If Times Are Tough — Don’t Hide. Be Present.
When facing a tough year or slow growth, the natural instinct for founders is to hide and grind in silence. However, being present for customers, employees, and investors is crucial to maintaining momentum and navigating through the crisis.
Hopefully, you’re well-funded enough to ignore all the VC and public market drama these days. Hopefully, things are going great. These are still the best of times for B2B overall, even if AI is slamming so many established leaders who … haven’t taken leadership in the Age of AI.
I hope so.
But the reality is, a lot of you have had or will have a rough year. Even a Year of Hell. We all have at least one. I sure did.
And for most of us, there’s one natural reaction: Hide. At least a bit. Put your head down, and grind it out. Try and get that one more customer in the door. Push harder. Analyze that data more. Cut everything quietly. Lay low and just “focus” until you can get growth back on track. Stare at that monitor, until you figure it out.
It’s natural, but please, don’t do that.
As a startup, there are few things more important than Being Present:
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Your customers need to believe. They didn’t just buy your product once. They repurchase it every month, every year. And more importantly, they are invested in you. They run their business on your platform. They need to see you out there. In the media. In the news. On a Zoom. At your customer event. Your second-order revenue engine still needs to work. Even if sales cycles have slowed down. OK, you missed the plan. But ultimately it’s your customers that beget you more customers. Don’t cut here. In fact, do the opposite. The worse the miss this year, the more you need to go talk to your customers. Do 20 Zooms a week with customers. Make sure that the revenue you ended the year with at least renews as a cohort. You at least know how to make your customers happier.
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The team knows it’s not all Daisies and Unicorns. They know. Startups are a journey. Everyone knows there will be ups and downs. They are looking to the founders and CEOs to guide them through the rough patches. You probably should hide some of the very worst news in some cases, at least. But be direct on what the new goals are, the new plan is, and how you are going to get there. And engage everyone with their best ideas.
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Your investors need to know you have a plan. Maybe they can invest a little more, maybe they can’t. But they know things are hard. What they need to know is there is a plan to get through it, and what that plan is. Don’t stop sending investor updates. Share a plan forward, and they will most likely follow you there.
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Lead from the front. If you aren’t the first one out there … no one will believe. It’s hard when times are tough. Find a way. It does matter if you are seen as a leader in your industry. It makes everything easier. Hiring, marketing, retention, fundraising, everything. So do whatever you can to keep momentum going, even if revenue has cooled off. Show up to that webinar. Keep doing PR. Do all the podcasts you can. Keep the positives of your brand up. It’s your job to make your company remain as much of a leader as you can — at least to your customers and in your vertical and industry.
We’ve all been there. I hid a few times. I still do sometimes, just … only briefly. But I tried at least to always still Get Out There. Win that Award. Get on that show. And close that Important logo that the team loved … even if the revenue itself wasn’t that material.
Be Present. Bridge the gap between one great year and the next year at least in part by getting out there.
Source: SaaStr
