When Every Headwind Blows at Once (W19)

Slack ping from a founder friend yesterday:

“Does it feel like everything got harder overnight, or is it just me?”

It’s not just her.

• In the US, the latest tariff round is slicing margins for hardware-heavy and even some SaaS hybrids that rely on overseas components.

• Across the Nordics and wider Europe, consumer spend is soft, B2B budgets are frozen, and headlines about AI-driven layoffs sound like the early 2000s dot-com purge—except this time, manufacturing, retail, and healthcare are in the same storm.

• Boards are asking teams to “pause hiring until we understand AI,” which often translates to “we have no idea what happens next.”

The result? Startups and scale-ups alike are stuck navigating supply-chain shocks, jittery customers, and a talent market that’s both flooded (with laid-off devs) and scarce (for AI specialists). It’s the strangest blend of surplus and shortage I’ve seen.

What seems to help on the ground:

Micro-economics over macro-narratives

• Chasing headlines is exhausting. The teams coping best are zooming in on unit economics they can actually control—cost per deliverable, churn drivers, customer payback periods—and tuning weekly.

“Parallel-plan” road-mapping

• Instead of annual bets, they keep two live plans: one assumes status quo pain, the other assumes an extra 20 % hit to demand or margin. Switching between them is a configuration flag, not a meltdown.

Radical context sharing

• Layoffs, tariff impacts, and AI policy shifts—they circulate the raw data internally. This kills rumor mills and surfaces scrappy solutions from unexpected corners of the organization.

This isn’t about optimism versus pessimism; it’s about running with headlights on low beam—far enough to avoid the ditch, close enough that you still react when the road bends.

How is the broader market turbulence showing up in your day-to-day operations, and what micro-adjustments are you making to stay on course?

Sam