Month: December 2023

Spotify has announced a 17 % (ca 1500 people) reduction in the number employees. This cut follow reductions of about 8 % earlier in 2023.

Charlie O’Donnell has a good blog post, for venture capitalists, called Level Setting and Career Goals for VCs: What level are Midas List VCs actually performing on?

He shares what he believes is world class performance for venture capitalist in the following areas: Visibility, Sourcing, Reputation, Screening, Domain Knowledge, Deal Closing, Board Approach, Capital Network, Talent Network, and Corporate Network.

This year ‘the magnificent seven’ have dominated the American stock market. But zooming out to two years, they have performed roughly in-line with the overall stock market as they underperformed in 2022.

Viaplay’s announced pay-to-play recapitalization plan highlights a few lessons that are also applicable for startups.

• The Golden Rule (Whoever has the gold makes the rules) is especially important when a company is about to run out of money, is about to break loan covenants or cannot pay its debt.
• Debt gives leverage in both directions. When things are not going well, it amplifies the problems and creates instability for the company and shareholders. In addition to the fact that interest payments and amortization are creating a cash outflow.
• Equity, as a comparision, is stable and don’t create a cash outflow.
• Taking on significant operational costs and liabilities without fully securing funding creates a big dillution risk for shareholders that cannot or are unwilling to provide additional equity funding if needed.