What turbulent times suggest for young ventures
I have been asking several expert mentors what advice they would give to early stage ventures in to-day’s turbulent times. Here is what they said:
- Expect customers and investors to delay decisions in the short term; but these things will take at least two years to sort out, so some kind of new norm will return to fill this gap.
- Cut development work that does not support the core competency of your business model.
- Get more from customers (and less from funders): don’t refrain from recruiting.
- Understand your revenue and expense streams and tailor the size of your organisation to a [cautious] estimate of future funds.
- Funding rounds are getting tighter and squeezing founders; and funders are requiring a good business case that includes ‘deeptech’ (IP), and not just break-even but also a handsome regular income from trading.
- You are entrepreneurs: look for new opportunities – in a slightly more conservative world.
John Whatmore, June 2016
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