Category: Crisis
My friends at Formlabs have launched a Formlabs Covid-19 Network and are working on numerous 3D printable solutions for the crisis. As of this morning, 800 people have already signed up to participate.
My premise around 3D printers when we made our first investment in 2010 in MakerBot was that ultimately everyone would want a 3D printer on their desktop. I thought this was especially true in prototyping, experimentation, and emergency situations.
Given the Covid-19 pandemic, my sense is that every hospital in the world should have multiple 3D printers. New 3D designs for the crisis, ranging from conversion kits to face shields to masks to respirator parts, are appearing daily.
Makers are rallying around this. In addition to the Formlabs Support Network for COVID-19 Response, I just joined the Make4Covid community of makers working on 3D printed medical equipment for Colorado healthcare professionals.
It’s awesome to me to see all of these efforts spinning up around innovation in this crisis. If you have other 3D printer related initiatives that you are aware of, please put them in the comments.
It’s amazing the havoc a 120-nanometer organism can wreak on the human race. Someone said that every 24 hours feels like a week. That would put us at the end of the school year, which kind of feels like what has actually happened.
I expect this week will be as intense as last week. While there was almost no positive news last week on any front, I feel well organized around the things I’m working on.
At Foundry Group, my partners and I spent most of our week focused inwardly on our portfolio, individual companies, supporting our partner funds, and providing as much content and connection as we could across all the companies in a rapidly changing environment. We have an awesome community of CEOs and GPs who are deeply connected to each other, so collective situational response and action happened fast. While this week will be more of the same, we feel very aligned on what is going on.
I’ve decided to focus all of my government-related energy on helping at the state level in Colorado, especially around business and innovation. I’ve agreed to be on the Economic Stabilization and Recovery Council responsible for small businesses, minority and women-owned businesses, entrepreneurial businesses, and rural entrepreneurship. I’ve also agreed to chair the Innovation Response Team. Both of these teams spun up over the weekend and have kicked into gear. More soon as we try to get ahead of everything coming at us.
Amy and I have decided to focus our philanthropic resources in Colorado with a focus on healthcare, food, and economic stabilization. So far we’ve announced three major grants and campaigns: Boulder Community Health Covid-19 Relief Fund, Covid-19 Response Fund Boulder County, and the Colorado Covid Relief Fund. More are coming this week. The organizations desperately need funding now so if you have resources, please contribute – any amount is appreciated.
Finally, I’ve re-engaged on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin as communication channels. While I’m not watching the stream, I’m broadcasting what’s going on and trying to respond to anyone who messages me directly.
Our world is in a crisis unlike any I’ve experienced in my life. I’m trying to focus my energy on areas I can help the most. If there’s anything I’m doing that you want to help with, please reach out and I’ll try to plug you in.
Over the past week, I’ve done a handful of podcasts to help entrepreneurs, leaders, and employees at startups to help think through how to respond in a crisis. I’ve requested that anything I do right now on this front is made public, so if anyone is interested, they can watch them.
The first, hosted by David Cohen, is with Scott Dorsey, Paul Berberian, and Berne Strom. Scott, Paul, Berne, and I are all “older entrepreneurs and investors” who have been through multiple crises dating back to 1987.
The next was a podcast I did with Greg Keller at JumpCloud on mental health in a crisis.
Last week I did two podcasts with Howard Lindzon on his series called Panic with Friends.
As a bonus, Fred Wilson also did a Panic with Friends with Howard which was excellent.
I’ve allocated a max one hour a day during the weekday for participating in creating content like this during the week as the Covid-19 crisis unfolds, but I’ll continue doing this as long as I feel like I have fresh things to contribute.
St. Patrick’s Day (tomorrow – 3/17) has always been a big holiday for us because it’s also my dad’s birthday.
This year we are celebrating it remotely. We are doing a Zoom call together at 6pm MT to have a birthday cake, sing happy birthday, and hang out as a family from three different locations (my parents, my brother’s family, and us.)
