A sincere plea to founders and CEOs of established tech companies. We need your help!
Nov 30th Update: Breaking News!
We have had our first #Pledge to #Payitforward from www.NetSfere.com (a fast-growing secure messaging and collaboration platform). The CEO and team reached out to me on the back of this blog and have been very generous by giving 6 months of complimentary access to their platform to Start-ups (very relevant to Fintech’s with Banking/Insurance clients) . Note: We have over 37,000 Fintech’s in the GrowthEnabler community who would save time, money, and much needed resources by signing-up to this gracious offer. A massive thanks #NetSfere.
If you’d like to support this cause, then reach out to me and we’ll jointly share the message to thousands of start-ups in the global community.
#MakeaPledge #Giveback #Payitforward
Please Make a Pledge!
The next generation of start-ups could be wiped out by this pandemic in just a few months. Your compassion, generosity and support could change the course of destiny for many start-up founders. We need you to dig deep within … and think back to your early days in your start-up. It was hard, gruelling in-fact. Building a business is tough. We learn to cope with the ups and downs. We start to make friends with uncertainty. We never give up! And that’s exactly what founders are doing today, but the enormous weight of the pandemic is fast draining all energy resources. It’s like a cancer, eating away at the healthy cells. A vaccine is needed to help start-ups survive and get through this difficult time.
Why I am writing this and why now?
The Pandemic has created chaos and stress amongst the global start-up founder community. Cash flow reserves are near empty, and tens of thousands of ideas and innovations are at risk of being completely destroyed. This is bad for the entire tech fraternity. We thrive via our dreams and survive the tough times by connecting with our higher sense of purpose, fuelled by our passion and unshakable belief that our hard work and determination will eventually help us realize our dreams. As a start-up founder, an investor, and global champion of tech – I have come to realise the real importance of communities. The Tech Community is unlike any other. We have the world’s best minds, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors – all working together to transform humanity and make lives better.
We now need key members of this global community to help protect our start-ups and founders (those most impacted by the pandemic).
We all have a duty to do all we can to support each other during this difficult time.
Who needs our help?
There are over 500,000 funded start-ups (from seed to post series B rounds) on the planet, and 248,656 are what are known as emerging (or early stage) start-ups. These companies are at ideation and seed stage. Usually teams of 3-10, working hard to either launch or roll out a prototype product into the market. The best and most disruptive ideas are born at this stage. It is where the ‘hidden gems’ are created. And it is also the most volatile stage of a start-up’s lifecycle. Typically, these emerging start-up’s experience a 30-50% mortality rate (varies based on region of origin and maturity of ecosystem) Those who make it to the next level of growth end up raising higher levels of investment (series A round $2-7m).
As it stands today, research tells us that emerging start-ups i.e.: early hubs of innovation and breakthrough products – will suffer the most because of the pandemic. And need our help.
The other group are ‘Scaling’ Start-ups. There are 241,468 of them out there. These are 3-7 years old companies. They have typically raised a Series A investment round ($3-7m). Often, they are revenue generating but will have low / no profits, as they are still investing big on tech and product development to increase market adoption. Scaleups also invest their capital in hiring new talent and marketing aggressively to build global brand awareness. These startups are under threat too – and are actively (but reluctantly) cutting cost where possible.
Source: GrowthEnabler Market Insights, Oct 2020.
What kind of altruism (aka, good karma !) would be helpful?
These emerging and scaling start-ups are struggling to keep afloat and doing all they can to preserve cash. Revenues have slowed down or even stopped – albeit temporarily. Running costs are high. Cost optimization is the default approach. And the product development capital pot is drying up fast. They cannot necessarily raise new venture money as it’s likely they will see their valuation decline and will have to give away more share equity to new or existing investors (aka a ‘Down-round’). This situation is deeply frustrating and demotivating for founders, early employees and even early investors. It needs to be avoided.
To have any chance of survival we (established tech companies) need to offer our support to these start-ups, ideally by reducing their stress and cost pressures. Many of these start-ups spend money on SaaS tools (products established tech companies sell – Zoom, Dropbox, Google Suite, PowerBI, AWS, Azure etc etc) and have rolling subscriptions (that they are now downgrading, cancelling or unable to pay). Products in the messaging, collaboration, analytics, and email space are common spend items – and account for hundreds if not thousands of dollars / pounds / euro’s a month in spend.
Having spoken to hundreds of start-ups via the GrowthEnabler platform – and conducted analysis on their financial, leadership and business traction using scoring algorithms, we believe any form of financial support and commercial altruism could make a huge difference and help to keep these start-ups alive (albeit with lean teams and even in stealth mode) and give them a fighting chance to survive and grow in the near future. #GOODKARMA
So, if you have start-ups as customers, or are targeting the start-up community to sell your products, a heartfelt request. Pls do all you can to offer any financial support to these start-ups.
What sort of altruism would be appreciated?
Payment holidays. Free Access for a few months. Discounts. Re-seller partnerships. At strategic level it could be worthwhile exploring joint ventures or even acquiring a start-up that has synergies. It all helps. This is a critical time and presents all involved with big opportunities. Your actions and decisions will help you will build immense brand loyalty, trust, and win market share in the medium term.
I know how proud and committed founders are. They will never give up and ask for such help. So, we are doing this on their behalf (unsolicited). Pls do whatever you can. I am happy to collaborate and even share your ‘altruistic’ gesture of goodwill with the start-ups on the GrowthEnabler Platform so we can make a real impact, not just locally but globally.
The perils of inaction are severe and it’s our duty to help our fellow start-up founders do what we all do best. ‘Challenge the Status Quo’ – Steve Jobs.