Product Thinking Edition - 3

Every autumn, we share a story that reminds us why technology still deserves a little fear. This one starts with an old database, a tight deadline and the belief that more users would fix everything. It didn’t.

The Legacy Database

When Maya found the old user database, it felt like a miracle. The quarter was slipping, the growth board was restless, and the new VP kept warning that without a million users, “big changes” were coming.

Buried inside a folder labeled Archive_FY19_DO_NOT_DELETE, she found it: hundreds of thousands of users, emails, activity logs, preference tags. It was immaculate.

“These are real people,” she typed in the team chat, grinning. “They already loved us once. Let’s make them love us again.”

By Friday, the Reactivation Revival campaign was live. Dashboards lit up. MAUs doubled overnight. Slack erupted in emojis and congratulations. Even leadership noticed. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” the VP wrote.

The euphoria lasted a week.

Then came the strange replies. Support tickets reopening from 2018. Messages about promotions no one remembered. One email read: It’s nice to be remembered, Maya.

She brushed it off — until the meeting invites arrived from deactivated accounts. The dashboard kept ticking upward, even at 3 a.m.

By Thursday, the metrics froze: flat, flawless lines. No dips. No spikes. Growth data never looked that clean. She told herself it was caching, a delay, maybe a reporting bug. Still, at dawn, she returned to the office to check the live data.

The place was silent, except for the faint hum of machines. 

Flicking on her monitor, the CRM welcomed her warmly: “Welcome back, Maya. It’s been 1,843 days since your last login.”

She frowned. That wasn’t right. The dashboard refreshed. Rows of user profiles filled the screen — each one her own face. First smiling, then slow fading into fear, eyes wide, mouth open mid-scream. She had on the same clothes  in every picture. The same clothes she put on that morning. 

A prompt appeared: [Sync All Accounts?] Beneath it, a flashing button: CONFIRM. She hesitated. Then, almost reflexively, clicked.

A low hum filled the room as the screen went black.

When the first team member arrived, her desk light glowed. Coffee still warm. Computer on. Logged in.

The CRM displayed record engagement: 1,000,000 active users.

At the top of the list — Maya. Repeated. Exactly one million times.

We hope you enjoyed this year's tale and the month’s content. But before that, we need to do this:

The Month in Tech & Product History: October Edition

1. The first Ford Model T rolled off the line and drove the world straight into the modern age — no horses, just horsepower. (October 1, 1908)
2. Sony released the first CD player, the CDP-101, turning cassette tapes into instant relics. (October 1, 1982)
3. The Twilight Zone premiered on unsuspecting viewers and reminded them the darkest places are usually in the mind. (October 2, 1959)
4. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, kicking off the Space Race and America’s national anxiety crisis. (October 4, 1957)
5. Instagram launched, teaching us that if it wasn’t posted, it might as well never have existed. (October 6, 2010)
6. Apple’s iPod slipped into pockets everywhere, sealing humanity’s pact with earbuds and endless playlists. (October 23, 2001)
7. Microsoft released Windows XP, an OS so iconic it turned a photo of a grassy hill into the most viewed image in history. (October 25, 2001)
8. The first NYC Subway line opened, shrinking the city above and spawning an ecosystem below. (October 27, 1904)
9. The Bitcoin whitepaper appeared online like a digital apparition — anonymous, revolutionary and impossible to kill. (October 31, 2008)
10. The Walking Dead premiered on Halloween, proving the real monsters were the friends we made along the way. (October 31, 2010)

Thank you again, and remember, be kind. 

Isabella & Chris

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