More cheery views on the economy

24th October 2008

Here’s the presentation top-tier US venture capital firm Sequoia Capital just gave to all its CEOs. It’s pretty grisly, talking about a 15 year downturn.

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession)

Their solution for its portfolio companies (slide 53):
- Perform situation analysis
- Adapt quickly
- Use a zero-based budgeting approach
- Make cuts
- Review salaries
- Employ a heavily commissioned sales force
- Bolster balance sheets
- Become cash flow positive as soon as positive
- Spend every dollar as if it were your last

This pretty much follows exactly a presentation I was at earlier in the week, where a top financier said that businesses could forget about growth - everyone was in survival mode for the next couple of years at least. He said that in most cases, people leave tough decisions about making cuts too late. It was a far better mistake to cut too soon and too much than too little too late.