As crisply shared by John Doerr at today's Web 2.0 Summit...requiring no embellishment:
- Don't take a meat cleaver to the core of your business; use a scalpel when making changes.
- Cut once, and cut deeper than you need to.
- Keep 18 months of cash flow, being conservative on cash flow from revenue.
- Defer facilities expansion – don’t spend money on tech or physical expansions.
- Reevaluate R&D priorities.
- Renegotiate all contracts that you have, even leases.
- Remember that everyone in the company needs to be selling the value proposition.
- Offer people equity instead of cash – e.g., equity bonuses.
- Secure the cash with things like government-backed securities.
- Figure out what the leading indicators are for your business so that you can react quickly when things don’t turn out.
- Communicate honestly with everyone, including all employees, and don’t sugarcoat things.
"Easy" enough, yes?
