Offsite - T3 2018 - Leavenworth, WA

Offsite - T3 2018

Leavenworth, WA

Back to the Pacific Northwest, we hit the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains for our T3 offsite. Finding a cabin about 30 minutes north of Leavenworth, WA this mountain backdrop had plenty of hikes, seclusion, and crisp mountain air. The first few days of September in the Northwest is special. The temperatures are crisper at nights and the foliage a little bit brighter as we head into the fall months.

With 25 people on the team, we used a combination of a large cabin and car camping to sleep the crew.

DAY 1

We started the day at the Moment Studio, packing up the cars before heading out for a two and a half hour drive to Leavenworth. Stopping at a local diner for lunch we landed at our cabin by 2 pm to start our first sessions for the first day.

TEAM SESSIONS

Now that the company is at nearly 30 people we start the offsite with team specific sessions. It gives everyone a chance to recap what went well and what we need to fix while giving each other props for what they appreciated over the trimester.

A list of items across the team.

What People Are Happy About

Our new model for Moment Travel worked
Customer excitement and sentiment for our trips.
Revenue was strong including gear, apps, and travel
Getting Alex on board as PM role to help organize all of us and be more efficienT
Case 2.0 design went well given the quick timeline
Gained a better understanding of our supply chain as we worked more and more with new suppliers and spent time in Asia
Breaking into new categories with female directed Freetime Collection and getting into the outdoor category
Full team helping us to produce more content
Did more organic/social giveaways to feature the community
Response to iOS - a solid app platform to build on.
Android 1.0 launched, contract developers are solid.
Cadence we have as a team is getting much tighter
Craft 3 is ready to launch.
Shop filtering improved the store experience.
Improved at Amazon with stock, FBA, and storefront.
Switched 3PLs without major issue.
Launch of our Freetime Collection
iPhoneX Battery Case shipping.

What We Want To Improve

Understand why people bought what trip.
Understand what tactics are working to lead to trip purchases.
More female guides
Getting trip assets in the can further before launch.
mFi program
Speed on soft-goods sampling
Holding suppliers more accountable on delivery schedules - more transparency on schedules and timelines and understanding the root of problems
Anamorphic Production
Get better at foreseeing smaller campaigns that may come up and take time away from other core goals
Get better at calling back to campaigns over time after they have launched
Delegation outside of the team (FW/HW) slows us down a lot.
Improving app launches from assets to content
Schedule time to do more analysis/research/architecture work before a project.
Need and Android engineer and an additional iOS engineer
Support volumes and processes around Order emails.
Our returns Process
Post-purchase Experience
Pre-orders / back-orders status updates
Customer self-service tools
Website page speed

GOALS

Once the teams had a chance to go through their last four months we got together as a whole company and scored our goals.

We used a modified format of the OKR system. At the company we have three goals for the year with markers for each trimester. While at the team level they have multiple goals, each measurable, that we believe move us closer to the top three company goals. And within each team goal, there is a short list of objectives that if executed should help to deliver the goal. Therefore teams score each goal between 0 (did nothing) to a max of 1 (accomplished the goal). This allows for us to consistently deliver 0.6-0.7 of our goals.

Collectively this was one of our best trimesters yet, hitting 69% of our goals. This means we found the right balance of set goals that make us stretch while delivering on a majority of that stretch effort.

DAY 2

We start every morning with a self-service breakfast followed by customer service before jumping into our first team session. Everyone on the team does customer service so staying current during the offsite is always a team effort.

Generally, on the second day, our sessions are about making us stretch. They help us get out of the day to date to think about scaling Moment. And because we spent T1 discussing how we grow our revenues, we spent this offsite discussing how we scale the team.

What Should Moment Accomplish

The first session of the day was thinking big about what Moment should accomplish in 2019 and 2020. Without providing anything other than the question...what should we accomplish, groups of 4-5 brainstormed ideas.

A random list of things people think we should accomplish...

2019

Subscriptions.
Retail distribution.
In-app distribution.
Multiple photography apps.
A great return process.
Guerilla marketing.
Supporting young creatives.
Mobile photography awards.
Master classes.
Being invited to phone launches.

2020

Moment stores.
Entry priced lenses.
Donating to a cause (like 1%).
$100M in revenue.
Selfie lens.
Ability to recycle our products.
Really good at advertising.
Content creation studio.
Feature film.
Top 50 grossing app.
Brand goes beyond just mobile.

Once we did this exercise we changed the exercise to what Moment has to prove over the same time period. Proof is generally tied to business proof which is a different way to look at the same time period.

The team settled on...

2019

Growth - our continued growth rate is always the most important proof point.
Frequency of purchase - proving we are more important in people's lives, while better understanding our customer payback window.
Scaling the team - moving from product owners to business unit owners.

2020

Growth - again this is the most important metric but also showing our revenue streams broaden beyond just our gear.
Members - proving we can go from a CPG to a marketplace business.
Cash - moving to a free cash flow model.
Scaling the teams - have sub-teams within teams.

DAY 2

What Should Moment Accomplish

A random list of things people think we should accomplish...

2019

Subscriptions.
Retail distribution.
In-app distribution.
Multiple photography apps.
A great return process.
Guerilla marketing.
Supporting young creatives.
Mobile photography awards.
Master classes.
Being invited to phone launches.

2020

Moment stores.
Entry priced lenses.
Donating to a cause (like 1%).
$100M in revenue.
Selfie lens.
Ability to recycle our products.
Really good at advertising.
Content creation studio.
Feature film.
Top 50 grossing app.
Brand goes beyond just mobile.

2019

Growth - our continued growth rate is always the most important proof point.
Frequency of purchase - proving we are more important in people's lives, while better understanding our customer payback window.
Scaling the team - moving from product owners to business unit owners.

