00:00I'd say the toughest decision, we had several hundred people who worked for 18 months to launch something called Etsy Studio, which was a marketplace for craft supplies.
00:10And it makes sense, actually, that people on Etsy, buyers and sellers, would be interested in craft supplies.
00:16But I didn't think we needed a whole separate marketplace doing that. I thought we could do it as part of the core of Etsy.
00:20So we had a few hundred people work for 18 months to build Etsy Studio.
00:26I joined on a Friday. It launched on Tuesday, and I shut it down that Friday.
00:33And that was very painful for the whole staff. But ultimately, I think it was the right decision.
00:39How do you kind of make that hard decision and then keep the team motivated and steering in the same direction?
00:47It was really hard, but I think being very transparent about how you made the decision and why you made the decision and what the larger purpose is.
00:54So first, anchoring everyone around the larger purpose, that our sellers need us to be doing the things that drive their sales the most.
01:02That's the most important thing, and it's urgent right now. And that's going to require sacrifice from us.
01:08How do we measure that? We measure that by what we call gross merchandise sales or their sales.
01:13And then saying, I'm going to be rigorous about picking the fewest things that will drive their sales today.
01:19And this project, while it's an exciting project, our own estimates suggest it's going to take three years before that contributes materially to our sellers' sales.
01:30And they don't have three years to wait.
01:33And so while it was very painful for the hundreds of people who were working at Etsy, we serve the millions of sellers who count on us every day.
01:42And in service of that larger mission, we need to accept this sacrifice.
01:45And so while it's going to be a little bit more, we need to accept this sacrifice.
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