Several recent episodes in my "Sherpa" practice have reinforced this lesson for entrepreneurs that I was taught early in my career:
In stressful times, over-communicate with all stakeholders in your start-up, if only about process/status.
One's natural tendency is to clam up; after all, stressful times, almost by definition, are crazy busy, so who has time.....
Wrong.
Fight the tendency.
Radio silence arouses fears of the worst.
And, counter-intuitively, if you involve your board, your advisors, and even your significant stockholders, you will be surprised how quickly folks can flip into the "how can I help" mode.
Like everything in life, however, use your judgment; not all of these folks can contribute to a resolution of the problem, but keeping them in the loop at least never makes the situation seem to them worse than it is -- and that, in and of itself, can be a big benefit (and lessens the follow-on communications burden with them).
The guy I know who does this as well as anyone is Jason Goldberg, co-founder and CEO of Fab.com (disclosure: I'm early investor and board member).
Read his blog and you'll get a sense of what I mean; there are, of course, lots of other communications via email, phone, texts, etc.
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