Mike Andes delivers an emotional keynote describing the launch and early failure of Copilot CRM. He recounts launching Copilot CRM on February 20, 2023, rapid growth followed by severe reliability problems (about 240 reported bugs), daily breakages, member losses, and his personal struggle and humility in seeking help to turn the product around.
This will be the hardest keynote I've ever given my whole life. If you're a sympathy crier, I'm warning you right now. The CRM that we were using previously went down for six hours. And I remember the hate and the vitriol that was cast upon them on Facebook and on groups. I remember we had to let everyone go from command center. I was like, you can't do anything. You can't log in. It's embarrassing to take a phone call and it's not working. And I remember thinking, these are going to be my problems if I do this. On February 20th, 23rd, we launched Copilot CRM. So a year ago this month, we tripled the number of members inside of Copilot. Everything was going incredible. And then we entered into bug hell. 240 bugs reported and documented inside the system and everything was breaking at.
Least once a day. I think I want to quit such a. It's so fragile right now. We are losing members going back into burning money. All of the destinations using it, every single location is using co pilot. Do I think I'll turn around 100%? Do I think in a year I'll probably watch this video and laugh at myself? Probably. Probably. But this is hell.
It was at my lowest moment. I could not turn this thing around.
And whenever I watch the turnaround applications cuz people send me videos all the time and talk about what they're going through, I think about this moment for me and I needed help. I need help and the humility to be able to.
Recognize you can't do this on your own.
