The 72-Hour COVID Pivot

Neon One, 2020–2021

Problem

It was March 2020, and governments were shutting down public events all over the world. Our customers' registration-based, in-person fundraising events were all canceling at once. This was potentially an existential threat to our nonprofit customers, with zero data on what was to come next.

My role

Product lead. Made the emergency call, shipped the stopgap, then drove the 12+ month strategic pivot.

Outcome

Customers recouped ~75% of projected lost event revenue; non-in-person fundraising grew +20% YoY over the following two years.

Phase 1 — the weekend ship

There was no instrumentation for a pandemic, but it wasn't hard to predict what was about to happen: events cancel → registration revenue evaporates → customers churn. The chain was obvious; the only question was speed. I shelved the roadmap immediately and we shipped a registration-to-donations conversion feature over the weekend, so customers could salvage revenue from events that were quickly canceling. The cost of moving too fast was small, but the cost of waiting was existential.

Phase 2 — the year-plus pivot

The weekend ship bought time, but it didn't provide an answer for what fundraising looks like when nobody can gather in person. As the shutdowns persisted, I drove a 12+ month reorientation toward virtual and hybrid fundraising: activity-tracking and endurance pledging (including a Strava integration), and later in the year, an embeddable livestream suite (on-screen fundraising tickers, live data overlays, Streamlabs integration, and QR donation links). The discipline was staying on the bet as it stopped being an emergency and became a strategy.

Outcome

Customers recouped about 75% of their projected lost event revenue, and the virtual fundraising features we built during the emergency grew 20% year over year for the following two years, becoming a durable product line.

What it shows

The ability to distinguish what we know from what we don't know, informing decisive action during a period of high ambiguity; and the follow-through to execute a strategic bet for a year after the adrenaline is gone.