Angel Investor Ron Conway Adresses His Portfolio Companies Over Financial Meltdown

Great advice. I think the $10MM number for needed "cash in the bank" seems a bit high. I think this is better looked at as a "months of runway" number (which he also refers to).

I'd say that you should either be extremely cash-efficient (burn is almost inconsequential), or have 12-24 months of cash in the bank to weather the storm. Or, of course, being profitable is great too (but then, you essentially have an infinite amount of runway).

If Silicon Santa is worried, I'm worried too.

I can envision internet ad execs dripping sweat reading: "...even if it means staff reductions and reduced marketing expense..."

I'm curious to hear what PG and others may think, is it worth it to take the hit for early stage startups now. Give up more equity than normal to get guaranteed money in the bank- even though these same startups still had the same leverage they had 3 months ago?

I wonder if TechCrunch got permission to publish this. The subject line reads "IMPORTANT PLEASE READ ASAP ...REGARDING CURRENT MARKET CONDITIONS...Confidential". It's not confidential any more.

Most of his "advice" is just stuff you "should" be doing anyway. If you can "scale down" costs, then you were already "spending" too much.

Also, he sure "loves" quotation marks.