With YC, Craft, and Sequoia all urging their portfolio companies to operate at a < 2x burn multiple, it would make sense to see these growth stage companies start to panic.<p>When you’re small, and have revenue, it might only take a handful of layoffs to get to “default alive” as a startup. But once you go beyond a series A and start dumping gasoline on every part of your business to scale faster, the risk starts to grow exponentially. These companies with hundreds of employees are insanely inefficient, but that’s the game. You run hot until you get above everyone else and then you start to figure out how to actually make money.<p>During a recession that type of growth probably doesn’t work. We might still see a few companies blitz scale, but if the capital is risk off there’s unlikely to an abundance of these types of companies.<p>In a way it’ll be an end of an era. Probably for the better, but the run was great while it lasted (depending on how you view great). I think any startup caught in the middle right now needs to effectively assume they’re dead unless they get to operational break even with their current runway.