Startup founders are used to crisis and leading through change is part of founders’ mental make-up.
What is happening now is unexpected, unprecedented, and harder.
Founders are taking salary cuts, making layoffs, cutting costs, and doing everything possible to conserve cash and extend runway. Last month’s challenges with managing remote work are minor in retrospect. Today’s issues are more difficult, and more personal.
In times like this, the role of community comes to the forefront. We have worked as a startup community in Lima over the past five years to become stronger, both as a group and as invidual members. Now, more than ever, we are going through the same problem at the same time.
Here is how we can use our community:
- Accelerator program managers can call batch members and promote sharing of ideas between startups.
- Investors, advisors, mentors should call startup founders and listen to their issues.
- Startup founders can call fellow founders and reach out to trusted advisors.
- Associations, including ASEP and PECAP, can promote public policies that benefit high-impact entrepreneurs.
- Everyone can learn from NGOs and multilateral institutions, including SwissEP, IDB Lab, and others, who have broad experience and a research-backed perspective to offer.
The last few weeks have brought a new level of difficulty to leading startups. We can to take on the coming weeks and months together as a startup community.
We know the long-term picture will benefit the founders who are building digital solutions that help us all live better lives.