In 2017, Panos Adamopoulos, founder and CEO of Seismos, went to bed thinking about happy news. The Austin-based advanced acoustic sensing company had finally landed their first customer engagement. An employee was on the road to the site with a trailer full of millions of dollars of equipment.
Then, at 4 a.m. Panos got a phone call. His engineer’s car and trailer had rolled over and the company’s machinery was sprawled across the highway. Helicopters were being dispatched as there were rumors of casualties. This sounds like the kind of crisis that could spell the end for a young company. But for Panos it wasn’t even the worst he’d been through since he started Seismos.
One of his co-founders, a scientist with mission critical specialist knowledge, tragically passed away just after the company raised its seed round. Soon after an oil price collapse halted most exploration by the oil and gas industry that Seismos serves. Then the prototype development process that was slated to take one year dragged on to four draining the company from resources and pushing finances into the deep reds. The product was eventually launched in 2019, a few months before the COVID crisis, oil prices turning negative and the industry going on a freeze, once again. Finally, Panos, a native of Greece but long-time U.S. resident, faced immigration issues and the threat of deportation.
For startups, chaos is the norm.
To the outside observer this string of setbacks sounds like incredibly bad luck. And Panos concedes Seismos might have faced more difficulties than the average company. But for young startups, he insists, crises aren’t the exception. They’re the rule.
“When you start a company, you don't really project that all these things will go wrong,” he says. “Actually that's the norm. This whole turbulence and adversity and facing one failure after the other is normal.”
To those who have never scaled a business, that might sound dramatic. But Stavros Papadopoulos, founder and CEO at AI-powered database startup TileDB, testifies he’s just being honest. “Early stage startups are constantly in crisis mode,” he says. “Every business is different, but that's the only constant.”
In TileDB’s case, the young company raised $1 million in seed funding, a small amount for the capital intensive database space. Then, just at the point where they needed to raise a Series A in the next six months to keep the lights on, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Most investors paused new deals.
Did the world shutting down at the exact moment he needed to raise money cause Stavros immense stress? Of course. It also brought out his competitive side.“It was like, ‘We need to work it out because we can't lose,’” he explains. “Sometimes. I think the way to get things done is just to get pissed.”
Angry and determined, he redoubled his fundraising efforts and managed to raise his round. This fire to keep your company alive in the face of inevitable challenges is central to the job of a startup CEO. “If a crisis like this phases you, you shouldn’t be CEO,” he insists.
Panos agrees: “If you're not ready for the ups and downs, you're not ready to become an entrepreneur. It comes with the seat.” He has a memorable way of describing the essential ability founders must have to scramble and survive whatever the world throws at them. When he speaks to business school students, he always includes a slide summing it up: “Survive no matter what. Be a cockroach.”
When Everything Fell Apart: What Worked for Panos and Stavros
For both founders the first step to weathering crises is getting your mindset right. Simply refusing to shut down operations and walk away will get you a long way. But Panos and Stavros offer other advice beyond sheer determination for less experienced founders facing existential crises:
Be transparent: “Transparency always wins,” says Panos. Don’t hide problems from your board. Instead, build a close relationship before a crisis hits and then lean into it when it does. Panos sends his board a written one page update once a month, including a summary of the company’s financial position and biggest challenges. “Always start with the problems,” he stresses. Stavros agrees: “I'm very transparent. I try to gain as much feedback as possible. I tweak my strategy accordingly.” He meets his board monthly and has bi-weekly meetings with three of his top investors.
Lean on your team. When it comes to how much to tell your team during a crisis, both founders default to openness. “This might cause a little bit of attrition,” warns Stavros, but he feels sharing his struggles during crises demonstrates his own commitment to the company. Likewise Panos emphasizes keeping your people close, especially the leadership team. “When I say close, financials and performance of the company is not something that stays on the board level,” he clarifies. “By creating visibility you build trust.”
Keep a healthy balance sheet. It’s easier to weather a crisis if you have money in the bank and therefore room to maneuver. Both founders stress running a lean business. “You really dictate your own fate by maintaining a healthy balance sheet,” advises Panos. “If there is one piece of advice I can give is, if you have small teams, make absolutely certain they're extremely tight and on the mission,” suggests Stavros.
Raise more than you think you’ll need. Not only should you think about burning less, if you’re past the pre-seed stage, you should also consider raising more than you think you need, according to Panos. “Whatever number you have in mind, raise more,” he says. “Every time I raised more than what I needed, it ended up being the right number. As good as investors are, you want to be in a position to act without having to ask for more money.”
Stay in ‘solutions mode.’ You can only make decisions with the information that is available. Waiting for perfect clarity will paralyze you. Stavros calls this drive to keep pushing forward and making decisions being in ‘solutions mode.’ It’s a mindset that focuses on making the best choice you can and learning from the experience: “Even if you craft a hundred strategies and nothing works, it's fine. You're going to learn. You're going to apply it to your next startup.”
Mindset wins in a crisis
These tips, taken together, suggest surviving crises is about leaning into them rather than fruitlessly cursing them. Black swan events aren’t actually rare for startups. Founders who get through them take pride in their cockroach-like determination to survive. They understand crises might not be pleasant, but offer key opportunities to test your mettle, learn, and grow.
As Stavros puts it, if you’re a founder, dealing with crises “is what you are supposed to be doing. If there's no crisis, your position is obsolete.”
Scale Up Stories is a new blog series by Endeavor Greece capturing honest reflections from founders who’ve been through it all - the pivots, the breakthroughs, and the internal shifts. Raw and real, these are stories of resilience, clarity, and everything in between. Written by Jessica Stillman, Author at Inc.