2020

Growth - again this is the most important metric but also showing our revenue streams broaden beyond just our gear.
Members - proving we can go from a CPG to a marketplace business.
Cash - moving to a free cash flow model.
Scaling the teams - have sub-teams within teams.

Scaling To 100 People

The second session of the day was about brainstorming how the company could scale to 100 people. We ran this exercise with the existing teams which is an easier model for people to think about is it relates to scaling our current structure.

First, we asked everyone to think about two different organizational models to support 100 people. This resulted in a variety of options...

C-suite
Functional structures
Cross team structures
Business unit structures.

The biggest take away was the realization that each person can lead a max of 3-7 people depending on if the structure is functional (like minded people) or cross-functional. It helped to give the group a frame of reference for how to organize 100 people into multiple groupings.

We did the exercise a second time, this time each team had to pick their preferred, how they would hold each team accountable, and account for 100 people. This time the groups came back preferring a business unit based structure over a functional one because of how you can hold people accountable. Under a functional structure, it's harder to hold the teams accountable for delivering their results.

But out of the second session we talked about a few important aspects...

How can functions develop within a business unit structure?
Consistency across teams - especially for technology and brand which can touch multiple teams.
Decision making within teams

After half a day of creative sessions, we took off for a hike around Merritt Lake.

DAY 3

Apple announcement day. This is always a hectic day as we find out if the rumors are true or not. But since the iPhone portion of the event doesn't start until 11 am we started the day with an ROI framework discussion.

ROI FRAMEWORK

We are looking to create new product and service categories that deliver new revenue streams, market differentiation, scale, and a return on capital. And in order to build this ability into our DNA, we've created a simple framework we can use to go after new market segments. These are not feature refinements to an existing Moment category, but instead, provide us with a way to think about new segments.

We broke into teams, each picked an idea for a new category and ran through this framework to punch holes in the process.
At a high level, the framework includes...

1. Concept
We leave this phase with a deeper understanding of what we would build, why, and how. Can we create an offering that wins in the market? Under 4 weeks, costing under $10K.

Team: is the team excited to start this project?
Competition: can we have a differentiated pov in the market?
Product: do we think there is a killer feature we can build 1.0 around?
Feasibility: technically understand difficulty at 60-70% confidence level.
Plan: a rough cost and timeline to prototype and 1.0

2. Sellable Prototype
We leave this stage with a working prototype that we can use internally, with a beta team, or through pre-orders that gives us confidence that customers will buy 1.0. Can we create a product people will pay for? Under 12 weeks, costing under $50K.

Team: is the team excited to ship this?
Customer: is there interest, high engagement, or pre-orders?
Market: do we clear, unique offering from existing solutions in the market?
UX: do we have a clear POV on the user experience for 1.0?
Technically: are we 90% certain we can build the core features for 1.0?
Plan: do we have a detailed technical plan, budget, and rough ROI for 1.0?

3. Ship 1.0
We ship 1.0 version of the offering. It has paying customers and positive reviews. Should we invest further to make 1.0 better? Under 12 weeks, costing under $100K

Team: is the team excited about continuing to work on this?
Customer: are they paying, using, and not returning the offering?
Quality: at least 4 stars with minimal returns and customer service issues.
Market: did or announcement get enough traffic, views, or positive sentiment?
Plan: do we have a detailed technical plan and budget for continued investment?

We took a break to watch the Apple announcement.

CROSS TEAM BRAINSTORMS

For the first time, we used time at the offsite to bring teams together to work on cross-team ideas. These are projects we've been talking about for a while but haven't spent the time diving into them.

We took an hour to go through the following...

1) User ID -> Memberships
Talking through how we join shopmoment with our mobile apps so we have one customer ID across them all. This work will lead us to Moment memberships.

2) Free -> Paid Content
Talking through what it would take to get to paid content which could be used with a Moment membership and subscription business.

3) Holiday Collections
Talking through a series of holiday product collections we're launching to ensure nothing is missed on the details.

COMPENSATION 2.0

At Moment our compensation philosophy is based on a comp model, which rewards people as they improve at their craft. The first version had five levels and was built around how people solve problems. Agnostic of functions we're looking for people to develop repeatable frameworks for solving hard problems, documenting, and delivering solutions that others can build upon.

We discussed the 2.0 version of our compensation which will move from problem-solving to ownership. As you take on more ownership within a team and company your compensation increases.

With this 2.0 framework in mind, the team did two brainstorms.

1) Within Teams - discussing what would be expected from Level 1, 3, and 4 with a cross-functional team the groups uncovered that ownership and consistency across teams is a concern.

2) Within Functions - Secondarily we did the same exercise in functions, allowing the teams to think about the same levels for functional ownership.

The combination of the two discussions will solidify our 2.0 Compensation plan.

After a long day of discussions and Apple announcements, we took a break for an almost sunset hike. Our attempt to drive to the top of a mountain was stalled near the peak because of the local forest fires. Instead, we ended up driving a long ways to end the day at the local lake.

DAY 4

The last day of the offsite is always long. The teams spend all day creating goals and organizing their work for the next four months. T3 is always our largest trimester as we go into our busy holiday season.

Before getting started we reaffirmed our our team wide T3 goals...

Revenue > $7.5M (stretch goal of $10.7)
Brand Reach > 850K
Gross Margins > 55%

The group then broke into teams and worked on their goals. This is a long process of discussion, planning, and prioritizing. In the end, the teams came back with...

Marketplace: 7
Content: 13
Gear: 8
App: 7
Travel: 6

The offsite aside we ended the day with a heavy heart. We lost a @moment team member. After a courageous battle with cancer, his time was up. We shed a lot of tears, shared some needed hugs, and appreciate the rest of the evening together.