Amid war, F1V helps startups with operational tasks. Here’s what we can do

By Oleksii Yermolenko, co-founder & partner at F1V

Startup owners may have great ideas that make money. They can also be satisfied with the current results and plan to attract new investments. But sooner or later, entrepreneurs will face new challenges like cash gaps, slow growth or entering new markets.

It’s even harder to face these challenges during the war.

As of March 2022, almost all Ukrainian startups need financial support, shows a recent survey by the Ukrainian Startup Fund. 38.5% of the startups have savings for a maximum of 1 month, 37.2%—for 1-3 months, 16.7%—for 3-6 months, 7.6%—for six months or more.

Judging by these responses, it’s now critically important to help Ukrainian startups survive. Here are some tools from Flyer One Ventures that may help:

1. Financial model—Operating Cash Flow. 2. Prioritization of business directions. 3. Planning and working on new hypotheses. 4. Homework to enter international markets.

1. Financial model—Operating Cash Flow

The main task is to avoid cash gaps that can lead to layoffs.

We have prepared a financial model that recalculates the company’s cash flow weekly (biweekly) and makes it possible to forecast the dynamics of income and costs by segments and geo.

Depending on the dynamics of revenue (cash inflow), in the middle of the month companies can preliminarily analyze the need for additional reductions in:

admin costs;
salary;
employees.

If the project has no way to avoid layoffs, we are ready to offer these people help with finding a new place in the other portfolio companies.

Since Feb. 24, we have supported the following companies in this direction:

Liki24
Awesomic
Ducky
Nebula
Mate Academy
PromoRepublic
3DLOOK

2. Prioritization of business directions

The main task is to track self-sufficiency, double-check the correctness of the constructed analytics, and prioritize efforts in unit-profitable areas.

We help to segment the company’s activities into areas and projects and evaluate LTV / CAC for each product, subscription, course, etc.

Business owners know what to do (strengthen profitable courses-geography-concepts) and what to avoid (unprofitable and experimental areas, except for strategic new markets).

3. Planning and working with new hypotheses

The main task is to evaluate hypotheses taking into account all available contexts from chief specialists with different backgrounds.

We divide the work into 4 stages:

1. To discuss the main 5–10 hypotheses for the growth of the company, we involve 5–7 Chief/Head people from the team with different backgrounds 2. Each participant evaluates according to the methodology of each hypothesis from 1 to 5. After that, they prescribe very high-level steps for the implementation of each 3. The mediator collects the scores and discusses the scores with the largest deltas (STO scores 5, COO scores 2). Each of the C-levels may have a context and understanding of the solution that other participants do not have 4. After the meeting, people reevaluate the hypotheses

As a result, we help the leadership team understand what to do and how to do it effectively.

To perform this activity, the company needs an intermediary who has done similar work.

Since Feb. 24, we have supported the following companies in this direction:

3DLOOK
Refocus
PromoRepublic
Amazing Apps

4. Homework to enter international markets

The main task is to give the CEO an opportunity to put out the fires in the current markets, while continuing with little effort to do their homework to enter new markets.

We help the project team with:

1. Market selection — research to understand which market to enter. 2. Choosing go-to-market strategy — research to understand exactly how and with what product you can enter this new market. 3. Adaptation — product localization for the market, new sales funnels, etc.

When the time comes, companies don’t need to start their market research from scratch, they will be able to focus on execution.

Summary

We offer various tools for problem-solving. Flyer One Ventures is also talking to portfolio companies, encouraging them

to evaluate whether they can apply these tools for their businesses;
to keep sharing their work approaches;
to work with the appropriate fund team on the processes described above (if relevant).

F1V is trying to ensure that its portfolio companies can continue to operate effectively, enter new markets and test various hypotheses.

Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter to get one useful article every week via email and on LinkedIn. Each story can be read in under 5 minutes, enabling you to promptly implement insights into your business.