As I rub the sleep from my eyes I think, “This is the day”. We are getting over all our bugs, everything is going to go well, and the app is starting to get some traction. Thank goodness, today is going to be a GREAT day. I’m hoping that the majority of our issues are behind us and the only thing to do is finally, make some money. Whew, it’s about time.

Customer emails start coming. “I cannot access ByteStand this morning, its asking me to re-subscribe”. Huh? And another, “Why is the app asking for my info again? I’ve already put it in.” Wha?

After a couple more emails I get in touch with Nafaa. “Nafaa, why are these folks getting asked for their credentials again? What’s wrong? Can you look this person up please?”

Nafaa jumps on it quickly , and just as quick gets back to me. “This is odd, I can’t find them in the database. I roll my eyes, “Come on man, this is a paying customer. I know they are in there.” Exasperation growing.

Nafaa replies, “No, Todd, they aren’t in there. Something is wrong.” I ask Nafaa to investigate further, and he comes back to me. “Todd, there is no one in the database, no customers at all.”

This HAS to be a mistake, we have over 200 downloads at this point, there is no way that the database is empty. I ask Roman, my sys admin, to take a look. He made some updates over the weekend, and may have forgotten something. I know we are backing up the database daily, so there really shouldn’t be a problem. I’m frustrated, but not concerned. That is until Roman comes back to me and says we have no database.

That’s impossible, we have backups. Just restore from a backup. Roman replies, “I don’t know how.”

F*ck me. This cannot be happening, the guy I hired to keep a careful eye on my servers, watching over them like a new mother, tucking them in at night and waking them up refreshed the next day has just told me that basically he went out drinking and forget his baby somewhere downtown. Holy shit.

My frustration has turned into complete dread, the pebble in my stomach has turned into Mt. Everest, and I just want to cry. We are brand new, everything is just starting to click, we have paying customers and now they all have to start over. How am I going to let everyone know? How am I going to get their money back? Should I just shut down? How in the world am I going to get through this?

I have no idea.