We realized that as a company promoting community living, we needed to foster positive relationships with cities rather than adopt a confrontational stance.

We made mistakes in defining our content policy, but enforcing it ultimately improved the platform and set us on a path to recovery.

Our early debate about the quality of data on Facebook led us to prioritize clean and accurate information, which helped establish a reliable platform that users could trust.

Listening to user feedback and delivering what they ask for has been crucial to our success, as seen in our launches on platforms like Hacker News.

After a few weeks, I quit the cleaning job because I wasn't learning anything new, but it gave us confidence that we were on the right track with our platform.

When we opened our platform to a wider audience, we found that self-selection by users led to better engagement and feedback than our initial closed beta approach.

Over time, we learned that certain questions we asked were indicators of whether a cleaning professional would be a good or bad performer on the platform. This insight came from data collection and analyzing responses.

With my return, we redesigned the site, moved Reddit onto mobile, and focused on building a sustainable business model.

After facing significant setbacks, we took back control from our investors and focused on learning from our mistakes to develop a better product.