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Trends in Security Information
The HSD Trendmonitor is designed to provide access to relevant content on various subjects in the safety and security domain, to identify relevant developments and to connect knowledge and organisations. The safety and security domain encompasses a vast number of subjects. Four relevant taxonomies (type of threat or opportunity, victim, source of threat and domain of application) have been constructed in order to visualize all of these subjects. The taxonomies and related category descriptions have been carefully composed according to other taxonomies, European and international standards and our own expertise.
In order to identify safety and security related trends, relevant reports and HSD news articles are continuously scanned, analysed and classified by hand according to the four taxonomies. This results in a wide array of observations, which we call ‘Trend Snippets’. Multiple Trend Snippets combined can provide insights into safety and security trends. The size of the circles shows the relative weight of the topic, the filters can be used to further select the most relevant content for you. If you have an addition, question or remark, drop us a line at info@securitydelta.nl.
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COVID-19 has made it difficult for startups to create new revenue or sustain their growth for future financing
1.1 The Impact of COVID-19 on Dutch Startups
The key objective of our survey amongst startups and Venture Capital funds (VC) has been to identify how COVID-19 is impacting startups and how sizable the impact is. In total 445 respondents have taken the time to share in depth details on their current situation and struggles. Giving us an adequate overview of the situation (2). We have looked at both the business area of the startup that has been impacted as well as the precautions they have taken to limit the damage. The impacted areas are quite consistent and 84% of the COVID-19 impact is covered in three key areas: delay in customer sign ups (30%), difficulty in raising money (27%) and the loss of existing customers or business (27%).
These three concerns makeup over 80% of respondents' biggest challenges and evolve around the difficulty in creating new revenue or sustaining the growth they need for future financing.
On the side of cost control we observe that 85% of companies are at this stage actively cutting cost. This cost cutting is impacting their operational activities as well as causing a reduction in general investments and marketing. The survey shows that COVID-19 has already slowed down milestone delivery for 16% of companies which is linked to cost cutting, reduction in capacity and logistical issues. This general slow down provides serious risk for startups that in general are geared (and budgeted) for growth and at the same time required to plan for regaining growth after COVID-19. In addition a local Dutch slow down needs to be addressed in order to capture market opportunities timely and ensure their position in the market with other startups and corporates is not disproportionately weakened.
1.2 How many companies are impacted, and which types of companies are impacted
When trying to understand the urgency and scale of the challenges we analyzed the runway (amount of time that the company can continue business before running out of money) of the startups. This shows a deterioration of the runway and buffers available. Some 42% of startups (3) anticipate they will run out of money in the next 1-3 months and another 32% anticipate they will run out of money in the following 3-6 months. This means over 80% of current startup companies will be without funding and cash flow after September this year (4).
On the funding side we observe that 30% of startups have had funding delayed or cancelled, showcasing that these high-potential companies are seen by investors as ‘at risk of not reaching potential’ due to the current situation. Investors in general also get cautious that they have frozen investments. Funding is always a challenge for most startups but asking for money in a time of stagnation or losses makes this challenge even more critical; as highlighted by 47% of startups.