Grow and Survive During Economic Downturns with Sahil Mansuri

How do you evaluate an employer in a down market? It all comes down to profitability. It comes down to whether your company is turning a profit or not. Any company that's turning a profit is completely fine. I mean, completely fine is maybe too glib, but you're still fine. You control your own destiny. If you make more money than you spend, your company's going to be fine. For 99% of startups, that's not true. You spend more than you, than you make. So then it becomes how much more are you spending than what you're making? So in some cases, I know companies, you know, famous examples were Fast and Bolt and you saw some of these high profile ones that were out there and you're going to see a lot more of this. Let's say you just took a new job as a VP of sales or as a sales rep at a company in the last 12 to 18 months, you got your equity off of the last valuation. So again, let's say the last valuation of your company is 50 on 500 million you got, you know of that. On that 500 million you were given some percentage of that company if you're rep, likely very small percentage. If you're a leader, maybe like a little bit more, but probably still not a ton because salespeople get screwed when it comes to equity all the time regardless. So, but now your company isn't worth 500 million, it's only worth 50 million. So your equity just became worthless. It's not even that it's like worth nine, it's, it's not that it's worth 90% less, it's, it's literally worth zero. And it will be worth zero until your company's worth 500 million again, at which point it will be worth flat, it'll be worth nothing. Right. For it to be worth something at the value, you should not ask me 500 million. Well, 95% of companies are never going to get to 500 million again. Most companies are just going to die or get aqua hired or have to make massive cuts so that you won't be there. So now for 95% of people who are working at a company, your equity is worthless and it will never be worth anything at the company you're at. Which is why many companies are issuing additional equity grants to their companies, right? Like so their employees. You're seeing this happen really proactively and it's going to happen reactively. In other cases they're going to give you more equity at today's prices in order to make sure that you have some equity that could potentially be worth something. I'll promise you that a lot of companies won't do this because they know that their reps and their leaders don't know it. So that's why I'm telling you, I'm telling you your equity is worthless. Not to be a dick. I'm telling you your equity is worthless because you need to go talk to your CEO and your CFO and say, I know my equity is worth nothing today. I know that we're not going to touch this valuation for years. And so I'm basically working for nothing right now. I'm just working for my salary. My equity is literally worthless right now. So I need equity at today's valuation if you want me to stay. That's the sort of conversation you should be having now. You might be thinking, well, whoa, you know, the economy is really bad. And like, you know, we're, we're in trouble. And so, like, I don't want to rock the boat, right? I don't want to be the person who's demanding things at a time at which things are not going well. Good call. I think that's a really smart piece of feedback. If you're not doing well at your world, if you're not hitting quota, if you're not performing well, if you know that you're kind of on the fence, no, I wouldn't go out and make this request today. But if you're doing well, if you're one of the top 10, 20% at your company, which hopefully many of you who are listening to this are, because the people who tend to do well are the types of people that listen to podcasts like this. If you're one of those people, then guess what? Go ask for it right now. Because the last thing your company wants to do is lose you too, right? They're in trouble. Every company is in trouble right now. Nobody wants to lose their best talent. And CEOs and CFOs will overpay today to keep you, if you're educated, informed of what's happening in the market. So my purpose in telling you this is not to be a dick or to scare you or to. Or to be negative. It's to give you the information and power that you need in order to set yourselves up for success. Because as I said before, salespeople and sales leaders get screwed all the time during stuff like this. It wasn't your fault that your CEO raised at 100 times revenue. Wasn't your fault that your company decided to take on all of this ridiculous funding without having their CAC and their growth economics and their ARPU and their retention and their, and all of their stat and their channel all optimized to be able to support this growth. That was not your fault, but your company decided to do it. Now you're here. This is your opportunity to take care of yourself. Because ain't no one else going to take care of you. So a lot of the questions that. So let's start with how do you evaluate an employer in a down market? It all comes down to profitability. It comes down to whether your company is turning a profit or not. Any company that's turning a profit is completely fine. I mean, completely fine. It's maybe too glib, but you're still fine. You control your own destiny. If you make more money than you, than you spend, your company's going to be fine. For 99% of startups, that's not true. You spend more than you, than you make. So then it becomes how much more are you spending than what you're making? Right? So in some cases, I know companies, you know, famous examples were Fast and Bolt and you saw some of these high profile ones that were out there and you're going to see a lot more of this. I know a lot of companies, I know a lot of friends of mine who are CEOs who've raised really large rounds of funding on the backs of very, very, very small dollars of revenue and then started spending way more money while the revenue didn't actually increase in conjunction. So it's simple math. How much do you spend every month? How much money do you make every month? What is the delta between those two things? And then how much money do you have in the bank? That's all you need to know. Those three numbers. Look at, get those three numbers. How