Two engineers cut a live auction timer from 7 seconds to 3 while shoppers watched
The seller wanted to move product faster, and the fix took a setting change and a refresh.
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career · This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)Tom Verrilli, chief product officer at Whatnot, was in his second week at the company when he sat in a room watching a live auction. Whatnot is a live stream shopping platform where sellers run auctions on live video, and shoppers bid and chat in real time.
The seller running this show was getting impatient. The clock was giving shoppers seven seconds to bid, and the gaps between sales were dragging. The seller said the sales were taking too long, and added, "I wish this 7-second timer was actually 3 seconds cuz I want to move more product."
What happened next showed Verrilli what building for live shopping could mean. Two engineers in the office looked at each other and said the timer was just a setting in the software, what engineers call a config. They adjusted the setting right away, then jumped into the chat for that show and told shoppers to refresh their apps. The shoppers refreshed, and bang, the auctions were running on three seconds instead of seven.
The sale was using a format called sudden death, in which the auction simply ends when the timer ends. That is different from a classic auction, in which a bid in the last five seconds adds 10 seconds back to the clock, and sellers on Whatnot can decide which auction model they want.
For Verrilli, the moment landed because he had spent about a decade working on live products, where he could ship something and then watch a customer try it for the first time. Here a complaint became a product change before the show was over. He recalled thinking, "Cool. I'm with my people. I'm in like the right place."
He said that was the level of responsiveness you can get in a live environment, and that AI means that kind of quick change is now easy for many more people to take on.
Questions people ask
Why would a seller want a shorter auction clock?
A shorter clock lets a seller run more auctions per hour, which can mean more items sold and more energy in the show. It works best for low priced, fast moving goods where shoppers decide quickly.
Isn't it risky to change software in the middle of a live sale?
Yes, it can be, because a mistake could freeze bidding or disconnect shoppers. A change to a simple setting, like a timer value, is much safer than changing the underlying code. Teams that do this usually keep the change small, reversible, and easy to test in seconds.
How is sudden death different from the classic auction format in the story?
In sudden death, the auction ends exactly when the timer ends. In the classic format described in the story, a bid in the last five seconds adds 10 seconds back to the clock so others can respond.