The alarm bells are ringing in Silicon Valley and start-up land today with Sequoia Capital and Ron Conway telling companies to prepare for the economic meltdown and to raise cash by cutting their burn. This is not new news as being in New York we started to feel the real economic impact in mid-September as Lehman melted down and as Merrill Lynch was bailed out by Bank of America. This is all prescient advice and something I have been espousing to my portfolio companies for awhile – see my last post from mid-September on Doing More with Less, a mantra that all startups should live by. All that being said, it is not time to hit the panic button. Don’t go out and fire everyone wholesale and skinny down just because everyone else is. Do it because it is right for your business and because all of your leading indicators tell you to do so. Do it the right way by not making a 20% cut across the board but by thoughtfully thinking about your business, your priorities, and where you need to focus your capital and resources to grow your revenue but conserve cash.
The good news is that many companies I have seen have learned their lessons from the last bubble bursting and rather than subscribe to the "if you build it they will come" model have turned towards the "release early and release often" model of gaining customer traction sooner rather than later and at much lower costs than before. As I look at the current landscape, obvious areas of concern are any companies with high fixed costs and heavily reliant on direct sales whether it be advertising related or enterprise related. It is clear that for these big ticket sales that many corporations are in the mantra of doing nothing rather than doing something and that startups should adjust their budgets accordingly to reflect this reality. For those companies that live by the frictionless sales model and that are capital efficient with a low fixed cost base, take another hard look at your organization and priorities and haircut unneccessary expenses. Once you do all of that and feel that you have 18+months of runway, look on the positive side as there will be many great people on the market. Yes, cash is king and if you have it and conserve it, there will be some phenomenal opportunities to pick up some great talent.
