The Covid-19 barricade on startup runways

The ‘cash is king’ credo has never been more applicable to startups than in these difficult times. As startups plan their runways and funding positions, will venture capitalists have to play doctors and choose who lives and who dies?

Angel investors and venture capitalists are not considering new investments, but for entirely different reasons

There is a strong belief that seed-stage investing will pick up soon, but funding terms are not going to be generous

Venture capitalists fear there is going to be a severe funding crunch at the Series B stage and beyond

Enterprise-focused startups are now just as vulnerable as their consumer-focused brethren

As the world teeters on the brink of a dystopian nightmare triggered by the novel coronavirus pandemic, it is amply clear that startups, too, are now operating in a new normal. While most aspects of how things will pan out in this new world are still far from clear, the one piece of advice that seems to have become de jure is that, above all else, startups need to conserve cash.

AUTHOR

Sumanth Raghavendra

Sumanth is a serial entrepreneur with more than eighteen years experience in running startups. He is currently the founder of Deck App Technologies, a Bangalore-based startup attempting to re-imagine productivity software for the Post-PC era. Sumanth’s columns appear regularly in leading publications. He holds MBA degrees from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management, USA.

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