Save Your Startup During an Economic Downturn

Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss Paul Graham's essay "Default Alive or Default Dead." They share strategies to cut your company's burn rate and keep your startup alive to see another day. Paul Graham's essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html Trevor Blackwell's startup growth calculator: http://growth.tlb.org Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 00:00 - Introduction 00:23 - Default alive or default dead 02:14 - The calculator 02:59 - Founder's distraction - Fundraising game 07:32 - Fundraising leverage 09:57 - Math are different 11:29 - Kill or cure 15:37 - The fatal pinch 19:22 - Tough decisions when default dead 19:40 - Headcount 20:46 - Ad Spend 22:50 - Raising prices 25:16 - Personal bankruptcy - Taking a big hit to growth rate 26:28 - Twitch's pirate ship 32:22 - Takeaways 32:27 - Survive to thrive 33:15 - To burn or not burn 34:06 - 10x better if operationally intensive business #ycombinator #startups #burnrate