Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Richard Luck
Youvitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.
It’sthe end of the world as we know it….
And I feel fine.
I’m joking, of course. The nervousness among consumers is palpable; retail store owners arebracing for an underwhelming holiday season. And the tech sector, though seemingly immune from the lawsof rationality on most given days, is not fully escaping this latest downturn.
“Well,” he started. “I know we’ll make payroll next week. The one after that…? I’m not quite sure yet.”
He then went on to say: “We have so many irons in thefire. Something has to hitsoon. If we can just make itthrough the next six months, I know we’ll have a great business on ourhands. But the next six months areeverything.”
The next six monthsare everything!
What struck me most by his comment was not thehopefully-optimistic-though-realistically-fatalistic tone in his voice, or eventhat a company that seemed to have their industry in the palm of their hand wascrumbling on the inside – but the fact that this was not the first story ofthis kind I had heard. It was thethird I’d heard in less than a month. I’ve stopped counting the stories I’ve heard this year. I know too many people in constructionand real-estate. A large swath hasbeen cut through the economic landscape, reducing once great companies intolittle more than scraps of paper being shuffled through bankruptcy court. The functional unemployment ratein the state is pushing the southern edge of 20%. And now the folks I know in tech are starting to feel thepinch.
The next six monthsare everything!
In a pre-profit company like Loudlever, it’s very easy to become isolatedfrom the realities of the marketplace at large. We’re busy building our product, iterating rapidly,differentiating ourselves from an ever-growing list of competitors, andgenerally moving as fast as we can. We’re used to fighting for every customer we acquire. Our’s is an uphill battle. The violent upheaval happening in thepublishing industry, while interesting from an academic perspective (andexciting in an opportunistic way), has no real bearing on our currentbusiness. The publishers goingunderin any givenweekare not our customers and do not affect our bottom line. They do represent a significant lost opportunity—but not one we canrectify.
I can’t imagine being in a post-revenue situation, clinging to a dwindling number of customerslike they were lifeboats as the company slowly sinks.
But this post isn’t about the economic landscape in thisstate, or even the revenue differences between established companies andstart-ups freshly birthed. This isa post about the next six months.
We stopped doing 3-year forecasts immediately after Ilabored to put the first one together. The numbers were purely imaginary, based upon a presumption that wewould continue along a prescribed trajectory and that the marketplace wasroughly static and predictable. Neither are true statements.
We stopped doing 12 month forecasts shortly after werealized that the market was far too volatile for us to even depend upon thesame types of companies to be targetcustomers in the coming year. Financial forecasting in this environment, in this marketplace, is liketrying to build a house on a foundation of quicksand. Marketplace validations are being invalidated asquickly as they are completed. Assoon as we compile a list of top players we could partner with, provideservices for, or may be competitors with, that list needs to be revisitedbecause of the companies that have gone out of business, merged with othercompanies, or simply materialized out of thin air.
In short, the ground is shifting far too quickly beneath ourfeet. And this is not a badthing. It signals that there ischaos in our marketplace. Andwhere there is chaos, there is opportunity.
At present we’re focused only on the next 6 months. Development’s focus is much, muchshorter. What can we deliver bythe end of the month? And all ofour energy is being invested in getting us from here to there as quicklyas possible. Because here is a growing customer base whichincreasingly demands more functionality. Because there is a movingtarget that is zigging and zagging past crumbling old-media behemoths as theytumble.
It’s the end of the world as we know it. And the next six months is everything.
Fortunately—I feel fine.
