Preserve your cash like oxygen on Mars
Imagine you are the commander of the first human settlement on Mars. You have [fill in how many employees you have] people with you and a few are your lieutenants.
One day, the oxygen generator stops working, and you are forced to use your reserve tanks. Everyone on Mars knows the situation.
How would you feel if you walked in the colony and saw the following?
- People use oxygen to clean their keyboard, with oxygen spray cans
- People filling party balloons from the reserve oxygen tanks
- And then this…
You would surely feel that you are all not on the same page for some reason. So you would call a meeting to make it clear what our reserve oxygen should be used for – until the oxygen generator is working again.
Any startup, until they can break even with generating cash (oxygen) should treat their investors’ money with this level of reverence.
Unless you want to:
- Have to raise money with your back to the wall
- Have a down round
- Let the startup die