The Operator Problem: What Startups Face After the MVP

## The Big Idea Every tutorial teaches you how to get started. Almost none of them teach you what to do after the MVP, once your company depends on the thing you built. That gap is what I've been calling The Operator Problem - and if you're running into it, congratulations. It usually means you did something right. Last time, I wrote about [rebuilding Craftwork's first product without stopping the business](https://mikebifulco.com/newsletter/stangler-fig-pattern). This is the problem hiding underneath that story. ## When our Twilio integration quietly broke When we first set up texting at [Craftwork](https://craftwork.com), we did everything by the book. We followed Twilio's docs to the letter: create the account, install the SDK, send a test message. A few seconds later, an engineer's phone buzzed. _Hello, World!_ If you've built software, you know that feeling - the little jolt of joy you feel the first time something you cobbled together actually works. Today, our Twilio…