Low morale and hard times

I had someone cold email me today asking to shares of his “startup” valued at $7m for $170k today. That may have been the steepest discount of any company I’ve seen so far in the private markets although to be fair I’ve never really heard of his company.

The cold email is symbolic of the times right now. Post pandemic we were promised the Roaring 20s. We got the roaring 20s for just a little over a year before the fun was all over. Lucky for us, we’re not in Great Depression times but things are far from good in startup and tech land.

I know quite a few people who are searching for jobs after going through layoffs. They’re in a brutal market right now. Those that are fortunate enough to be left are dealing with reduced workforces and slowing business. Couple a tough work environment with lowered valuations of their equity, and many employees are in a morale trough right now.

A large part of my day is spent speaking to other current and former startup employees and I’ve never seen morale this low across the board. A lot of individuals are just plain disgruntled and/or burnt out. They went from dealing with COVID to being busier than ever in the post-pandemic phase to everything coming crashing down again.

It’s been a hell of a 3 years since COVID started. Every year has been unique and challenging in different ways.

There’s not a magic fix for all this. Nearly every company is dealing with it right now and we’re no exception at Secfi. To remedy this, we’re going to go back to the COVID playbook a little bit. We’ll start small with more team events to enable camaraderie (and venting). We’ll of course encourage more vacation time, but also look to do company-wide days off as well.