Should a well-capitalized company invest aggressively during a downturn or conserve and wait?

Markus Villig · Nov 13, 2024

Bolt's competitors missed the reopening trade: by running a daily war room and blasting marketing and discount spend into each city the moment it reopened, Bolt exited lockdowns with two to three times the market share it had going in

Cities reopened at very different times, so tracking them city by city and immediately investing let Bolt capture demand competitors weren't chasing

Scope: market-by-market timing varied — Eastern Europe reopened within 3-4 months, London took much longer

55:58 20VC: Bolt; The Most Insane Story in Startups | Turning a $5K Loan into an $8BN Company | Why Every VC Turned Down One of Europe's Biggest Winners | Competing with Uber & The Future of Micromobility and Self-Driving

Julian Teixeira · Mar 7, 2025 · hedged

1Password should have been far more aggressive investing in product and engineering, including build-or-buy, during the downturn when it was profitable and cash-rich and peers were struggling

There was a window to substantially accelerate growth while competitors were weak, and they chose caution or a middle ground instead

Scope: hindsight is 20/20; who knows where they'd be had they decided otherwise

42:41 20Sales: Everything You Know About Sales Playbooks is Wrong | How to Hire and Train Your First Sales Hires | How to Crush Pipeline and Deal Reviews as a Team | How to Structure Sales Teams and Sales Comp Plans with Julian Teixeira, CRO @ 1Password

Johannes Reck · Jun 23, 2025

Refusing investors' advice to lay off the whole company and instead planning for the rebound was the right call

They had cash in the bank, so being first out of the gates, supporting suppliers through the crisis and continuing to build product would make them a stronger company coming out of the pandemic than going in

Scope: specific to a company with substantial cash reserves; stated in hindsight

47:26 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide

Amit Bendov · Sep 12, 2025

A downturn is the right moment for a well-capitalized company to step on the R&D gas pedal, because cash-constrained competitors cannot follow

Crises contain plenty of opportunity; Gong had cash, competitors were going to struggle, so expanding the platform then created a durable advantage

Scope: requires having plenty of cash on hand; he didn't know how long it would take

38:51 20VC: Why AI SDRs are BS and Do Not Work | How to Use AI in Your Sales Team and Process to Win Today | What Skills Do All New Reps Need to Have in an AI First World with Amit Bendov, CEO @ Gong

Eran Zinman · Mar 2, 2026

From here there is only upside, so the right move is to take risks and go all in rather than play it safe

The downside is already priced in and this is the biggest opportunity the company has ever had

Scope: not claiming the stock cannot fall further

44:17 20VC: Monday.com CEO on Is SaaS Dead: Will Everything Be Vibe Coded | Will Systems of Record Become Valueless Databases in an Agentic World | Will LLMs Own the Value in the Application Layer with Eran Zinman

Daniel Khachab · Oct 28, 2024

In a crisis, a company should play offense rather than hibernate — cut costs, preserve runway and wait it out is the wrong move

Choco kept selling by relocating teams to whichever country or state was not locked down, changed its go-to-market from field sales to telesales to product-led growth, did no layoffs, and emerged ahead of competitors who chose to hibernate

Scope: they burned a lot of cash doing it

38:51 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco

Philipp Freise · Jun 30, 2025

Periods of major disruption like the financial crisis and COVID are precisely when investors should lean in and deploy, and freezing up is the real mistake

After the GFC KKR was 'the rabbit in the headlight' and made almost no investments; the one they did make, BMG into music in free fall, proved to be a great investment, and they resolved not to repeat that paralysis in COVID

9:23 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise