Founder Lesson: When to Fire a Customer

Unfortunately, I just had to *fire* a customer for the first time at @hello_iamelliot, & it wasn't an easy thing to do.

Considering the tremendous amount of money & time spent on Brittany Chavez & Shop Latinx, here's why we did... https://twitter.com/britchavez/status/1263661383800901633

Since SLX started, Elliot's gone above & beyond to support its cause.

On 11/6/2019, after 6 months of building on Shopify, she came to us with 0 progress & had an 11/20/19 SLX launch date.

No web designs or business foundations were presented to us at any time at this moment.

Without charging any design or migration fees, in addition to moving up our Marketplace feature, we completed a full Marketplace feature in less than 14 days & SLX launched its marketplace.

Note, at this point we're only 1.5 months old as a platform, having launched 10/14/2020.

As our relationship grew, we mutually agreed that Brittany had restrictions that were preventing her, and SLX's growth.

It's disappointing to hear her say that *we don't care* about her business when from the beginning, I:

Paid $500, via CashApp, to Brittany to properly incorporate SLX to better position it for their upcoming venture fundraising.

Donated, to Brittany, a 2019 MacBook Pro, given she was borrowing various laptops from friends & family, and did not have one to run her business.

We, as a company, began to see instances and evidence of this popping up in January and February of 2020, despite her tweets about our company and her *mistreatment* from our company since December of 2019.

Additionally, as with several up & coming founders in eCom that are on Elliot. Our company, when approached by Brittany, signed a $20,000 SAFE on 02/06/2020 (see attached), to lead her pre-seed round with a $7M cap. Note, she had also made less than $10,000 USD at this point.

All the while, SLX had a dedicated 24/7 customer support representative from January 2020 through the end of March 2020.

Note Elliot's a free platform to use & also in Beta (launching June 19, 2020).

Given Elliot's in Beta, we provide, and always will provide, 24/7 support to 1,000+ early adopters from every country.

Working together to improve the UI/UX of the platform & on-board, train, and resolve any & all bugs that arise from being an early-stage software company.

Moreover, I personally provided Brittany marketplace *playbooks* from FarFetch, Orchard Mile, and other marketplaces I had worked on & worked with her on developing her vendor agreements.

Currently, vendor agreements do not appear to be in place, nor safeguards.

Despite that effort, Brittany would harass our team via Intercom, SMS, email & would continuously badger customer support despite having 24/7 support & a fellow start-up equally invested in her success.

On March 25, 2020, the harassment had reach peak & our customer support team continued to express their unease at managing SLX on a daily basis.

At that point, I sent Miles Montes, an SLX co-founder, a recommendation to move from Elliot & back to Shopify (see attached).

This was my founder's lesson & *mistake*.

Which was under enforcing my recommendation, which should have been a *termination* given the amount of stress, lack of professionalism, & under-appreciation our team had been exposed to by SLX.

Since March 26, 2020, the relationship with SLX has deteriorated & this morning I've sent my first ever termination email to a customer as a founder.

Here's what I learned...

Protect your team at all costs
Set clear boundaries with customers
Setup community guidelines on bad behavior
Setup guides for managing tough situations
Trust your gut

As a Latino, it's unfortunate to terminate a customer that supports a community I'm racially bound to.

Moreover, a brand we supported, wanted to see succeed & was a case study for us.

I sincerely wish SLX the best; however, we've reached an impasse & have to part ways.