That’s it.
The kids have gone back to school, the yard’s been treated, the furnace serviced and now it’s a clear run til Thanksgiving.
Labor Day has always been an ironic institution. As everyone knows it was initiated in the 19th century by the Central Labor Union as a day of rest so really it should be called No Labor Day.
And for most of the nation’s employees, government workers and the unemployed the first Monday in September has become a payless Labor Day with the time spent away from the factory or office dealing with a list of domestic chores that has built over the preceding months.
Unfortunately the same isn’t true if you’re the leader of a tech company with 6 or 7 or even more Labor Days behind you.
For you and all of your peer members of the Living Dead, Labor Day marks another period of deep reflection as you contemplate the agonisingly distant prospect of that perpetually elusive goal - an exit.
Even as you reorganize the garage, sew name tags into the kids’ clothes or whatever you find yourself struggling to summon up another wave of enthusiasm to deal with your ever more irritable shareholders as the prospect of another 12 months of hard labor come into closer relief.
First let me say that the term “Living Dead” isn’t my term. It’s one used in the US VC community to describe all of their existing portfolio holdings that were going to be sure fire 10-baggers when they put their money in back in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.
Today of course, those companies bear scant relationship to those shiny new businesses contemplating the arrival of their Series A Round back whenever. Now saddled with layers of preference shares that make the global debt market’s structure seem simple, the Living Dead are soldiering on unglamorously dong what businesses have done since time immemorial – business.
Unfortunately V 2.0 of business isn’t as compelling as V 1.0 was.
Back then the talk was of planetary domination – “the leading global supplier of xyz” was the priapic boast of every company’s website. Today’s ambitions are more tempered and the tech leaders who remain in place (or more likely - their replacements) are focused on the challenges of delivering enough organic growth to satisfy their owners (cash for acquisitions dried up long ago) while worrying about how little their own ever-diluted share of the company is worth.
The lucky Living Dead (if that’s not an oxymoron) are those whose VCs have so lost interest (or been fired) that Board meetings happen only rarely.
The real losers are those who have to endure a monthly beat-up session in which their wholly unreasonable refusal to contemplate a bargain-basement fire sale to a trade buyer is picked over in fine detail by their bellicose but otherwise impotent shareholders.
The real real losers are those who, having survived another Board meeting from Hell have to go home to explain to their partner and children why the dream of early retirement, holiday homes on the coast or merely the best schools for the kids, have had to be put on hold for another month!
Perhaps the leaders of US tech companies should take a leaf from the books of an earlier generation of downtrodden workers by forming a Union so that they can rise up against their oppressive owners?
Perhaps something along the lines of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor who organized the original Labor Day on September 5th 1882?
Started by Uriah Stephens and a group of Philadelphia tailors in 1869, the Knights of Labor set the scene for the institutional organization of those who lived by the sweat of their brows rather than off others’ capital for a generation.
Under the motto – “An Injury to One is the Concern of All." - the Knights were responsible for many innovations such as calling for a 24 hour work week and welcoming as members women and blacks (although inexplicably they excluded Asians!).
Among their more novel quirks was the exclusion of bankers, doctors, lawyers, gamblers, stockholders, and liquor manufacturers on the grounds that they were unproductive members of society.
We are probably a long way from the formation of the Knights of the Living Dead or The International VC-backed Stalled Tech Company Leaders Association to counter the oppressive employers represented by the fat cats of the NVCA.
But I guess if some brave souls were to form a Union of the Living Dead their exclusion list would be topped by Preference Shareholders.
Unfortunately next September’s streets won’t be full of chino-clad tech CEOs marching in mutual support under the banner "A hurt to one is a hurt to all".
Mind you if this year is anything to go by they will all be at the office slaving away over spreadsheets trying to figure out a way to avoid a Groundhog Day amongst the Living Dead in one year's time!
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