I’m an incredibly strong proponent of immediate social distancing. My last three blog posts have been about this and initiatives that I – and my partners at Foundry – are advocating:
- LeadBoldly to #StoptheSpread of COVID-19
- Take Spring Break At Home For Two Weeks Starting Now
- Joint Statement by Colorado High-Tech Companies on COVID-19
Bars and restaurants are shutting down around the country, but there are many communities, cities, and states that have not mandated this yet. While the impact on local business of this type of a shutdown, even for a few weeks, will be dramatic, it’s imperative that we aggressively social distance to slow the spread of COVID-19.
So, celebrate St. Patrick’s day tomorrow, but do it at home with your loved ones. Better yet, organize a distributed St. Patrick’s day via video (Zoom, Skype, Hangouts) with a bunch of your friends. But stay at home, be safe, and help slow the spread of COVID-19.
Following is a poem titled Pandemic written by Lynn Ungar on 3/11/20. Thanks to Joanna Rupp at the University of Chicago for sending it to me.
I like to read poetry out loud. It slows me down enough to relish the words. Lynn, I don’t know you, but you wrote a beautiful poem that hopefully helps a lot of us in this moment.
Pandemic
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
–Lynn Ungar 3/11/20
A coalition of 250 CEOs and leaders (and growing by the hour) are asking our fellow business and civic leaders around America to #LeadBoldly and #StoptheSpread of COVID-19.
We as leaders are doing the following, and asking other leaders to join us:
- Immediately change our organization’s policies to “work from home” for all employees where possible, including leaders.
- Do everything we can to support our frontline workforce, our first responders and our healthcare workers, as they show up for work and fight this on the frontlines.
- Ask our employees to stop hosting or attending voluntary/social public events of ANY size
- Free up time on our calendars to support our state and local communities as we move through this crisis
We’re encouraging all of our employees, our friends, and our families to:
- Stop hosting or attending ALL voluntary/social public events of ANY size
- Stop patronizing bars, restaurants, and gyms. That said, please do what you can otherwise to support small businesses and their employees during this tough time — buy gift cards from local restaurants to use later this year, support small online retailers, etc. (More to follow on specific initiatives to support small businesses — please send us your suggestions).
- Provide support for frontline workers, first responders and healthcare workers, as they fight this on the frontlines
- Treat one another kindly in the stressful time
If you are a business or civic leader, I encourage you to join this initiative to LeadBoldly to #StoptheSpread of COVID-19
By this point, I expect everyone who reads this blog is extremely familiar with the phrases “flatten the curve” and “social distancing.” If not, read Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now right now.
In the US, many schools are having spring break for a week sometime in the next two weeks. Ironically, it’s convenient timing for taking action that could dramatically flatten the curve.
What if we decided, as a nation, to take Spring Break at Home for the next two weeks. If you haven’t canceled your spring break trip, cancel it. Stay home with your family. Spend time together. If you’ve already taken spring break, extend the concept of it through the end of the month.
But, do it at home. In your house. With social distancing.
If you have a job where you can work from home (WFH), do it and don’t take the time off. Your company probably needs you more than ever right now. If you do take time off, figure out things that you and your family can do to help your local community. There are many people who can’t take time off, or will be suddenly unemployed hourly workers. Know that they will be impacted significantly.
Most of the US is a few weeks behind Seattle. Greg Gottesman wrote an excellent post the other day about A COVID-19 Response for Those WFH. Pay a lot of attention to your local businesses, which are a key thing that makes your city special to you. They are all going to be under massive distress with social distancing. Consider how you can help them during spring break. And know that if we don’t get ahead of this, we will likely end up in a situation like where France has had to close all restaurants, cafes, cinemas and clubs due to coronavirus, which seems like an extraordinary decision for a country and culture that loves to be out in public together.
If you are not involved with organizations like your local community foundation, explore that as part of your spring break. Community members who find themselves at the intersection of being most vulnerable to the virus and most impacted by inequity will need real help right now. Front-line caregivers will be under incredible stress. Find things to help (like we have in Boulder with the Covid-19 Response Fund) and contribute in some way to help keep your entire community healthy.
I talked to a new friend from Seoul yesterday and asked how he personally navigated through things. He said that he shifted from “thinking about himself to thinking about everyone else.” Whenever he thought about himself, he just got anxious and stressed. When he thought about everyone else, it motivated him to take action.
