Building a Startup

I mentioned it yesterday but given its impact on global health and capital markets, I thought I’d share a few things I’ve read and watched in the past few days that I found helpful (both shared on Twitter by my friend Phil).

This is a conversation that was held last week at Johns Hopkins Business School:

This is a good article from The Atlantic

This is the Johns Hopkins Live Map.

I like the headline of The Atlantic piece:

You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus. Most cases are not life-threatening, which is also what makes the virus a historic challenge to contain.

I think we should prepare ourselves for Coronavirus to be like the flu. It will be everywhere, including the US, and many of us will get it. A few of us will get really sick but most of us will not.

I am not suggesting we should not be alarmed and do what we can to protect ourselves, our families, our companies, our communities, etc, etc. We absolutely should. If you run a company, you should prepare your employees and your company for a worsening outbreak.

But I do not believe we should panic. I think there will be panic and that is understandable. But, I think remaining calm, getting prepared, and understanding what is going on and what is not going on is the best approach.

I am going to spend much of today in my Zoom room participating in several meetings around the country and around the world.

If you look at Zoom’s stock price over the last month, since the outbreak of the Coronavirus, you will see that the market thinks that I am not the only one who will be doing that.

The combination of limiting travel due to Coronavirus fears and the desire to lower carbon footprints tells me that we may have reached videoconferencing’s moment.

Maybe attending a meeting in person is a thing of that past and video’ing in is our future. If so, we may look back at this winter of 2020 as the moment that happened.

These guys have been using Kickstarter, and a bunch of other online platforms, to support their live shows riffing on “campy B-movies.” I love the underground, indie creative community and these guys are a great example of that. I backed this project this morning.