Articles
March 24, 2020

Modeling COVID-19’s Impact and Making Hard Decisions

Modeling COVID-19’s Impact and Making Hard Decisions

Realities are changing day-by-day as the impact of COVID-19 deepens. This is true for startups as much as it is the broader economy. Our portfolio companies — and entrepreneurs everywhere — are in the midst of making hard decisions to lead their companies, employees, and customers through these unprecedented times while extending runway to find success on the other side. Making these hard decisions is tough in a world where we don’t know how broad or deep COVID’s impact will cut. We shared an initial view on how startups might react in a post several weeks ago.

Last week, we hosted a webinar for our portfolio c-suite leaders on how to model COVID’s impact (Breadth and Depth) and what options to consider to manage cost structure and find runway. The webinar included our perspective that the crisis (from lockdown beginning to some level of normalcy) will be between 6 and 9 months, but possibly longer. We expect the “depth” — eg, impact on existing revenue at the bottom — to be highly dependent on the business model and industry but to range from a 0 to 50%+ decline for most startups. Of course, we hope both will be shorter/less, but we must plan and act for the worst.

You may find our framework useful in your own modeling and, moreover, in taking action to extend runway. You can find the webinar recording and the deck linked below.

Click here to listen to our webinar. (22 minutes)
Click here to access the presentation. (12 slides)

We expect to make more relevant webinars available soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out our Startup Resource Guide | COVID-19. With the vast amount of resources being created by organizations everywhere, we’ve been aggregating those we find to be most useful for VC-backed startups.

We know every day brings new challenges and choices. In a time with so much stress and uncertainty, our team is here to help. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. And, most importantly, stay healthy. Thank you for what you do.