When the Startup Becomes the System: Knowing When to Move On

It’s been just over nine years since I left Stupid Cancer. Some days, it feels like a lifetime ago. Other days, like yesterday.

There’s a moment in every startup or early-stage nonprofit when the chaos starts to calm. When whiteboards become roadmaps, Slack turns into org charts, and the gritty, figure-it-out hustle gives way to polished processes and official departments.

For some, it’s a long-awaited relief. For others—people like me—it’s a sign.

I joined Stupid Cancer (fka i[2]y - I’m Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation) when it was scrappy. Our ideas outpaced our resources, our passion outran our capacity, and we thrived in the unknown. I wore every hat, from operations and events to tech and merchandise. One month I was leading a 10-city road trip; the next I was negotiating vendor contracts or troubleshooting a donation form at midnight. It was unpredictable, unscalable—and I loved it.

But as we grew, something shifted. We built structure. We added roles and layers. Things that used to be a quick chat became committee decisions. Processes got cleaner—but also slower. We were doing the right things for a maturing organization. And I was proud of that growth. I had helped build it.

Still, I started to feel it in my gut: this wasn't the same work anymore.

I realized I was more comfortable in the ambiguity. I thrived when we were making it up as we went, when the mission and the hustle were inseparable. I was energized by building, solving, and stretching. But in the newly formalized environment, I felt like I was maintaining, not creating. There was less space for improvisation. Less mess to clean up. Less adrenaline.

That’s when I knew it was time.

Leaving wasn’t easy. Stupid Cancer was family. It shaped who I was as a professional and as a person. But staying would have meant resisting the very progress we had worked so hard to achieve.

I find purpose in uncertainty, in figuring it out before it’s figured out. And that’s not something to fight—it’s something to follow.

So, I stepped away. Not because I didn’t believe in the mission anymore, but because I had helped bring it to a place where someone else—someone better suited to stability—could take it further.

Nine years later, that decision still feels right.

P.S. No matter where I go or what I build next, I will always carry a deep love for Stupid Cancer. It’s in my DNA. The mission, the people, the memories—they travel with me. Always. Make a donation, here.

Migrating from Volusion to Bigcommerce

The Beginning

In March 2012, I stepped into the ecommerce world and launched a Volusion store for my non-profit, Stupid Cancer. I understood the basic functions of ecommerce, and felt like I could figure the rest out as I went. My expectations were pretty accurate, and found that navigating the unknown was a lot of fun. I picked Volusion because a colleague of mine had found success with their platform, and like any other digital software vertical, there were so many options. The sales started, issues that popped up along the way were remedied, and before I knew it, I had a successful online store.

Remember when you learned how to drive? That sense of confidence that followed? Before you knew it, you wanted to go faster.

Enter Bigcommerce: I received a solicitation to take a tour of their product by a Bigcommerce sales rep. I found myself building a carbon copy of my store on their platform within the first hour, and noticed the little things that were different than what I had been used to. I found myself building out shipping rates by weight, and entering those pesky sales tax rates by county. (Thanks a lot for that, by the way, New York State. #sarcasm)

I have to insert here that Volusion did get me off the ground with a very generous 80% discount. So, while Bigcommerce was unable to offer the same discount, I felt like I was getting much more in personal back and forth e-mails with their team, along with some on-boarding conference calls.

So here I am, with the holidays approaching rapidly and a steady flow of orders coming in, planning to abandon ship with Volusion and start on a new course.

I had everything pretty much built out on BC when it came time to flip the DNS. I say pretty much, because you’re never really ready when it comes time to go live.

Going Live

To my surprise, my new store was online about two hours later, and the orders resumed. A critical step here is to put your old store into maintenance mode, and have your provider restore it back to its original(demo) URL. Luckily, I was headed to a conference for the days following, so I had some downtime to watch the fallout, which ended up being related to the following:

301 Redirects

This is arguably the most important thing you will need to do. With a new ecommerce platform comes a new URL structure. For example, http://store.com/productname could end up being http://store.com/product-name. Anyone who searches for your product and clicks on your old URL will get a big old “Page Not Found.” Bigcommerce makes it easy to point potential customers in the right direction.

Shipping Rates

You probably set these up once and then left them alone, right? With Bigcommerce, I had an issue where I capped off my shipping rates at 2 pounds, without a price for anything heavier. This resulted in customers not being able to proceed with checkout. Make sure you test everything thoroughly, and let customers get in touch with you easily. (Install a “Contact Us” tab.)

Payment Processor

I was operating under the assumption that I had a relationship outside of Volusion with Authorize.net.  I plugged in my payment gateway info into my new store, and subsequently learned that it would be a breach of contract if I moved forward with that setup. I investigated my options, and found that PayPal Pro is a very nice solution if you're already accepting PayPal payments in your web store. It's a seamless application, and you get the great service that PayPal provides. (It's important to note that you can use a new Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce. You cannot use your Volusion Authorize.net account with Bigcommerce.)

Moving Forward

Once I had everything pretty much straightened out, I focused on getting my product offering back up to 100%. A new store offered the opportunity to audit my product images, descriptions, etc.

Having been live on Bigcommerce for a few weeks now, I am much happier with the mobile version of my store, and am seeing a lot of mobile checkouts. I was also happy to see that a lot of my favorite tools integrate just as well, if not better, with Bigcommerce. Check them out on the Bigcommerce App Store.