Meridian's company brain

Standard customers: refunds up to $50 are auto-approved. Above $50 requires Head of Operations sign-off (currently Marcus Reed). VIP members: refunds up to $100 are auto-approved. EU customers: all refunds are auto-approved regardless of amount due to local consumer protection laws. All refunds are logged in the billing system with a reason code. Policy updated Q3 after compliance review.

New vendors must complete a security questionnaire, provide proof of insurance ($2M minimum), and pass a financial stability check before any contract is signed. Legal reviews all contracts over $10k. Procurement owns the workflow in Coupa. Process typically takes 3–4 weeks end to end. Checklist template owned by procurement — contact procurement@acmecorp.com to initiate.

P1 (system down / data loss): first response within 4 hours, resolution target 24 hours. P2 (major feature broken): first response within 8 hours, resolution target 3 business days. P3 (minor issue / workaround available): first response within 1 business day, resolution target 7 business days. SLA clock starts when ticket is received, not when assigned.

Stripe was replaced as the primary payment processor for EU customers in Q2 2023 due to VAT compliance complexity under EU OSS regulations. Adyen was selected as the EU processor following a 3-vendor evaluation. Stripe remains active for US and APAC transactions. All new EU payment integrations must use Adyen. Contact finance for API credentials.

Renewals under $25k ACV are owned by the Account Manager. Renewals above $25k ACV involve both the AE and AM — AE leads commercial negotiation, AM leads relationship. Legal must be looped in 60 days before expiry for any contract with custom terms. Renewal tracker is maintained in Salesforce. CSM flags at-risk accounts 90 days out.

Books close on the 5th business day of each month. AR reconciliation is due by day 2, AP by day 3. Finance holds a 1-hour sync on day 4 to resolve discrepancies. Final P&L is shared with leadership by EOD on day 5. Controller signs off before distribution.

All visitors must sign in at reception and be escorted by a full-time employee at all times. Temporary badges expire after 24 hours. Contractor badges require manager approval and are reviewed monthly. Permanent badge access is provisioned by IT on day one of employment.

QBRs are held in the first two weeks of each quarter. Department heads submit decks to Chief of Staff 5 days before the session. Format is 15 minutes per department: 5 minutes lookback, 5 minutes current quarter priorities, 5 minutes asks. CEO facilitates. Notes distributed within 48 hours.

Customer data is retained for the duration of the contract plus 2 years. Financial records are kept for 7 years per regulatory requirements. Employee records retained for 5 years post-employment. Deletion requests processed within 30 days. Engineering owns the deletion tooling.

On-call engineer pages the team lead within 5 minutes of detection. A war room is opened in Slack (#incidents). Status page updated within 10 minutes. Customer comms go out at 15 minutes if customer-facing. Post-mortem is required within 48 hours of resolution. On-call rotation is weekly, documented in PagerDuty.

All PRs require at least one approval from a senior engineer before merge. PRs touching the payments or auth modules require two approvals. CI must pass including unit and integration tests. PRs over 400 lines of diff should be broken up — reviewers may request this before reviewing. Stale PRs (7+ days) are auto-flagged in Slack.

Deployments happen Tuesday and Thursday between 2–4pm ET only. No deploys on Fridays or the business day before a major holiday. Engineer deploys to staging first and monitors for 30 minutes before promoting to production. Rollback procedure: revert the merge commit and redeploy. On-call must be notified before any unscheduled deploy.

Migrations affecting tables with over 1M rows must be reviewed by a staff engineer before running in production. All migrations run during off-peak hours (10pm–6am ET). A backup snapshot is required before any destructive migration. No migrations are permitted during the monthly close window (days 1–5).

Critical vulnerabilities (CVSS 9+) must be patched within 24 hours. High severity (7–9) within 7 days. Medium within 30 days. Security team is notified of all critical and high findings immediately. External researchers can disclose via security@meridian.com. Bug bounty program is run through HackerOne.

Weekly on-call rotation starts Monday at 9am ET. Handoff call is required between outgoing and incoming on-call (30 min). Outgoing engineer documents all open incidents and known fragile systems. If the on-call engineer is unavailable, the team lead is the backup. PagerDuty is the system of record.

Discounts up to 15% can be approved by the AE independently. Discounts between 15–30% require VP Sales approval. Anything above 30% or involving non-standard payment terms requires the CFO. All exceptions must be logged in Salesforce with a reason code before the deal can close. No verbal approvals accepted.

