Eddie Lazarus
Appearances
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
Of course. A lot of us know a lot of people who have Sonos, and some of those people were having problems. I actually do know that I was in Europe at the time. I think I may even have been on a bike trip. But I got off my bike and started getting back into it.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
If I could sum up in just a few sentences, it would be, we tried to do too much Too fast. And we did not apprehend what would happen when we released all this new work into the wild.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
We discovered that with all the code that we had changed and all the work we had done, when the system got out into the wild, where you have people with a lot of old equipment and new equipment and mixed old and new equipment and good routers and bad routers and all kinds of other complexities, the performance was just not even close to the standard that we expect of ourselves or that our customers expect of us.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
And we disappointed our customers and we disappointed ourselves.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
We'll never do that way again. And in retrospect, of course, it was a mistake. But we thought we had a new modern app that was ready to go. And we wanted to give the benefits of that app to our customers as quickly as we could. And frankly, we should have acted with more humility. And that's one of the absolute number one lessons learned. And as I said, we won't be doing that again.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
The headphones came out shortly thereafter, and we wanted the new app out into the marketplace in advance of the headphones. Now, we delayed the launch a couple of times while we continued to work on the app to get it to a place that we felt it was ready to go. But again, we misjudged.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
And those headphones are a fantastic product, and the app, unfortunately, has been, up until recently, a bit of a cloud over it.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
Well, we've had 22 new software releases since then, and we had a dedicated team, and still do, that does nothing but think about these performance and reliability issues and how to fix them. Now we're over 90% of the features that we're missing. It's just been the number one priority of the company.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
Well, when you say fixed, not every single feature that was in the old app is in the new app. Almost all of them are. On many of the performance metrics, we're actually doing much better than the old app did. But there are a few cases involving a few of the older products where we're still having performance issues. There are a few other issues out there.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
So, again, we have our eye on not only getting to that parity bar, but to go well beyond it.
The Journal.
The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million
I really think there's only one way to fix reputational damage like that, and that is to show that we're doing the right things by our customers every day. And we're going to make our software and our experience better than anyone else in the field. And as people see that we're delivering on that, I certainly hope they'll give us another try. So we just have to win them back through action.