8 factors to consider when fundraising during a downturn

Welcome to TechCrunch+ Friday

According to Crunchbase, more than 17,000 tech workers have lost jobs since the start of this year. That’s painful, but for perspective: TechCrunch tracked more than 100,000 tech layoffs between August and December 2008.

In my experience, founders and investors usually come out unscathed on the other side of events like these. For below-the-line employees, however, unexpected layoffs can be life-changing: One former product manager I used to work with now sells residential real estate, and another works in public health.

As I’ve said previously, if your name doesn’t appear on the team slide of your company’s pitch deck, this is a time to be cautious: Update your resume, dial back your summer vacation plans and start adding more to your rainy day fund.

Building a company is a high-stakes effort, so here’s a promise: I won’t approve articles with advice for navigating this downturn unless the author has direct experience with the matter.

Before Karl Alomar became managing partner of VC firm M13, he led one company through the dot-com bust of 2000 and helped another survive the Great Recession of 2008.

“The key difference between 2022 and previous downturns is that this contraction was anticipated for a long time, whereas the previous downturns were far more sudden,” he says.

Alomar shared eight elements entrepreneurs should consider in this environment, including his top-level advice that anyone fundraising should pin down at least two years of runway.

“Investors will likely remain on the sidelines for the most part as the markets settle and a new set of comparable multiples has been established,” Alomar said. “This might take a little time.”

On Wednesday, June 29, at 2:30 p.m. ET, Karl Alomar will join me in a Twitter Space to share more strategic advice for fundraising during a downturn. To get a reminder, follow @techcrunch and @techcrunchplus.

Thanks very much for reading; I hope you have a great weekend.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

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Dear Sophie: How do we handle being fully remote when it comes to immigration?

Dear Sophie,

Our fully remote startup is looking to fill several new engineering positions.

We have not gone through the immigration process with employees before, and a couple of prospective hires will require visas.

One is currently on an H-1B and living in Dallas. Another candidate is currently living in Germany and wants to work from Miami.

What should we consider before hiring these engineers? How do we handle being fully remote when it comes to immigration?

— Distributed and Determined

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Growth marketing experts survey: How would you spend a $75,000 budget in summer 2022?

As entrepreneurs began turning lessons learned in bootcamps into basic best practices, startups started giving growth marketers more respect and resources over the last decade.

Here’s the good news: Managers can’t slash your respect budget. Unfortunately, to maximize ROI, every dollar now needs to stretch further than Reed Richards in the last “Doctor Strange” movie.

This time, we asked four experts to tell us how they’d manage a budget of $75,000 and which recommendations they’d offer someone who only had $10,000 to spend:

• Ellen Kim, VP of Creative, MarketerHire
• Jack Hallam, growth and community lead, Ammo
• Jonathan Metrick, chief growth officer, Portage Ventures
• Jonathan Martinez, founder, JMStrategy

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Pitch Deck Teardown: Lunchbox's $50 million Series B deck

Lunchbox CEO Nabeel Alamgir co-founded the company with Andrew Boryk and Hadi Rashid to give restaurants a way to create and manage online delivery and takeout without paying high fees to delivery platforms.

Since then, it’s expanded to create tools for ghost kitchens and restaurant chains, creating a comprehensive digital stack for food service.

In February 2022, the team raised a $50 million Series B, and we have its unabridged, 15-slide deck, which includes a case study, two cogent problem slides and several data points that helped investors imagine its path to an exit.

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VCs flock to TikTok to reach the next generation of founders and investors

Investors are turning to social media as they widen the top of their talent funnel, reports Dominic-Madori Davis.

On TikTok, founders and VCs are engaging directly with a global audience, and it’s leading to acquisitions, funding rounds and the democratization of information that’s historically been held by insiders.

“These are really smart, capable young people who will do great things in the future,” said Craft Ventures Partner Arra Malekzadeh.

“I want to capture their interest and attention early in their lives, so when they do decide to become entrepreneurs or investors, I’ll be someone they know to come to.”

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As markets go down, government tech spending stays steady: How can investors tap in?

Federal spending on technology is expected to hold steady even as a recession looms, and investors and startups should tap this opportunity, write Josh Mendelsohn and Mike Ference, co-founders of Hangar.

“The current government spending, much of which will only begin moving in the states as they complete their legislative sessions this summer, means that companies have a once-in-a-decade (or more) chance to enter a funded marketplace looking for new ideas.”

Since the infrastructure spending bill included $110 billion for more than 4,300 projects, “for investors, it’s an incredible opportunity to back the next wave of innovation.”

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