This is a personal reflection on the toughest day I never imagined.
My team had a great holiday. Hytch Rewards has been hitting on ALL CYLINDERS and a very talented team came to work today, relaxed and ready for our typical challenges and a SHORT work week.
We were FLAT NOT READY for today. I failed to prepare us for the unthinkable.
Our world blew up at 4:50 am CST when the Southeast data center for Microsoft melted down. What? All our servers are in their data center! That facility DOES NOT FUNCTION as I write this note to our customers.
They say “severe weather” caused a power surge… How do you prepare for Microsoft to be unprepared?
It looks like they have no failover strategy for their data centers. Of course, and I’m sorry to say, neither did we.
Every Hytch ride failed today. Every single one - nationwide. As I write this, we still don't know when Microsoft will recover from their outage. There was nothing we could do about it.
To our customers:
Were you surprised? I was.
Were you expecting more? I was.
Were you frustrated when you could not invite your co-workers to Hytch to work? I was.
Were you a little pissed off? I was.
But don’t tell my team - they thought I played it cool…
Every member of our team would join me in saying, “...we are so sorry.” We hate feeling helpless. In fact, the idea that we can find hope in motivating people to make smarter mobility decisions is what drives us!
Together, we are fighting climate change. We are fighting congestion. We are fighting to create hope!
We cling to the vision that something as simple as sharing a ride will change the world - one Hytch at time.
We are a learning organization. We will learn from this and be better tomorrow.
Thank you for supporting Hytch on our best days -- and our worst. Tomorrow will be better - we hope!
Mark Cleveland
CEO and CoFounder
