From my perspective I've boiled this down to three different aspects (aside from the normal aspects of good business advice like know-thy-business-model and spend-like-it's-your-money:
- VCs will continue to invest unless there's a tremendous "run on the LP obligations". Seems like a relatively low probability, especially for Tier 1 and Tier 2 VCs. So there's cash out there. The price will be ugly, though, if one raises money now.
- If the credit markets cannot get "unstuck" then we're in for a world of hurt — B2B or B2C. Governments seem to have learned extensively from history, here, and the risk of that seems to be relatively lower than in the Depression. It's really the credit markets being stuck that portend the worst/longest part of this downturn.
- It all depends on who your customer is. If your customer is a consumer spending somewhat disposable income you're in trouble because of the over-leveraged consumer base. If your customer is someone with access to credit markets (and credit is flowing) and is *not* a consumer buying discretionary items you're in better shape.

The big question I'm still trying to grapple with is: Was our experience with the dot-com bubble an anomaly or something we can/should learn from? Some say that it was an anomaly because we were still building the credit/debt bubble and it was "contained" to the tech sector (not the financial sector). Implication: we're in for 3-10 years of "the Lost Decade" like Japan had. Others say "it's the same" because it's a normal correction and recession. Implication: we're in for a rough 9-18 months. Those are two pretty radically different scenarios to try to work through if one is an entrepreneur or an investor — they require fundamentally different responses.

From my perspective I've boiled this down to three different aspects (aside from the normal aspects of good business advice like know-thy-business-model and spend-like-it's-your-money:
- VCs will continue to invest unless there's a tremendous “run on the LP obligations”. Seems like a relatively low probability, especially for Tier 1 and Tier 2 VCs. So there's cash out there. The price will be ugly, though, if one raises money now.
- If the credit markets cannot get “unstuck” then we're in for a world of hurt — B2B or B2C. Governments seem to have learned extensively from history, here, and the risk of that seems to be relatively lower than in the Depression. It's really the credit markets being stuck that portend the worst/longest part of this downturn.
- It all depends on who your customer is. If your customer is a consumer spending somewhat disposable income you're in trouble because of the over-leveraged consumer base. If your customer is someone with access to credit markets (and credit is flowing) and is *not* a consumer buying discretionary items you're in better shape.

The big question I'm still trying to grapple with is: Was our experience with the dot-com bubble an anomaly or something we can/should learn from? Some say that it was an anomaly because we were still building the credit/debt bubble and it was “contained” to the tech sector (not the financial sector). Implication: we're in for 3-10 years of “the Lost Decade” like Japan had. Others say “it's the same” because it's a normal correction and recession. Implication: we're in for a rough 9-18 months. Those are two pretty radically different scenarios to try to work through if one is an entrepreneur or an investor — they require fundamentally different responses.