much do you spend per month? How much do you make per month? And, and how much money is in the bank? So again, easy math. Let's say company spends a million dollars, $500,000 in revenue. So they burned 500k a month in spend. How much money do you have? Company has $50 million in the bank. Great, go work for that company. That company's great company's got $10 million in the bank. Do not work for that company because that company is screwed. And by the way, Most companies have 10, not 50 in that example. But that's why you need to be choosy around who you work for. And so that's the first thing. And in the future, don't forget this lesson. I think that's the other thing. Everybody spent a lot of energy being like, well, what percentage your reps at quota? And, you know, recruiter pings you and says, we had 375% of quota and we're hiring like crazy and you're going to make 500k OT and then like a bunch of lemmings, we just like jump after those jobs without actually thinking, well, is that sustainable? How many reps did you do that with? Are you going to do that at scale? How is my territory going to change over time? What is the tam of the business of? These are hard questions to answer. I'm not expecting everyone to be a VC or a, or a, or an investment banker or a hedge fund manager to be able to understand this. This is why we at Bravado do it for you. We have our own jobs product where, you know, myself and our finance team actually vets every single company and we only let employers in that have sustainable, scalable business models with high product market fit and whatnot. You know, kind of a new age like reverse agency, you know, where instead of vetting candidates, we vet companies. And so we kind of solve for this problem. But you can solve for it yourself. You need us, you can do it yourself. Just figure out those three numbers. How much do they spend, how much do they make, how much money they got in the bank, and you'll at least get a good sense of where they're at. Now let's come to the other example, the main question you asked, which is, what do I do right now if I don't have a job? Let me just be super real with you. The number of companies that are actively hiring for sales roles right now has shrank in a way that most people don't understand. There's a lot of companies I know that have open sales roles on LinkedIn or on job boards and stuff that are privately telling me that they're not hiring. But they're so still, this is the thing that pisses me off and I'm sure I'll piss you off. They're still having conversations, they're still interviewing people. Why are they doing that? Because they're like, well, look, you know, if things turn around, we want to have the option to hire quickly, but so we're going to string people on. We're going to just say, no, not right now. You know, bunch of bullshit. You know, you start to see that there's a lot of bad actors in the space and then, you know, I think, I think there's another really important question to ask, which is, you know, what would be my start date? First conversation first, you know, are you actually hiring right now, or is this just a preemptive conversation? No, you are hiring right now. Great. Let's say that the process goes well, and in two or three weeks, you give me an offer. What would my start date look like? You know, ask specific questions. It's hard. Some people lie to you. Some people say bullshit. But. But a lot of people won't be able to keep lying to you with very specific answers. So if you get really specific on things like that, you'll get some of the people like, oh, you know, it might be August or September. And then. And then, you know, that they're just waiting because most people are waiting till summer. I think that's a good proxy. Like, this summer is a bloodbath. Like, if you lost your job this summer, trying to find a new job right now is gonna be really hard. So what should you do instead? Not bitter, but better. As my man Katie likes to say, what you do right here, right now is where you level up. This is where you work on yourself. Now, some people don't have that luxury, right? I want to be really clear. I know there's people who do not have two to three months worth of cushion that they can afford to just not do a job search for two to three months and focus on trading and stuff. And I get that. And I'm not here to. You sit in my, you know, oh, let them eat cake kind of bullshit, right? I get that. I get that. There's, like, some realities. You and I have talked about this before. We both came from hard places at times and didn't come from a lot. And, like, you and I both know the realities of that. But let's talk about for those of us who are luxurious enough to have been in sales for a while and maybe did a little bit of a decent job of saving such so that we do have three months of cushion. I wouldn't waste my time trying to find a job right now. Here's what I would do instead. I would spend my time building my network with the types of companies that I'd want to work for in three months, with the types of leaders I want to sell for in three months. I would work on figuring out, you know, what I was really. Not that, you know, I was good at selling, but I didn't really understand the technology at my last job. You know, I wasn't really, like, I was good at bullshitting it, but I didn't really get it. Maybe I should really learn it. You know, if you sell Google AdWords, you know, maybe I should get AdWords certified. Maybe you sell some sort of a security software. You know what? Maybe I should, like, take a security course. Like, now is a great time to invest in yourself. Such so that. Because the market will turn just as sure as it's frozen today, it will be back up to being hot tomorrow. That's the way the world works. Gotta grow. Either you grow or you die, right? So right now, everyone's in pause for a couple months. That shit's gonna end. People are gonna start growing. As soon as they do, you want to stand out in the crowd. You want to get certified, you want to do training, you want to. You want to build your network, you want to start having conversations. You want to get yourself ready. Because as soon as things thaw, you want to be the first call. You want to be on top of that list so that you're the first one off the pile and back onto the team.