Capital's harder to get, but personnel and real estate is cheaper if you get funded. And then while you develop, hopefully the market recovers, and there's cash available for subsequent rounds and with customers to buy your stuff.

And it really depends on who your customers are. The amount of cash available during a recession doesn't change. It just gets more sluggish and people tend to be more reluctant to let it go. But it's there all the same.

I don't know if people tend to be more reluctant to let it go, they just change where it goes. As an example, a company I worked at during the dot.com crash made a lot of bones in regulatory compliance until 9/11...at which point, redundancy and high availability became the money machine.

What is "classic Namazu stuff"? I have never heard that phrase.

It's probably not super common, I just like to use it to describe economic upheaval and opportunity.

So there's this giant catfish in Japanese mythology, the Namazu. It's captive in the ocean, under a giant keystone held down by the daimyojin Kashima. When Kashima gets tired or distracted, he lets off pressure a little, the Namazu wriggles around to get free and that wriggling sets off earthquakes and subsequently, tsunamis.

After an earthquake, there's always a rebuilding and a redistribution of wealth. And after the Edo earthquake of 1855, woodcut prints depicting the namazu and society (namazu-e), money falling from the sky, businessmen vomiting and defecating money, etc. got super popular. (https://www.illustrationchronicles.com/When-Giant-Catfish-Sh...)