Every few months we survey the innovation-stage community of CEOs with the goal of leveraging our C-level relationships as executive recruiters to generate collective wisdom to share back. We hope below you find insights that help to run your companies more strategically.
In August, we surveyed our CEO community and had more than 60 CEOs participate. Thanks to all who contributed. The theme of this survey was centered around whether a different strategy is required to succeed post-recovery than that which was in place pre-recession. These CEOs came from those practice areas in which we focus, and included broad based technology companies in the media, software, mobile and telecom sectors, Biotechnology, medical devices, and cleantech / renewable energy.
The 60-plus participating companies were spread across the growth-stage spectrum, ranging from pre-revenue through profitable/shipping product, most being seed-funded through post-Series C, as well as private equity-backed–
To set the stage for the survey questions, when asked when CEOs were expecting the recovery to materially reach their companies, the results were still quite bearish, with more than 50% responding Q2 2010 or later–
Although entrepreneurs are supposed to be eternal optimists, when asked what sort of recovery CEOS expected, again, the majority picked the worst of the alternatives, with more than half opting for a “W” recovery (in graphical terms, a double dip, with the last year starting September 2008 to now equalling the first “u” of the “W,” and another anticipated dip between now and Q2 2010 or later. Almost as bearish, 28% of CEOs chose an “L” recovery, indicating that they felt “recovery” was really better defined as a flatting out of the downward trendline, but no corresponding upward rebound–
The next several survey questions focused on business strategy. 58% of CEOs indicated that they were not planning on pursuing the same strategy after the recession than before–
In executing on their strategies, CEOs responded somewhat intuitively that sales & business development functions would be two of the most important executive level functions that would help them in executing successfully post-recovery. Somewhat less intuitively, the third most important functional area ranked was product development–
The last strategy question posed to CEOs was whether - if a majority of the CEOs were executing on a different strategy in post-recovery than pre-recession – did CEOs feel that the same executive team they had could execute effectively on both. More than a third of CEOs surveyed indicated, no, their current executive teams were not the right teams for their new post-recovery strategies.
As for their companies’ financial condition, 60% CEOs responding indicated they were still burning cash, 15% were cash flow break-even, and 25% were running their companies in cash positive position–
And answering the perennial question as to whether CEOs were planning on raising equity capital in the near future, slightly more than half responded in the affirmative–
In conclusion, the survey pointed up the fact that innovation-stage companies are still very cautious around the economic forecast, have recast their strategies as different from pre-recession in preparation for the recovery, but still have some retooling to do within their executive teams to optimize the chances of outstripping their competitors in 2010.
Thanks again to the CEOs who participated. Knowledge is power. Collective knowledge is actionable.
