Managing through COVID-19: Advice to our TVP Founders and CEOs
03.19.20
Blog, News
By Tribeca Venture Partners
We recently shared the email below with our TVP Founders and CEOs. We also wanted to share this with our New York Tech community as we collectively work through this unprecedented time.
Good afternoon TVP Founders and CEOs. We hope this email finds you, your families, and teams as well as can be in these unprecedented times. We have been working with all of you individually but wanted to reach out with some thoughts and suggestions and provide an opportunity for all of us to leverage our collective knowledge and experiences.
1. Overreact in your planning
Overreact in your planning while remaining deliberate in your actions. We are on the Italian curve, and our testing is vastly undercounting the number of infected patients, meaning we are likely worse than the Italian curve. Statistically, we are about two weeks behind them. Yesterday alone, Italy had ~3,500 new cases and ~368 deaths. We know you are all taking this very seriously, and we do not want to be alarmist, but these are the facts.
2. Scrutinize your “sources and uses” of cash
Scrutinize your “sources and uses” of cash. Drawdown all available debt, and if you can raise equity, raise it. Liquidity is more important than dilution. If you can renegotiate with key vendors to preserve cash, do it. Note that Boeing Corporation drew down its entire revolving debt line last week. On the uses of cash, every dollar matters. Cash = time.
3. The key is to survive this shock and the aftermath
The key now is to survive this shock and the aftermath so we can capture the upside recovery. Growth rate in 2020 is not nearly as important as it was three weeks ago.
The entire TVP team is available to help any time, any day, any way. Working together, we will get through this. If anyone has a key lesson learned or thought they’d like to share hit reply and send it to us. We’ll put together a note pooling everyone’s knowledge and experience.
The TVP Team