We're in survival mode (and we're not broke)

I told my team last week we're in survival mode.

Nobody panicked. Which was the scary part.

We have 2-3 years of cash in the bank. Nobody's getting fired tomorrow. There's no investor breathing down our necks. No creditor calling.

And I've never been more terrified.

Three years ago, I took out a personal loan to make payroll for 14 people.

I remember the exact feeling: if this doesn't work, I lose everything. My credit. My reputation. Probably some friendships.

That was a math problem. I solved it (after much pain).

This is worse.

Because three years ago, I knew what to build. I knew who to sell to. I knew what the playbook was. The only question was whether I could afford to keep running it.

Now I have the money. And I have no idea what to build.

On December 1st, 2025, my SaaS business was a legitimate asset. We had customers who'd been paying us for six years. Revenue was coming in. The product worked.

On December 2nd, I watched an AI do what my product does. Not 80% of it. All of it. In seconds. For free.

That transition — from "real business" to "dead business" — happened in a Slack message. I sent my COO a link and wrote three words: "We're done here."

I emailed every customer. Turned off auto-renewals. Told six-year subscribers that the thing they'd been paying for was no longer worth their money.

Some founders would've kept collecting. Ridden it out for another 12-18 months while the product slowly died. I couldn't do it. Not because I'm noble. Because pretending would've cost me the only thing I actually have left: clarity about what's real.

Here's what nobody tells you about survival mode when you have money:

It's lonelier.

When you're broke and fighting, people rally. Your team locks in. Your friends check on you. There's a visible battle and everyone wants to help.

When you have cash and no direction? People assume you're fine. You look fine. Your bank account says you're fine.

But you're sitting in a room knowing that every playbook you've run for five years is dead. The skills that got you here won't get you there. The market you understood doesn't exist in the same shape. And the thing that replaced it moves so fast that by the time you learn the new rules, they've already changed again.

35,000 tech workers have been laid off in the first six weeks of 2026. Most of them had money in the bank too. They weren't broke. They were irrelevant. There's a difference, and it's the difference nobody's preparing for.

So I told my team something I've never heard a founder say out loud:

What you're working on today might be completely irrelevant tomorrow. And that's okay.

You might wear a different hat next week. That's fine.

Some days you'll have nothing to do — not because there's no work, but because we haven't figured out what the right work is yet. That's fine too.

Survival mode isn't a pace. It's a priority filter. Everything goes through one question: does this matter if the world shifts again in 90 days?

If the answer is no, we stop.

If the answer is "I don't know," we stop and think harder.

If the answer is yes, we go.

I used to think the opposite of survival mode was growth mode. Like they're two ends of a dial. You're either growing or surviving.

I was wrong.

The opposite of survival mode is autopilot. It's running the playbook because the playbook exists. It's hiring because you've always hired. It's building features because the roadmap says to build features.

Autopilot is what kills companies in 2026. Not bankruptcy. Not competition. Just quietly doing the thing that used to work until you realize nobody needs it anymore.

The frog doesn't jump out because the water is warm. By the time you feel the heat, you're already cooked.

So here's what I'm actually doing about it. Not theory. The real operating system I'm running right now.

Every 90 days I ask four questions: What can AI do better now than it could 90 days ago? Kill that. What still requires me specifically — my judgment, my relationships, my willingness to take risk? Double down on that. What's newly scarce that wasn't scarce before? Explore it. Am I still in the safe layers? If not, move.

Identity — AI can't be you. Relationships — AI can't text your lawyer. Stakes — AI doesn't take risk with its own money. Selection — AI can't decide what matters. Accountability — AI isn't responsible for outcomes. If my work isn't in at least one of those layers, I'm in the blast zone and I need to move.

Revenue doesn't matter if the business is dying. Valuation doesn't matter if it's based on a market that's evaporating. The only numbers I track now: monthly expenses, months of runway, and whether I'm building skills that compound or skills that depreciate.

Five-year plans are fiction now. I plan in 90-day sprints with one question: what's the most important thing to figure out in the next 90 days? Not build. Figure out. Because building the wrong thing fast is worse than building nothing.

Not the motivational poster version. The real version. "I don't know" is now the most common thing I say in meetings. And weirdly, that honesty has made the team sharper. When nobody's pretending to have answers, everyone starts actually looking for them.

Here's the uncomfortable question this leaves you with:

Are you in survival mode and pretending you're not?

Are you running a playbook that worked in 2024 and hoping it still works? Are you defending a business model because changing it feels like admitting failure? Are you building skills that an AI will have in six months?

If any of that is true, you're not in growth mode. You're in autopilot. And autopilot is the thing that kills you.

The business I killed was worth millions on paper. Killing it was the best decision I've made in two years. Because now I'm not defending something that's dying. I'm free to figure out what's actually worth building.

Survival mode isn't defeat. It's clarity.

The people who win the next five years won't be the ones who moved the fastest. They'll be the ones who saw clearly first.

You are the asset. Everything else — the product, the revenue, the valuation, the playbook — is infrastructure. And infrastructure gets commoditized.

So you better be worth something independent of what you're selling.

George Pu | Founder Reality

You are the asset. Everything else is infrastructure.