Economic downturn in SV
シリコンバレーがこの状況（不況）を経験するのは、初めてではありません。
投資家としては、今まで経験から、何を自分の投資先にアドバイスし、一緒に状況を打開できるのか
投資先の身になってどれだけ考えることができるかが非常に重要だと思います。
それらは今まではVCや投資家の頭の中で活躍していたのだと思いますが、今の世の中だとそれがネットに出回り、
誰でもそこから無料で学ぶことができる、貴重な先人の知恵を受け取ることができる。
ベンチャーキャピタルのSequoiaが投資先のCEOたちに送ったという資料がこちら。
Joiもこのプレゼンをブログに掲載しつつ、「パニックしてはいけないよ」と忠告しています。
Sequoiaは投資先全部を集め、全部で約100人のCEOたちが集まって会議を行ったといいます。こんなことを行ったのは、ドットコムバブル崩壊の時以来らしい。そして、今回の影響は15年続くのではないかと予想しています。
出席者がとった議事録も公開されています。
Sequoia to CEOs: “Get Real or Go Home.”
For those of you that are not cash-flow positive, get there now. Raising capital is nearly impossible if you’re too far off of cash flow positive.
赤字の会社は黒字化が急務。資金調達は不可能に近くなるだろう。
M&A will decrease dramatically and only lean companies, with proven sales models will be acquired.
M&Aは激減し、スリム化されかつ収益モデルが確立されている会社のみが買収されうるようになる。
Manage what you can control. You can’t control the economy, but you can control everything else.
経済はコントロールできないが、自分の会社はコントロールできる。コントロールせよ。
Cut spending. Cut fat. Preserve Capital.
コストを下げろ。資金を残せ。
Make changes, slash expenses, cut deep and keep marching. You can’t be a general if you turn back.
コストを削減し、進み続けろ。振り返るな。
Don’t trust your models and spreadsheets. All assumptions prior to today are wrong.
今までのモデルや試算を信用するな。今日以前の前提はすべて間違っていると思え。
In a downturn, aggressive PR and Communications strategy is key.
不況時には、ＰＲ・コミュニケーション戦略が重要である。
Focus on quality.
クオリティを重視せよ。
o Engineering: Since you already have a product, strongly consider reducing the number of engineers that you have.
エンジニアリング：エンジニアの人数を減らすことを検討せよ。
o Product: What features are absolutely essential? Choose carefully and focus.
プロダクト：真に必須な機能に集中せよ。
o Marketing: Measure everything and cut what is not working. You don’t need large Product Marketing, Product Management teams.
マーケティング：すべてを数値化し、うまくいっていないものは捨てろ。プロダクトマーケティング・プロダクトマネジメントのチームはスリム化せよ。
o Sales & Business Development: What is your return on this investment? The Valley has gotten fat with Sales people: Big bases, big variables. Cut base salaries on sales people, highly leverage them with upside (increase variable) and make people pay for themselves via increased sales productivity. Don’t add sales people until you’ve achieved your goals with sales productivity. Be disciplined.
営業・ビジネスディベロップメント：基本給をカットし、成功報償を多くすることで、多く売れば多く給料が入るしくみにせよ。営業効率があがるまでは、営業マンを増やすな。
Death Spiral (Nobody moves fast enough in times like these, so get going and research later.)
o The death spiral sucks you in, you’re in it before you know it and then you die.
o Survival of the quickest.
o Cutting deeper is the formula for survival.
o You should have at least one year’s worth of cash on hand
「死のスパイラル」は知らないうちにやってくる。早く動いた者のみ生き残れる。調べ物は後でいい。まず動け。メスを深く入れた者が生き残れる。1年分のキャッシュを手元に残せ。
Assess your situation. Drop your assumptions, start with a blank page and start zero-based budgeting.
自社の現状を分析せよ。すべての前提を捨て去り、白紙から、ゼロベースで試算せよ。
Spend like it’s your last dollar.
金を使うときは、最後の1ドルだと思って大切に使え。
Get Real or Go Home.
Ron Conwayが自分の投資先のCEOたちに送ったメールもTechCrunchに掲載されています。
Angel Investor Ron Conway Emails His Portfolio Companies Over Financial Meltdown
2000年に状況が酷似していることと、その時期を経験しているRon Conwayの生、そしてストレートなアドバイス。
資金調達は難しくなるぞ。コストを下げ、生き残れ、と。
ただし、彼はシリコンバレーのイノベーションがなくなるわけではなく、投資はやめないと言っています。
One thing Ron made clear in a conversation with me today. He’s not worried about the state of innovation in Silicon Valley, and he isn’t going to stop investing. He’s not pessimistic about the future of technology at all. What he is concerned with is protecting the portion of his portfolio companies who don’t currently have a large cash position to weather a storm, and he’s sharing his experience from the last downturn to help them through this one.
