12 Ways to Extend Your Startup's Runway
When cash is tight, every month matters. Here are practical strategies to make your runway last longer—without killing your company's growth potential.
When to Use These Strategies
Don't wait until you're in crisis mode. If your runway is under 12 months and you're not actively fundraising with strong traction, it's time to extend.
Running low on runway is one of the most stressful situations a founder can face. The good news: there's almost always more room to extend than you think.
In our work as fractional CFOs, we've helped dozens of startups add months to their runway without destroying what makes them valuable. Here are the strategies that actually work.
Quick Wins (1-2 Weeks)
These strategies can be implemented immediately and start saving cash right away.
Audit Your Software Subscriptions
The average startup wastes 20-30% of SaaS spend on unused or underutilized subscriptions. Do a full audit.
Action Steps:
- • Export all recurring charges from your credit card/bank
- • Ask each team: "Would you pay for this with your own money?"
- • Cancel anything unused in the last 30 days
- • Downgrade enterprise tiers to team/starter plans
Typical savings: $2,000-$10,000/month
Renegotiate Vendor Contracts
Most vendors would rather give you a discount than lose you entirely. Don't be afraid to ask.
What to say:
"We're tightening our budget and evaluating all vendors. Can you help us with pricing? We'd like to stay, but we need to make the numbers work."
Typical savings: 15-30% on major contracts
Pause Non-Essential Marketing Spend
Not all marketing delivers immediate ROI. Identify experiments that aren't working and pause them.
Review these:
- • Brand awareness campaigns (hard to measure ROI)
- • Underperforming paid channels
- • Conference sponsorships
- • Agency retainers with unclear deliverables
Typical savings: $5,000-$30,000/month
Medium-Term Strategies (1-3 Months)
These require more planning but deliver significant runway extension.
Implement a Hiring Freeze
Payroll is typically 60-80% of a startup's burn. Pausing hiring is the single biggest lever you have.
How to implement:
- • Freeze all open requisitions immediately
- • Require CEO approval for any new hire
- • Consider contractors for critical gaps
- • Redistribute work before backfilling departures
Typical savings: $15,000-$50,000/month per unfilled role
Reduce or Eliminate Office Space
If you have a lease, explore subleasing or negotiating an early exit. Many landlords prefer negotiation over vacancy.
Options to consider:
- • Go fully remote
- • Sublease part of your space
- • Move to a coworking space
- • Negotiate rent reduction with landlord
Typical savings: $3,000-$20,000/month
Convert Employees to Contractors
For non-core roles, contractors can be more flexible and cost-effective. You save on benefits and can scale up/down.
Caution: Be careful with worker classification rules. Consult legal counsel before converting employees to contractors.
Typical savings: 20-30% on loaded cost per role
Temporary Salary Reductions
Executive team salary cuts show shared sacrifice. Some companies extend this to the full team with equity compensation.
Typical structures:
- • Executives: 20-50% reduction
- • Management: 10-20% reduction
- • Individual contributors: 5-10% or optional
- • Offer additional equity to offset
Handle with care—can affect morale and retention
Strategic Moves
These are bigger decisions that can significantly impact your runway and business trajectory.
Narrow Your Focus
Stop doing things that aren't working. Kill products, features, or market segments that drain resources without results.
Questions to ask:
- • Which customer segment has the best unit economics?
- • Which product features do customers actually use?
- • What would we do if we had to cut 50% of our scope?
Can free up 20-40% of engineering and support resources
Raise a Bridge Round
If you have supportive existing investors, a small bridge round can provide runway to hit your next milestone.
Bridge round basics:
- • Usually 3-6 months of runway
- • Often structured as convertible notes or SAFEs
- • Typically from existing investors
- • Have a clear plan for what the bridge enables
Don't bridge to nowhere—have a clear milestone in sight
Explore Non-Dilutive Funding
Grants, revenue-based financing, and government programs can provide runway without giving up equity.
Options to explore:
- • R&D tax credits (can be significant)
- • State/federal innovation grants
- • Revenue-based financing (for companies with revenue)
- • Venture debt (if you have recent equity funding)
Often $50K-$500K available without dilution
Revenue-Side Strategies
Remember: Net burn = Expenses - Revenue. Sometimes the best way to extend runway is to accelerate revenue, not just cut costs.
Offer Annual Prepay Discounts
Get customers to pay upfront for the year in exchange for a discount. Improves cash flow immediately.
How to structure:
- • Offer 10-20% discount for annual prepayment
- • Run a limited-time campaign to existing customers
- • Make annual the default for new customers
- • Consider multi-year deals for enterprise
Can bring in 6-12 months of revenue immediately
Accelerate Near-Term Deals
Focus sales resources on deals that can close in the next 30-60 days. Sometimes deals need a push to get over the finish line.
Tactics:
- • Review all deals in pipeline with sales team
- • Offer limited-time incentives to close
- • Have founders/execs join late-stage calls
- • Remove friction from the buying process
Every dollar of revenue reduces net burn by a dollar
What Not to Cut
Not all cuts are equal. Some will hurt your business more than they help. Avoid cutting these unless you're in true survival mode:
Protect These Areas
Core engineering talent
Rebuilding a team is expensive and slow
Product quality/reliability
Churn from quality issues costs more than you save
Customer success (if driving retention)
Keeping customers is cheaper than finding new ones
Marketing that has proven ROI
Cut experiments, not channels that work
Implementation Plan
If you need to extend runway, here's a framework for implementation:
Week-by-Week Action Plan
Audit and quick wins
Software audit, vendor calls, pause experiments
Team decisions
Hiring freeze, contractor review, role analysis
Strategic focus
Product focus review, bridge funding conversations
Revenue acceleration
Annual prepay campaign, deal acceleration
Key Takeaways
- 1Start with quick wins: SaaS audit, vendor negotiations, marketing pause
- 2Payroll is your biggest lever—hiring freeze is the most impactful move
- 3Don't forget the revenue side—accelerating deals and annual prepay help too
- 4Protect core engineering, product quality, and proven marketing channels
- 5Act early—don't wait until you're in crisis mode
Need Help Extending Your Runway?
Eagle Rock CFO helps seed and Series A startups optimize spending, build financial models, and make confident decisions about cash management. Let's talk about your situation.
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