Tuesday, October 17, 2023

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Is Your Startup Stuck? How to Get Real About Restructuring.

With many options under water and return targets missed, entrepreneurs and their investors are facing a harsh reality. But it doesn't have to end badly if everyone is willing to share the pain--and the future gain. 

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1

 

After a decade of strife and struggle following the Great Recession and then enduring three more thankless years of largely treading water through the pandemic, millions of founders, funders and key company executives and employees are all reaching a critical point of re-examination of their careers, their family lives, and their opportunities and alternatives. The extravagant valuations, feverish expectations and absurdly optimistic timelines, which so many of them wholeheartedly subscribed to, have all turned into so much dust and despair.

There’s a new sense of practicality and cynical realism. Patience and perseverance have their limits and have been sorely tested over the last few years. Today there is increasing pressure to address and resolve the two most important questions: what’s next and what can my company offer me as a reason to stick around?   

Options granted 10 years ago are expiring or already gone and even the most committed grantees aren’t seeing future prospects sufficiently encouraging to even exercise in-the-money options. Cash out of pocket is the last thing anyone is looking to provide these days (there’s a strong feeling in some cases that it might be “good money after bad”) and cashless exercises have multiple issues: (a) they permanently shrink and concretize the modest financial results of all the effort to date; and (b) they may have adverse and immediate tax consequences as well for the employees who do exercise.  Other deferred comp vehicles and incentive schemes are likely well under water and unlikely to recover or improve soon given the overall reductions in valuations in most marketplaces. A reasonable assumption is that a couple of additional years of hard work and good fortune might get the company back to the valuation levels of their last funding round.

On the other side of the equation, funders and lenders sitting on startup boards and comp committees aren’t in any hurry to help their portfolio companies revise employee compensation since they have serious performance and accountability issues of their own. The IPO window, especially for tech businesses, remains closed; traditional venture funds are finding it difficult to raise new funds (apart from A.I. ventures) because their IRR numbers are so poor (as a result of the Covid “timeout”) and because they have had very few successful exits of existing, long-in-the-tooth companies to cite as evidence of their ongoing vision. The M&A transactions that are happening are likely to be seen as fire sales and shotgun weddings.

Entrepreneurs--admittedly among the world’s most optimistic individuals -- even find themselves somewhat uncomfortable asking their people to sign up for another few years. The founders know they'd be telling the team to accept the likely prospect that even at the end of the next tranche of pain, scarce resources and stress, the once-promised pot of gold will have shrunk to levels of reward and return that may pale next to the compensation of those poor “suckers” who took day jobs with big banks and consulting firms.  

Ordinarily, at this point, I’d offer some concrete suggestions that we’ve employed in our dozens of portfolio companies. But the reality is that every single case is one-off at this point -- totally dependent on the company’s history, the number of key players involved, prior plans and programs, the amount of available and unallocated options and shares, and the board’s and investors’ appetites in aggressively resolving the problem. But in every case, the key is to try to be pre-emptive, not reactive.

 My own belief is that the only kind of solution that will succeed is a bold and sizable reset in which the investors make a strong new commitment to the team (forgetting all the past history) and treat the new allocations of ownership (current and prospective) as if they were funding a fresh, new enterprise. This means a lot more work, conversation and negotiation than simply trying to further cram down management’s share of the business. If all of the parties don’t strongly believe in the company’s future, there’s no reason to start down the path with half measures, grudging give-ups, or too lengthy vesting schedules.

What always surprises me in so many of these discussions is that the exact same investors and lenders who are making new deals with totally untested managements and unproven ideas are so often reluctant to re-up with the management teams and businesses they know. That have a track record. They’d rather back a fresh deal with two newbies in a garage with a glimmer of an idea than a time-tested team that’s slowly built a real business. You can call this reluctance sour grapes or avoiding embarrassment with their partners, but whatever you call it, it’s clearly a substantial impediment to getting the right resizing of the business accomplished. You can almost certainly guarantee with this approach that there will be a further “too little, too late” failure down the line.

 But if everyone’s onboard and willing to work at it, let me offer a couple of philosophical observations because how you go about the process and how you arrive at the final deal are far more important than the actual numbers and dollars involved.

 (1)   New Game, No Blame

There are plenty of excuses, rationalizations, and explanations, along with a boatload of blame to go around. But looking backwards and finger-pointing won’t help. Things didn’t work out as planned or expected, no one anticipated a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Now it’s all about moving forward.

 (2)    No Lessons, No Lectures

Everyone needs to understand and acknowledge the mistakes and miscalculations that were made, but no one needs their nose rubbed in it. Don’t expect extensive apologies from team members who’ve been busting their butts for years to build the business. None of this should be news to the investors or the board.

 (3)   It’s a Fact, Not a Favor

Start from the proposition that these changes are in everyone’s best interest -- not a favor, not a concession, and not a contest or competition. The goal is to best position the business, the investors, and the key team members for success and then get moving.

 (4)   Everyone Satisfied, Not Happy

It’s a given that there’s not going to be enough to go around and please everyone; that’s an unrealistic objective to begin with. An arrangement that’s fair, focused on the right incentives and behaviors, and equally distributed among the parties is the goal. This is not about near-term winners or losers. Everyone’s in the same boat.

 (5)   Leave a Nibble for Later

Each party should plan on leaving a little something on the negotiating table. Shared pain is an important part of the process. Saving a little stash and conserving some ammo for future adjustments are usually prudent approaches.

I realize that a lot of this is intangible in some ways, but I would cite Eminem, a world-class authority on matters such as these, who said: “I can’t tell you what it really is, I can only tell you what it feels like.” Make it feel fair and shared and all the rest will take care of itself.

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