughs. “You did well up there. But you should push back when you don’t agree.”

“The whole room thought he was a genius! You were there, you saw it. I’m not going to fight with the CEO in front of the entire company.”

“But you already had that idea.”

“Believe me, I know. It’s a good idea, it’s just expensive at scale. All those queries aren’t free.”

Glenn leans back in his chair and puts his glasses back on. He’s the kindest, most even-keeled manager I’ve ever had, but I can tell he’s frustrated with me.

“It’s your job to communicate that, Lacey. It’s a tradeoff you correctly decided not to make. The free plan will be operating at a loss if we’re doing millions of queries for that user base. You can’t change things on a CEO’s whim and not tell him how it affects the bottom line.”

“So, about that,” I say, opening up my laptop.

I show him what I’ve outlined: Jude’s suggested modal will appear for paid clients every time, but people on the free plan will get only chances to use it, along with a cute little button prompting them to upgrade to keep access.

Somehow all that anger pushed me to find a way to make it work properly, instead of throwing money out the window.

I can’t hide how pleased I am as I show the new solution to my boss.

“This is very clever,” Glenn says. “And it’s true product management. You’re not just hearing someone’s idea and doing it. You understood the problem he’s trying to solve, and you came up with the best possible solution. I’m impressed.”

He stands up, satisfied, and heads off to his next meeting.

I know I should be happy with the outcome. I’m not obsessed with taking credit for things, but I can’t help resenting that all my hard work is going to get wrapped up as Jude’s Amazing Idea. It almost makes me want it to fail.

“Coffee. Now.”

Dave raps his knuckles on my desk ten seconds after I send the new user story and its accompanying wireframes to him.

He’s the lead engineer on my team, a stereotypical software developer down to the T-shirt he’s wearing, which features the elements that comprise the human body under the title IN MY ELEMENTS. Such a nerd.

“But I just sent you something,” I tell him.

“And I’m sure it’s brilliant. I’ll read it when we’re back from getting coffee.”

I exhale loudly through my nose, peeved.

“Dragon snort all you want, but we’re going,” he says, zipping up his company hoodie.

“Arguing about it will only delay the estimate,” Ingrid offers, appearing at his side. “That’s not what you want, is it?”

With even mild-mannered Ingrid against me, there’s no use in fighting it. We pick up Kate on our way to the elevator, and I try my hardest not to peek into Jude’s office when we walk past, but I do. He’s at his standing desk, scratching away at his neck. Ugh.

The second the doors slide shut, they immediately start bitching.

“What the actual fuck?” Dave asks.

“He’s such a prick,” Kate says.

“I just find it disheartening that he chose that forum to give that type of feedback,” Ingrid says, which is the closest she can come to bitching.

“You’re not saying anything,” Kate notes, squinting at me. “Are you okay?”

I sigh. I appreciate their support, but I almost don’t want to go down this rabbit hole at the moment. I’d rather be talking about how long it’s going to take to build out the new modal along with the permissions and upsell.

“I mean, none of you are wrong. But I’m trying to stay positive here. That stuff is part of the job.”

“Only when you work with assholes,” Dave insists.

“Venting can be healthy,” Ingrid pipes in.

They’re all waiting for me to unload, so I turn to face them, and I give them what they want.

“Do I wish he’d paid even a moment of attention during one of my earlier demos, or clicked through on one of the many links I sent the entire company while it was in testing?

Sure. Would I rather he’d come to me or messaged me privately to tell me his concerns?

Absolutely. Do I love that all our hard work was just completely derailed so he can look like a visionary genius in front of the whole company, while I stand there like an incompetent fool? No. No, I do not.”

They’re all looking at me, and not in a go off, queen kind of way.

Because in our haste to find some closed doors to complain behind, not one of us bothered to hit the L button to send the elevator down to the lobby.

Which means that when the next person showed up and hit the down arrow, the doors slid open.

As I was ranting.

I turn around and, of course, the person standing there is Jude.

“Hey guys,” he says.

Speechless after my speech, I slink deeper into the elevator. He gets in and turns his back, presses the L, and we ride down, all of us exchanging panicked looks behind him. Ingrid looks at me and taps her ear, tilting her head toward Jude.

I look up at him to try to figure out what she’s talking about. I don’t remember him being this tall, but then, he doesn’t usually have shoes on, and I don’t usually stand this close to him, so close I can feel the heat radiating off his back.

I lean to each side to look under all that hair at his ears—which feels kind of intrusive—and see what Ingrid’s trying to tell me: his AirPods are in. Maybe I got lucky and he didn’t hear. Maybe he’s listening to a podcast that gives tech bros tips about new ways to humiliate women at work.

The doors open and he walks out without saying a word. We shuffle into the lobby in a stunned pack.

“I don’t think he heard,” Dave says.

“Definitely not.” Kate agrees.

Ingrid nods. “Noise canceling is so good these days.”

I don’t say anything, but I one hundred percent disagree. There’s no use in debating it. I caught a glimpse of the side of his face as he walked away and saw that over the course of the elevator ride, he’d turned red and splotchy, just like when he got all worked up during my demo.

Jude heard everything.

What an achievement for me: I’ve successfully pissed off the CEO twice in one day.