Startup Survival Guide: Thriving in Uncertain Market

Buckle up, startups. With extreme uncertainty from the macroeconomic environment, it will take equally extreme discipline to run your businesses. This applies to well funded and less well funded startups. Enterprise customers will further tighten their budget, spend more time in navigating their own operations in the current environment versus focusing on cool stuff, and will have less appetite in experiments and pilots.What can startups do with the current market backdrop?

➡️ Your product must solve a real problem and has strong value proposition.

➡️ Manage finance, do forecasts, preserve cash to ride this market out. Have a strong finance and accounting partner.

➡️ Do not raise more than necessary to support feasible growth because the market will be unforgiving with a big or messy capitalization stack relative to fundamentals.

➡️ Be maniacal in doubling down on what is working and make those even better.

➡️ Be obsessed with customer service and success.

➡️ Only hire those who truly can roll up the sleeves and do the best work in a startup environment.

➡️ Do not run out of cash. Think about how to generate sustainable profit by building strong unit economics.

➡️ Assume it will probably take 6-8 months to fundraise.

➡️ When finding investors, ensure your investor has high conviction, strong engagement, and will be there for you and your company in all market conditions.