Startup is like an invisible mesh of trust.
Akshay Sharma, CTO at Doc.AI
If you have a warm introduction, you are 13 times more likely to get funded.
Alice Wagner, managing director at the British Business Bank.
A crisis triggers a flight to quality behaviour amongst investors. The top quartile of startups typically gets the lion's share of the capital.
Arvind Purushotham, global head of venture investing at Citi Ventures
A startup is trying to find what works in a series of experiments, many of which fail.
Brad Feld, managing director at Foundry Group
A lot of things change in a crisis. As an investor, you are not really backing a business or a market in a crisis. You are backing the founders to find the right opportunities in the market.
Camilla Dolan, partner at Eka Ventures
As the crisis hit, we focussed a lot on ecosystem work and bringing people together. I felt like if we VC investors were lost, I couldn't imagine how founders felt.
Carmen Alfonso Rico, partner at Blossom Capital
Don't just do a pivot for the sake of attracting funding and or trying to show product-market fit for whatever you have. So I think the biggest question is, why should you pivot?
Chitresh Sharma, former CEO of Swipii
If you're in a fintech startup, where the team is young and visionary, you might be missing something, which is someone who's been on the block. Find a grey-haired person who has dealt with regulatory bodies.
Chris Skinner, author and nonexecutive director at 11FS
If you are in Europe, tap into government funding. It can be a good source of capital during a crisis.
Christophe Pechoux, partner at Consilience Ventures
A startup working with a CVC investor would need to be very good at building relationships not just with the person writing the cheque but also the business lines who could have synergies with their proposition.
Claire Calmejane, chief innovation officer at Societe Generale
Based on my own experiences, a lot of mental health issues boiled down to people not recognising and asking for help when they need it.
David Fogel, cofounder at ADV and Alma Angels
Your values are the lenses through which you see the world. And so for me, you've just got to stay true to what your values are.
David Brear, CEO at 11FS
Focus on the customer's pain; focus on wins for the customer.
Emma Maslen, vice president and general manager, EMEA & APAC at Ping Identity
They say great companies are built in times of crisis because if you survive that shit, you come out on the other side pretty lean and pretty mean.
Fred Destin, founder at Stride VC
A VC investor's job is to help manage crises. If everything goes well, nobody needs me.
Ganesh Rengaswamy, cofounder at Quona Capital
When you have legends on your cap table, and you have a good idea at the right time, it's pretty hard to mess that up.
Howard Lindzon, founder at Social Leverage
Founders really need a coach and a mentor to be the impartial third-party support systems.
Hussayn Kassai, CEO and cofounder at Onfido
True grit is kind. Resilience is the path; equanimity is the goal.
Jerry Colonna, author of Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (HarperCollins) and co-founder of the executive coaching firm, Reboot.io
As a woman entrepreneur, I knew how hard it's going to be. I knew that I wouldn't be able to do the marathon if I didn't invest in my mental health.
Joyeeta Das, cofounder and CEO at Gyana
A lot of money comes with a ton of expectations. When you raise a lot of money, you [must] become more careful and disciplined in terms of how you deploy that capital.
Kelvin Au, head of Ventures at Founders Factory
Experiences during a crisis can help us find a sense of perspective and rethink what we want to do in life.
Kunal Mittal, chief product officer at FrontM
I've learned that negative momentum is almost as powerful as positive momentum. We always need some kind of momentum. Up or down is better than flat.
Lizzie Chapman, cofounder and CEO at ZestMoney
I've told a number of CEOs to just reach out to me as a friend. Forget that I'm an investor, just call me as a friend, share with me the uncertainties that you're facing as a person and as a leader of an organisation.
Manuel Silva Martinez, general partner at Mouro Capital
As the crisis unfolds, the messenger is often as important as the message.
Mari Sako, professor of management studies at the University of Oxford
A lot of success is based on whether or not the founder is able to tough it out to a certain point with things. This makes it imperative for founders to keep a lookout for their mental health.
Mary McKenna, expert advisor to the European Commission
Even something as simple as putting an out-of-the-office and saying, I'm not available or blocking your calendar can be the modelling behaviour that the founders can do. The notion of being available 24/7 is not sustainable.
Monica Brand Engel, cofounder at Quona Capital
I just believe that if you know what your values are, if you can know what makes you tick and if you can make good decisions and be happy with those decisions, then there is a really powerful ripple effect from that.
Natasha Chatur, associate coach at People Untapped
Unlike previous crises when the impact was largely on the Western world, with the COVID crisis, the entire globe is shrinking at the same time.
Managing Director of South Asia and MENA at Ripple
Most young companies identify and exploit an error in a regulated area in such a way that the incumbents think they're protected by it.
Nicola Persico, professor at Kellogg School of Management
Entrepreneurs often solve the world's problems, and there're always the brave ones, the pioneering ones who will go in and fight the cause. I think a crisis can be a massive opportunity for entrepreneurs to lay their claim.
Nicole Anderson, managing partner at RedSand Ventures
Painting pictures and stories for people in the hearts of crisis is really important to the way they can connect to you.
Nigel Morris, nonexecutive director at Guardian Media Group PLC
As funding dries up for fintechs, they may have to rely on partnerships with incumbent financial services firms, which could potentially lead to consolidation.
Pinar Ozcan, professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Oxford
For VC investors in emerging markets, the accelerated digitisation in 2020 might come as a boon. LPs would likely double down their investment in us as their allocation for technology innovation increases.
Rabeel Warraich, founder and CEO at Sarmayacar
In most corporates, and particularly banking and financial environments, they still kill the guy who fails. That needs to change.
Richard Turrin, author at Innovation Lab Excellence
Disruption is not adding a new product to the product line if it's being sold to the same set of customers in the same way and just creates a different form of revenue generation.
Ron Shevlin, director of research at Cornerstone Advisors
Founders are time travellers who have seen the scene or lived in the future, and they come back to the present to build that future.
Rory Stirling, partner at Connect Ventures
Crisis is an excellent time to re-evaluate a startup's problem statement, altering positions based on the current situation.
Sabine VanderLinden, cofounder and CEO at Alchemy Crew
Ensuring that there is clear and consistent communication is extremely critical. What is impeccably important is that you deliver the messaging honestly to the team; don't sugarcoat it.
Sachin Jaiswal, cofounder and CEO at Niki
It's a huge generalisation, yet, I think women have always struggled to raise money. We learn to do more with less even in the good times. That comes in handy during a crisis.
Sarah Turner, cofounder and CEO at Angel Academe
I think a key differentiator is that very early on when we set up our cost model, we kept it as variable as possible. That kept our cost structures efficient.
Simbarashe Rusike, VP of finance at Assurance IQ
I normally look at crises in three buckets. There's this structural crisis, like the global financial crisis, which is a balance sheet issue. Then, there is a cyclical crisis, which is inflation, unemployment, things like that. And there is something called an event-driven crisis.
Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer at Monetary Authority Singapore
Whenever we go out to pitch, you always want to talk about who you have in the cap table as a hook for them to come on. It says a lot.
Victor Chang, corporate legal counsel at Curve
That is one of the really clarifying things about a crisis. It calls so many previously forgotten assumptions into question.
Victoria Fram, cofounder and managing director at VilCap Investments
You need to be resilient and optimistic to get through the rejection that comes with being a founder. But to be a leader, you need to be a good listener, be insightful and potentially vulnerable.
Yifhat Ernstein, Executive Coach