ただし、現在キャッシュが少なく嵐に耐えられない可能性のある投資先について、自分の経験からアドバイスを行っているとのこと。
The message is simple. Raising capital will be much more difficult now.
You should lower your “burn rate” to raise at least 3-6 months or more of funding via cost reductions, even if it means staff reductions and reduced marketing and G&A expenses. This is the equivalent to “raising an internal round” through cost reductions to buy you more time until you need to raise money again; hopefully when fund raising is more feasible. Letting go of staff is hard and often gut wrenching. A re-evaluation of timelines and re-focus on milestones with the eye of doing more with less will allow you to live many more days, and the name of the game in this environment in some respects is survival–survival until conditions change.
資金調達は難しくなる。コストを下げ、人員削減・マーケティング/G&Aコストを下げることになっても3－6ヶ月もつようにして、資金調達がしやすくなるまでの時間を稼げ。タイムラインの見直し、マイルストーンへの集中で生き残れ。
資金調達サイクルにいるのであれば、すぐに調達し、なるべく多くの資金を調達せよ。資金調達が難しそうということがわかったら、コスト削減を必ず行え。If you are in a funding cycle, you should raise your funding as soon as possible and raise as much as possible but face the fact that if you can’t raise money now you must cut costs.
下記は2000年に送ったメールの抜粋。
You must aggressively examine and pursue M&A opportunities (unless you have over 12 months of cash reserves!) ro insure you have critical mass (including funding, customers, rolodex power, market share, cash, synergy, etc.).
12カ月分のキャッシュがあるのでなければ、M&Aの機会は積極的に模索すべき。
4. Be realistic on valuations - they will fall so be ready and willing to co-operate.
バリュエーションについては現実を見ろ。バリュエーションは落ちることが見えているので受け止めるように。
5. Look for corporate partners to invest so you can raise more money. You should also consider a sale of your company to your corporate partners.
パートナー企業で投資してくれるところを探せ。パートナー企業が買収してくれるならそれも検討すべき。
。。。というわけでさっそくSeesmicのLoic Le Meurは社員の1/3（7人）を解雇。
実はこの解雇策、FONのMartin Varsavskyが春に社員の100人中40人を解雇した経験から、アドバイスしたものらしい。
My advice to other start up CEOs: the Fon experience
Last Spring we cut our burn rate at Fon. We reduced our head count from close to 100 to 60. It was painful. It was sad. But it had to be done. Since then Fon has grown faster than ever. Not because the people we let go were not doing anything. Quite the contrary, they had been doing a lot. But many times a start up is about first building a platform and then managing it. And just as it takes hundreds of people to build an office building but less to run it it also takes less people to run a platform like Fon than it took to build it. Bottom line is that when we went from 100 people to 60 we managed to grow revenues faster than ever before and to cut losses from over 1 million euros per month to 350 thousand. We also grew to one million foneros around the world. Our revenues grew from 20K euros per week to 50K and the good news is that these sales are mostly cash into the company (Fon is like a telco without capex or opex). What we also achieved is to stretch our investor´s money into 09 and to need a very small round to break even.
40人の人員削減以降、コストが月100万ユーロから35万ユーロに落ち、会員も増え、売り上げも2万ユーロ/週から5万ユーロに増え、burn rateを70％落とすことができたという。
My advice to CEOs of start ups then it´s tough, really tough, but it is to do what we did at Fon. We cut our burn rate by 70% mainly by reducing headcount, raising revenues, raising margins, and particularily by raising margins on the sale of the foneras themselves which we used to give away practically for free. In our case we discovered that the free mentality of the internet was not especially good for a wireless community as most people who got their routers for free did not connect them while those who paid were more serious about the whole thing. Moreover we are now about to raise the rates we charge Aliens who connect to Fon. Partly because we need the money but also again to show the value of becoming a fonero and share and never have to pay. We only charge $2 per day while other WiFi companies charge way over $10. Plus the value of our passes increases as we have more hotspots. Fon now has 10 times more hotspots around the world than our second closest rival. In the UK and Japan our coverage is especially good. With this crisis Fon cannot think of deep pocketed investors continuing to cover high burn rates, regardless of the fact that our investors are BT, Google, eBay, Itochu, and some of the largest VCs in the world. eBay for example today announced that they are letting go 10% of their workforce and this is probably the beginning of many job reduction programs that will happen in the next 12 months at the big companies.
人員削減以外で重要だったのは、無料でFONルータをばらまくのをやめたこと。無料で入手した人は実はつながず放置していたりして、有料で買った人の方が真剣に考えて使ってくれるということもファインディングのひとつとして共有されています。
