as the country scrambles to send employees home amid the coronavirus pandemic — and the tech industry is already preparing for how to survive the upcoming turmoil.
For one thing, "the speed of change has been much faster than the other ones," Strom noted. That's a situation that will present specific challenges to startups looking to quickly adapt to a fast-changing economic landscape. Here are the five pieces of advice that the group has for company leaders navigating a looming coronavirus-driven economic downturn: Bernee Strom remembers exactly where she was during 9/11 - a board meeting in Boston, about to have a group of banks refinance the debt of her company Polaroid. The very next day, the banks pulled out of refinancing the deal, she said, forcing the company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Scott Dorsey, who eventually sold his company Exact Target to Salesforce, noted that his company was well-prepared to handle the 2008 recession precisely because it had cash on hand. This even allowed the company to avoid layoffs, he said. "We really doubled down on our existing customers," Dorsey said. "We shifted organizational resources to caring for customers, making sure they were healthy and making sure they are growing and really trying to deepen those relationships.Brad Feld of the Foundry Group tackled advice from a slightly different perspective, as one of the two investors in the group.
And Strom added that communicating with employees in the tech industry was especially important. "Tech is unusual because people are very happy to take lower salaries or no cash compensation in some respects if they really...you find that they really believe in the vision and the product," Strom explained. "Your employees become very loyal and very committed to get the thing done.
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