https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-897688-1-1.html YC这周给所有自己投资的founder发了一封公开的警告信。措辞之严厉，已经有一段时间没有见过了。 看版上没什么人讨论这个话题，估计大部分人还是觉得事不关己 - 毕竟YC投资的目标大多数还是以B轮之前的公司为主，与我何干。但我觉得YC一定比一般人得到更多信息，了解更多经济的情况。考虑到这封信里有很多具体的指标和结论，还是值得一读，同时也可以为未来2-3年的经济情况大概做一个预期，并为此早做准备。 TLDR 中文总结版： 1. 开门见山，经济不好。要求公司为最坏经济状况做准备（按照上两次经济危机的规模做准备 - 提到了缩减开支，所以裁员。。跳槽。。）。 2. 公司应该做好24个月都融不到钱而且不破产的准备。（有多少上市公司2年不发债，不增发股票，账上现金活不过2年？） 3. 融资环境和市场环境与过去5年将大为不同。（是否也可以认为18年那种规模的经济动荡，hiring freeze，在YC看来和未来几年比都是小case？） 4. 过了A轮但还没找准市场定位的公司，不会再融到钱了。 5. 如果计划未来6-12个月融资，大概率融不到任何钱。（同理 - 计划未来6-12个月IPO的公司，instacart, stripe, quora, reddit等） 6. 现在能拿钱就赶快拿，哪怕估值不理想。活下来最重要。（同理 - 公司会强行上市，但是一定流血） Greetings YC Founders, During this week we’ve done office hours with a large number of YC companies. They reached out to ask whether they should change their plans around spending, runway, hiring, and funding rounds based on the current state of public markets. What we’ve told them is that economic downturns often become huge opportunities for the founders who quickly change their mindset, plan ahead, and make sure their company survives. Here are some thoughts to consider when making your plans: 1. No one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don’t look good. 2. The safe move is to plan for the worst. If the current situation is as bad as the last two economic downturns, the best way to prepare is to cut costs and extend your runway within the next 30 days. Your goal should be to get to Default Alive. 3. If you don’t have the runway to reach default alive and your existing investors or new investors are willing to give you more money right now (even on the same terms as your last round) you should strongly consider taking it. 4. Regardless of your ability to fundraise, it’s your responsibility to ensure your company will survive if you cannot raise money for the next 24 months. 5. Understand that the poor public market performance of tech companies significantly impacts VC investing. VCs will have a much harder time raising money and their LPs will expect more investment discipline. As a result, during economic downturns even the top tier VC funds with a lot of money slow down their deployment of capital (lesser funds often stop investing or die). This causes less competition between funds for deals which results in lower valuations, lower round sizes, and many fewer deals completed. In these situations, investors also reserve more capital to backstop their best performing companies, which further reduces the number of new financings. This slow down will have a disproportionate impact on international companies, asset heavy companies, low margin companies, hardtech, and other companies with high burn and long time to revenue. Note that the numbers of meetings investors take don’t decrease in proportion to the reduction in total investment. It’s easy to be fooled into thinking a fund is actively investing when it is not. 6. For those of you who have started your company within the last 5 years, question what you believe to be the normal fundraising environment. Your fundraising experience was most likely not normal and future fundraises will be much more difficult. 7. If you are post Series A and pre-product market fit, don’t expect another round to happen at all until you have obviously hit product market fit. If you are pre-series A, the Series A Milestones we publish here might even turn out to be a bit too low. 8. If your plan is to raise money in the next 6-12 months, you might be raising at the peak of the downturn. Remember that your chances of success are extremely low even if your company is doing well. We recommend you change your plan. 9. Remember that many of your competitors will not plan well, maintain high burn, and only figure out they are screwed when they try to raise their next round. You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive. 10. For more thoughts watch this video we’ve created: Save Your Startup during an Economic Downturn. .и Best, YC
看版上没什么人讨论这个话题，估计大部分人还是觉得事不关己 - 毕竟YC投资的目标大多数还是以B轮之前的公司为主，与我何干。但我觉得YC一定比一般人得到更多信息，了解更多经济的情况。考虑到这封信里有很多具体的指标和结论，还是值得一读，同时也可以为未来2-3年的经济情况大概做一个预期，并为此早做准备。 TLDR 中文总结版： 1. 开门见山，经济不好。要求公司为最坏经济状况做准备（按照上两次经济危机的规模做准备 - 提到了缩减开支，所以裁员。。跳槽。。）。 2. 公司应该做好24个月都融不到钱而且不破产的准备。（有多少上市公司2年不发债，不增发股票，账上现金活不过2年？） 3. 融资环境和市场环境与过去5年将大为不同。（是否也可以认为18年那种规模的经济动荡，hiring freeze，在YC看来和未来几年比都是小case？） 4. 过了A轮但还没找准市场定位的公司，不会再融到钱了。 5. 如果计划未来6-12个月融资，大概率融不到任何钱。（同理 - 计划未来6-12个月IPO的公司，instacart, stripe, quora, reddit等） 6. 现在能拿钱就赶快拿，哪怕估值不理想。活下来最重要。（同理 - 公司会强行上市，但是一定流血）
Greetings YC Founders,
During this week we’ve done office hours with a large number of YC companies. They reached out to ask whether they should change their plans around spending, runway, hiring, and funding rounds based on the current state of public markets. What we’ve told them is that economic downturns often become huge opportunities for the founders who quickly change their mindset, plan ahead, and make sure their company survives.
Here are some thoughts to consider when making your plans: 1. No one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don’t look good. 2. The safe move is to plan for the worst. If the current situation is as bad as the last two economic downturns, the best way to prepare is to cut costs and extend your runway within the next 30 days. Your goal should be to get to Default Alive. 3. If you don’t have the runway to reach default alive and your existing investors or new investors are willing to give you more money right now (even on the same terms as your last round) you should strongly consider taking it. 4. Regardless of your ability to fundraise, it’s your responsibility to ensure your company will survive if you cannot raise money for the next 24 months. 5. Understand that the poor public market performance of tech companies significantly impacts VC investing. VCs will have a much harder time raising money and their LPs will expect more investment discipline. As a result, during economic downturns even the top tier VC funds with a lot of money slow down their deployment of capital (lesser funds often stop investing or die). This causes less competition between funds for deals which results in lower valuations, lower round sizes, and many fewer deals completed. In these situations, investors also reserve more capital to backstop their best performing companies, which further reduces the number of new financings. This slow down will have a disproportionate impact on international companies, asset heavy companies, low margin companies, hardtech, and other companies with high burn and long time to revenue. Note that the numbers of meetings investors take don’t decrease in proportion to the reduction in total investment. It’s easy to be fooled into thinking a fund is actively investing when it is not. 6. For those of you who have started your company within the last 5 years, question what you believe to be the normal fundraising environment. Your fundraising experience was most likely not normal and future fundraises will be much more difficult. 7. If you are post Series A and pre-product market fit, don’t expect another round to happen at all until you have obviously hit product market fit. If you are pre-series A, the Series A Milestones we publish here might even turn out to be a bit too low. 8. If your plan is to raise money in the next 6-12 months, you might be raising at the peak of the downturn. Remember that your chances of success are extremely low even if your company is doing well. We recommend you change your plan. 9. Remember that many of your competitors will not plan well, maintain high burn, and only figure out they are screwed when they try to raise their next round. You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive. 10. For more thoughts watch this video we’ve created: Save Your Startup during an Economic Downturn. .и
Best, YC