01
Problem and crux
Smily maintained a simplified product for individual homeowners alongside its core platform. It represented under 10% of the business, yet a roughly 20 person engineering organisation still had to account for it. Four support staff were dedicated to the product.
02
Assumptions to test
We examined the product's commercial contribution, the engineering overhead created by parallel maintenance and whether its support team could serve a more constrained part of the organisation.
03
What I did
As Head of Product and a member of the Executive Committee, I worked with the CEO and COO on the decision. I made the case for sunsetting the product and for retraining its support team before redeployment.
04
Evidence and result
Engineering no longer needed to maintain two substantially different products. Four experienced support staff moved into the capacity constrained core support organisation.
05
Relevance to AI safety operations
Mission driven organisations face real opportunity costs. This case shows that I can identify work with low marginal value, make a difficult stopping decision and move people toward a genuine constraint.