Company Update: Mandatory WFH extended to May 1

I will continue to be posting my company communications to LinkedIn + Medium to both record this journey for my own memory as well as possibly help others in their company communications.

Hi Team,

As most of you probably know, the SF city government has extended the shelter-in-place order through May 1st so we will also be adjusting our Mandatory WFH to May 1. This situation is still very much unknown, although it seems to be getting a bit clearer by the day as to what will need to happen to get back to 'normal life' (or the closest we will get to it), but right now all I can tell you for sure is that we need to get really good at this remote work!

In light of that, I have asked our Customer Success team to briefly speak at our next company meeting (to be scheduled) and share some tips for remote work and building camaraderie while remote. This is especially critical as we have new people on the team and we may need to hire remotely down the road, so this is a good thing for us to learn for the future! We will likely need to do a lot more email communications and weekly digests from each team to the whole company, as well as more emails from me like this, etc. It would be great to have some time to source ideas here from your own experiences and what worked and didn't work at other companies during this session. It would also be good to have CS present another Voice of the Customer, especially as it pertains to our newest cities and features, and hear from product, engineering and analytics on what they have been up to and how some of their new features, platforms, and experiments are performing during this strange time. If time permits, I'd like to end on a lightning round of product brainstorming in light of the current situation. We will work with everyone to find an ideal time for our next company chat Zoom - my vote is at Happy Hour time to keep things on brand!

As a reminder, we are going live globally this Thursday in cities like S?o Paulo, Rio, Rome, Berlin, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, Hong Kong, and others with the hopes that we can bring The League and League Live, our video dating product, to cities across the world during this period of isolation. Some users have been sharing Zoom links in the chats and having impromptu Zoom parties, so we will be promoting these user-created digital events in the app for people across the world to join. This could also help influence our roadmap if people enjoy it....

Currently, the business is faring as well as you could expect, considering how volatile the market and environment is and how scared everyone is about what is happening / going to happen. I am still cautiously optimistic that people will still want to use dating apps even during times of 'social distancing', so even though we are below our target revenue goal for the month, I believe we will weather this storm - especially if we work together to do so. Read some of the early findings Michael helped us uncover here.

I know this has been a really tough time for all of us, especially those of us caring for children and elderly family members, and I am inspired by the way you are all managing this turbulence in your life with such poise and elegance, while still giving 110% every day. I feel truly blessed to get to work side by side with each of you and get to design, build, and deliver products that make the world a happier, more loving place. I know we will remember this unique time period in our lives forever, and I am so glad to have this important work to lean into, and this beautiful work-family to lean on during this time. And what better time to design the future of human relationships than now?

To the moon we still go! (or Mars..or anywhere other than Earth at this point)

Amanda

PS: I am working on clearing out my Slack so I can start to use it again...please continue to use email to reach me me fastest, but know it's one of my #quarantineGoals ??