Expenses must be submitted within 30 days of purchase via Expensify. Meals over $75 per person require manager approval and a business justification. All travel must be booked through TravelPerk. Software purchases over $500 require IT pre-approval. Reimbursement is processed within 2 pay cycles of submission.

Budget planning kicks off in October for the following fiscal year. Department heads submit bottom-up headcount and opex requests by November 1. Finance consolidates and presents to leadership by November 15. Board approves final budget in December board meeting. Any mid-year budget changes over $50k require CFO approval.

SaaS purchases under $5k/year can be approved by the department head. $5k–$25k requires Finance approval. Over $25k requires CFO sign-off and a vendor security review. All software must be added to the SaaS inventory in Productiv. IT must be notified for any tool with SSO or data access requirements.

Day 1: IT setup, Theo orientation, team lunch. Week 1: role-specific tool access and buddy assignment. 30-day check-in with manager and HR. 60-day check-in to review onboarding progress. 90-day performance conversation with documented goals. Onboarding checklist lives in Notion and is auto-assigned via Rippling on hire date.

PIPs are initiated by the manager in consultation with HR. A 30 or 60-day timeline is set based on severity. Goals must be specific, measurable, and documented in writing before the PIP starts. Weekly check-ins are required throughout. Legal review is required if the employee is in a protected class. All documentation retained for 3 years post-employment.

Promotions are considered twice per year in June and December review cycles. Managers submit a promotion packet with performance evidence, peer feedback, and a level justification. Calibration sessions are held cross-functionally to ensure consistency. Offers are communicated within 2 weeks of calibration. Compensation changes are effective the first of the following month.

Manager notifies HR and IT on the employee's last day notice. IT revokes all system access within 24 hours of final day. HR conducts an exit interview. Payroll processes final paycheck including accrued PTO. Equipment return is coordinated by IT within 5 business days. Knowledge transfer document required for senior roles.

All enterprise opportunities above $50k ACV are qualified using MEDDIC. Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion must be documented in Salesforce before moving to Stage 3. Deals without a confirmed Economic Buyer cannot advance past Stage 4. AEs review open pipeline with manager in weekly 1:1s.

Customer-initiated redlines must be sent to legal@meridian.com within 24 hours of receipt. Legal has a 3-business-day SLA for standard MSAs. Non-standard liability caps or IP ownership changes require General Counsel review with a 5-day SLA. No contract can be signed without legal clearance. DocuSign is the only approved signature tool.

At contract signature, the AE completes a handoff document covering: use case, key stakeholders, success metrics, committed features, and any side agreements made during the sale. A 3-way intro call between AE, CSM, and customer champion within 5 business days. CSM takes full ownership at kickoff. AE remains available for executive escalations for 90 days.

Commissions are calculated on the 1st of the month following a deal close. AE receives 8% of ACV for new business, 4% for expansion. Accelerators kick in at 100% and 120% of quota. Disputes must be raised within 10 business days of the commission statement. Finance approves final payout before processing.

A DPA is required for all customers handling personal data of EU, UK, or California residents. The standard Meridian DPA is pre-approved and can be signed without individual legal review. Customer-modified DPAs require General Counsel review. Sub-processor list must be updated within 30 days of adding a new vendor. Current list maintained in the legal wiki.

All employees and contractors sign an IP assignment agreement before starting work. Any invention related to the company's business is automatically assigned to Meridian. Employees must disclose prior inventions at onboarding. Open source contributions require manager and legal approval. IP schedule is reviewed annually by the General Counsel.

Data subject access requests (DSARs) must be acknowledged within 72 hours and fulfilled within 30 days. Deletion requests are processed within 30 days. Engineering executes the technical deletion; Legal confirms compliance. All requests are logged in the privacy request tracker. Legal escalates any ambiguous requests before responding.

Features are scored using a RICE model (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) tracked in Linear. PMs submit scoring with supporting data from Mixpanel and support tickets. Engineering lead provides the effort estimate. Leadership reviews the top-10 backlog in the monthly roadmap sync. Customer-committed features are automatically elevated regardless of RICE score.

Beta features are gated by feature flags in LaunchDarkly. PM selects up to 10 design partner accounts for initial rollout. Feedback is collected via in-app survey and fortnightly calls. Beta exits to GA when NPS exceeds 40 and no P1 bugs have been open for 14 days. Marketing is notified 2 weeks before GA for release prep.

All feedback from Intercom, NPS surveys, and support tickets is reviewed weekly by the PM team. High-severity feedback from enterprise accounts is escalated to the Head of Product within 24 hours. Feedback is tagged and tracked in Productboard. Customers who submit significant feedback receive a follow-up response within 5 business days.