#35–Start of Season 3–My Company is in Trouble. What Should I Do? - a podcast by Bertrand Schmitt & Nuno G. Pedro

“I am leading or involved in a company… and we are in trouble. What should I do?” In this episode, the beginning of season 3 of Tech Deciphered, we firstly share how to know when you are in trouble (spoiler alert: getting this right is essential) or … if you are “relatively safe”.

Navigation:Intro (01:34)
Section 1: Context (03:28)Section 2: How to know the company is in trouble (04:58)
Section 3: What does “being relatively safe” look like? (17:15)Conclusion (28:17)

Our co-hosts:Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt
Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedroOur show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news
Subscribe To Our PodcastIntro (01:34)

Nuno G. PedroWelcome to season three of Tech Deciphered. We have many surprises in store for the season. But to start, we will have two episodes: Episode 35 and 36, on the topic of My Company is in Trouble. What should I do? In these two episodes, we will discuss context on what is happening currently in the market. But more importantly, we'll help you figure out if your company is in trouble or not, maybe the most important of the first questions that you should answer.

Secondly, we will talk about what to do if your company is indeed in trouble. And coming from different perspective, not just the perspective of the CEO, but also of people that are involved at the board level or relatively senior people that are involved in the future of the company.And finally, we come to the"what if all fails"piece, right? If everything's failed, what should I do? It's going to be an interesting set of questions, and hopefully, our answers will be helpful to you all.

Section 1 - ContextBertrand Schmitt

Thank you, Nuno. Yeah, it would be exciting to start this Episode 35. Maybe to share more context, we can start first with our last two episodes about the bubble bursting, winter coming. I guess winter is getting closer. A lot of great companies, tech companies today, they are valued at 50% of what they were worth last year. Fifty percent, five-zero.And it's not just 50%; it's 50% versus a year ago. Imagine the company attempt to grow, to expand their business, to be more successful, but the market are still valuing it 50% lower. That's happening for a lot of great companies in tech. If I take some private market, this company in the buy-now-pay-later space that announced pretty recently, [inaudible 00:01:42], that they were moving from $46 billion valuation last year to 6 billion market cap this year for the last round of financing, which is a huge gap. We're not talking about 50% anymore. We are talking about 90%.

It probably happened because they had to mirror what happened in the public market with other competitors in that space who end up being in a similar situation of losing 90% market cap. Of course, the private market had to react and adjust to that new situation, and you cannot keep disconnecting yourself from the relatives of public markets, especially if you are at very late stage.Nuno G. Pedro

You have Zoom that was close to 160 billion at the top of it in 2020. Top of COVID, I guess, and now at 25 billion or so. There's been some interesting... And this is a public company.

Bertrand SchmittWe are not talking about Peloton.

Nuno G. PedroWe're not talking about Peloton. The whole COVID effect also being felt very strongly in many industries.

Bertrand SchmittYes, Peloton is actually on 15X.

Nuno G. PedroThat's not too bad.

Bertrand SchmittIt's in way more serious financial trouble than some of these companies we are talking about.Nuno G. Pedro

Today,

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