Last week, @uenodotco announced it was being acquired @twitter. While that's super well deserved and great news for digital agencies, it seems like it didn't happen for the best reasons: https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1346291029012574217

A small thread.

1) 2020 has been hard for everyone, even for a company like Ueno that's top of the market, considered a reference by almost everybody in the industry. But, reading through Halli's thread, what surprises me is how fast the company went "down".

2) Being a Founder myself, I know how hard it is to run a business. No question about that. But I think it's worth to share a bit of how we handled it at @pixelmatters_.

3) By the beginning of March, the first news started to appear. In a matter of days, we've created a contingency plan and decided to have everyone working remotely. We even shared our contingency plan publicly: https://twitter.com/pixelmatters_/status/1238432128431505408

4) By March 16 we were all at home, national lockdown. On that day, I've made this communication to our entire team: https://blog.pixelmatters.com/blog/confidence-and-optimism-internal-communication-culture-march-2020-pandemic-covid-19

5) In the midst of an unprecedented crisis, my intuition as a leader told me I should do, or say something. The goal was simple: to provide some sense of security. Turns out it was probably the best communication I've made in my career thus far.

6) On it, I wrote: "financially, Pixelmatters is a company managed in a "conservative" way. Since day one, we follow a pretty basic rule, but sometimes ignored: try to have more revenue than costs."

Luckily, this goal has been achieved in 98% of the months since we exist as a company. This allows us, now, to look at this possible worldwide crisis with strong confidence.

(...) For years now we're not waiting for a client to pay an invoice in order to pay a salary. Even if the "world drops on us", we've solid foundations that will allow us to keep navigating in turbulent waters.

This privileged position that we've been conquering also enables us to make strong decisions to support you, which are definitely who matters the most, especially now."

7) This is a result of a combination of good profit margins and strict financial management over the 7yrs the company exists. Every year, we plan thinking that something could go wrong. Simply put, it helps me to sleep like a baby (when my actual baby allows).

8) From the moment this communication was made, we've our hard times. By June, we've had lost two of our biggest clients, which represented ~40% of our revenue back then. We've had some people leaving, but we were also hiring.

9) It was hard, but we didn't have to make any layoffs nor we were at risk of collapse. Far from it. In fact, our company health allowed us to look at this crisis as an opportunity, which included a rebranding which is coming soon: https://twitter.com/pixelmatters_/status/1347249318160379904

10) I remember reading a great article from @eladgil which was fundamental to our strategy going forward. Elad wrote: "You will need to make a series of offensive and defensive moves to deal with this new environment."

http://blog.eladgil.com/2020/05/startup-offense-and-defense-in-recession.html

11) That's what we've done. During the harder months, we've made tough decisions like a salary freeze. But we also invested in the development of some of our complementary teams like Marketing, People Ops and Sales.

12) The vision is still the same: "Use this period as an opportunity to re-organize and re-structure, so we grow more sustainably, with full assurance on the quality of our work. We want to be in great shape when the storm passes. And it will pass."

13) Right now, the feeling is of...confidence and optimism. We're having a solid start to 2021. Acknowledging the economy won't still be in full speed, I'm hopeful it will be a recovery year.

14) I'm proud of our resilience and flexibility to react to an adverse situation, but most of our ability to stay calm, withstanding the pressure with emotional balance, even when the world seemed to be "collapsing".

15) As for the overall success of our approach...check this thread back in one or two years. By then, we'll know if decisions made in 2020 were good.