Starting - Friday, June 30, 2006 9:12 - 0 Comments

For micro-ISVs, Murphy is your first customer.

Here’s a tale of woe every single micro-ISV should read and take to heart: a Web 2.0 micro-ISV with 90,00 users wiped out.

Two days ago CouchSurfing experienced what could be described as the perfect storm. The database administrators we hired made two critical mistakes. First, we had a major, avoidable hard drive crash. Secondly, the incremental back-ups weren’t executed in the correct manner, and twelve of our most important data files didn’t survive.

I have been working non-stop trying to repair the data, but as difficult as it is for me to say, it has become clear that certain essential pieces are not recoverable. This crash happened at a particularly vulnerable time, in a transition between two back-up methods. If the crash had happened a week ago, or next week, we would have had a different outcome.

It is with a heavy heart that I face the truth of this situation. CouchSurfing as we knew it doesn’t exist anymore. We’ve had an amazing two and a half years.

The bottom line here for you is your micro-ISV is that you had better have a long hard look at your business practices (or lack thereof), risk assessment (or total lack thereof) and start getting into the habit of remembering that your first customer is Murphy, like in Murphy’s Law.

(more on this: Web 2.0 Crashes: When Eyeballs Don’t Pay The Hosting Bills