Introduction

Attn: Ladies and Engineers. We’ve been completely humiliated and upstaged by the growth rate of the novel coronavirus. It ends today (not the pandemic, that ends in 2023 probably – but our global humiliation). In the next quarter, we pledge to go as viral as the coronavirus.

Objective

To create a product that has a faster growth rate than the coronavirus, and, in doing so, to disrupt the economy and healthcare system more swiftly. To make a complete pivot from selling Point of Sales software and overhaul our product amidst a global recession. Because we’re Silicon Valley, and we think big.

Market Research

We’ve assumed great personal risk in order to research the coronavirus. Specifically, our leadership team has read the news for 15 minutes/day, much to the detriment of our collective mental health. Our cursory glances on techcrunch.com and twitter.com have sent us spiraling into pits of despair. We intended to offload some of the work to the marketing team, but unfortunately, we had already fired them.

Action Items

Much of the buzz about the coronavirus is over its size – it’s 1/900th the width of a human hair. Therefore, we intend to cut the codebase down to no more than three total lines of code. To do so, we’ve laid off most of our engineers, because it only takes a good engineer several minutes to output three lines of code. And then we laid him off, too.

Roll-Out

The coronavirus is currently on its second wave – the wave that happens while the first one is still happening. We expect to see third and fourth waves while the first one continues. As such, we will model our roll-out off theirs and continue telling people we’ve updated our product without actually making any changes.

Relevant Metrics:

We want to compete with the virus across several metrics.

• User Growth: The virus made it to all 50 states in a matter of weeks, and it took us months just to break out past Palo Alto (we haven’t yet, but we estimate months). The coronavirus didn’t get bogged down in the legal issues, such as whether or not drivers need “licenses.” To compete, today, I’m firing our staff of lawyers. Nevermind – I already did.
• New User Acquisition: Someone with COVID-19 infects 2.2 other people. It’s time we start measuring our R0 – how many new infections we get from every existing one. Sorry, sorry, downloads. Someone please make a note – our product does not cause computer viruses. Or, at least, it doesn’t definitely cause computer viruses.
• Speed with which we bring the economy to a complete halt: This one is unrealistic for Q3 – let’s make it a Q4 goal. Can someone write that down? Oh, sorry, the woman who writes things down no longer works there? Why? Oh, she was in the sixth round of layoffs? Bummer.

Potential Customers

We charge a pricey $4000/month for our service, while you can contract the coronavirus for free and treat it for the low, low rate of all your money. As such, we’ve decided to advertise straight at Jeff Bezos, who currently controls approximately 70% of America’s total disposable income. If he purchases one membership and we continue to lay off our own employees at the rate we’re going (50% per week), we should be profitable in a mere two weeks. 

Qualifications

Our team is uniquely qualified to outpace the virus. Every single person at this company contracted it during our internal version of Burning Man one month into lockdown, and no one died. In fact, no one even had symptoms, we just thought it would be fun to take a team outing to all get tested (what’s the point of having employer-sponsored health insurance if we’re only going to use it on massages?). We – the last three employees – are proudly in our 20s, and we stand strong against the Virus. 

Description of New Product

Q-Tip-Tip is a service to tip the delivery people who bring you Q-Tips. Because remember – if someone goes way out of their way to get you a Q-Tip, they deserve a special something.

Note: No one works at Q-Tip-Tip anymore, so it’s on you, the customer, to be decent and tip your Q-Tip delivery people.