The other day I was chatting with a group of startup mentors about one of the founders in the program we were supporting. This founder was in the heat of a new investment round, but at the same time had (very understandable) anxiety about her existing runway of funding.
Would this runway time be enough? Or would it make sense to spend some more effort on tweaking the cash flow situation to extend the existing runway a bit? Would it all work out!?
These things are very common with startups that have received investing. You have the estimates of your cash curve going down over a given set of months (ideally), but will it be enough for you to reach the milestones for your next funding round, or for meeting business viability?
There’s only one way to go in this situation, and that is to run to your goal! Whether it’s a new round, or business viability. Duct tape the business together and push for that next milestone. It’s called runway afterall!
To give you an analogy: it’s like this scene from Lord of the Rings in the video below, where Legolas (the Elf) is fighting Bolg (the Orc). The crumbling tower is the context in which Legolas, as the founder in this analogy, has to work. The falling stones make the runway. The goal is slaying Bolg.
Run!