Thread by @epaley

Some amazing startups were founded after the 2008 financial crisis, but we shouldn't forget the startups founded in 06-07 that survived *through* it:

Adyen
🧪 Veeva
OPower
Dropbox
ZenDesk
Wix
Hubspot
CarGurus
Twitter
Spotify
Waze
Workday

/1

https://twitter.com/yuris/status/1236380762326224896

And the list above is not comprehensive!

Navigating a financial crisis isn't easy for any company, but a startup has the benefit of nimbleness on its side.

The 2008 meltdown came at a moment of maximal vulnerability for most of those companies I listed.

/2

This cohort of companies had to manage a lot of difficulties:

🌆 High-fixed costs
🍂 Rapidly dwindling funding
⚡️ Demand shock/Revenue drop
☁️ Cloudy financial forecasts
🏦 Political instability

/3

You can argue that this group of startups had the toughest path in 2008. They didn’t have the flexibility of new startups with low burn rates and no technical debt, nor did they have the strong cash positions and veteran management teams the big tech co's had on their side.

/4

Each of these companies managed their way through the 2008 meltdown differently, so, unfortunately, there's no general advice that can be distilled from their successes.

I'd encourage founders to look up the histories of the relevant companies to see what can be learned.

/5

But every founder should find encouragement in the fact that startups that sold consumer-facing services, SaaS tools, marketplaces, even hardware (👣 FitBit) managed to survive this rocky period & come out with $1B+ successes on the other side.

Your startup can as well!

/End