We can't win every battle, so sometimes we just need to live to fight another day.

I learned this lesson early in my startup career (the 90s), at a time when everything was going "up and to the right" for absolutely everyone. During the boom times, our biggest problems are staffing up, raising capital, customer acquisition, and scale.

And then one day they go the other direction. The markets dry up, "How fast can we staff up?" is replaced with "How do we make payroll?" and suddenly we're talking survival versus strategy.

When Survival IS the Strategy

We don't talk much about "survival" as a startup strategy, partially because it's not fun to talk about, and partially because we hope never to think about it. But lo and behold, if we plan o...