By now, you have most likely read directly or have been forwarded the notes from Sequoia Capital's CEO All-Hands Meeting on Sand Hill Road yesterday. They had 100 of their CEO's in attendance yesterday. GigaOm did a nice job on covering the sentiment and Force of Good re-posted some notes
from the Funded.
The advice is eerily similar to what Mike Mortiz told me years ago when I was at Atom Entertainment. We had just closed a big round and we took steps to batten down the company for the nuclear winter called the Web 1.0 bubble burst.
I highly recommend that you read the Sequoia takeaways. There is a bunch of good advice in it. If I were to boil it down, then I would say:
- If you don't have adequate capital for 1-2 years, then act now on making your business smaller
- Even if you do (have adequate capital), focus on building a profitable business (and smaller)
- Do more with less - less is a smaller team, smaller budget, less initiatives (get good at your business)
I continue to believe that the teams and companies that view these periods as an opportunity will emerge out of this period as better, stronger, and building fantastic value for employees and investors.
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