It sucks to cancel a family trip. It stinks to stop going out to your favorite restaurant. It’s a bummer that the sports events in the US were canceled (although I view it as incredibly leadership by our professional sports organizations.)
Take action. And know that every bit of action you take right now can help flatten the curve.
I’ve been involved with a number of leaders in the Colorado tech community since Wednesday morning as we’ve aggressively mobilized to address the Covid-19 crisis.
Following is a joint statement that a bunch of us have signed on to. A group of us are working quickly to create more mechanisms for a coordinated response, collective action, funding for critical resources, and ideas for things to do that will have a positive impact.
Huge kudos to Bryan Leach at iBotta and Rachel Carlson at Guild Education for providing urgent and effective leadership here.
We are leaders of 35 different technology companies with headquarters or offices in the Denver and Boulder metro areas. This week, our companies stepped up efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 here in Colorado and beyond. Reflecting the spirit of collaboration that characterizes our startup community, we all came together as a group, shared best practices, and agreed to take the following decisive actions in the interest of protecting the most vulnerable members of our community:
- First, we are strongly encouraging the majority of our workers to work from home as soon as possible, leaving behind the minimum possible in-office presence.
- Second, we are restricting work travel by our employees, both domestically and internationally. We are also strongly advising our employees to be thoughtful about all personal travel, particularly where they would be congregating in larger groups.
- Third, we are moving all clients, visitors, and interviews to remote only meetings and not currently welcoming onsite visitors.
- Fourth, wherever possible we are strongly encouraging our vendors, service providers and partner businesses to take similar precautions.
- Fifth, we are each consulting with our teams to find ways of supporting our local healthcare workers by helping to purchase critical medical resources, such as additional tests and protective equipment, and supporting the work of local nonprofit organizations that are helping at-risk communities who will be severely impacted by this pandemic.
- Finally, we are calling on government officials and other business leaders to restrict large group gatherings, including in the largest entertainment venues along the Front Range.
Why are we taking these unprecedented steps? The spread of COVID-19 is past the point of containment. Without swift action, we may soon witness the failure of our healthcare system’s capacity to deal with the virus’s complications. Our healthcare system is not built to handle enormous loads of critically ill people all at once. Therefore, we urgently need to flatten the curve of disease transmission to prevent unnecessary deaths. Wuhan City had 4.3 hospital beds per thousand people. In the United States, we have 2.8. There are not enough health care providers to care for all the sick. There are fewer than 100,000 full ventilators in the US. We are already seeing this play out with tragic consequences in Italy, where the mortality rate is shockingly high, as their healthcare system has struggled to keep pace with the sudden crushing load of hospitalized patients, leading to otherwise preventable deaths.
Our actions alone will not be enough, and we cannot wait for our government agencies and elected officials to mandate these restrictions. Every hour counts. We therefore call on others in Colorado — and in other startup communities across the country — to follow our lead and implement these procedures, effective immediately.
Signed:
Bryan Leach, Founder and CEO, Ibotta
Brad Feld, Partner, Foundry Group
David Brown, CEO, Techstars
Sameer Dholakia, CEO, Twilio SendGrid
Ben Wright, CEO, Velocity Global
Jake Bolling, CEO, Skupos
Bart Lorang, CEO, FullContact
Conor Swanson, Co-Founder, Code-Talent
John Levisay, Founder & CEO, Bluprint
Matt Talbot, CEO, GoSpotCheck
Joni Klippert, CEO, StackHawk
Rajat Bhargava, CEO, JumpCloud
Fred Kneip, CEO, CyberGRX
Brent Handler, CEO, Inspirato
Lee Mayer, CEO, Havenly
Brett Jurgens, CEO, Notion
Walter Knapp, CEO, Sovrn
Brian Egan, CEO, Evolve Vacation Rental
Chris Cabrera, Founder & CEO, Xactly Corporation
David Levin, Co-Founder & CEO, Four Winds Interactive
Matthew Glotzbach, CEO, Quizlet
Nick Martin, CEO, The Pro’s Closet
Seth Levine, Partner, Foundry Group
Stewart McGrath, CEO, Section
Matthew Klein, CEO, Backbone
Carm Huntress, CEO, RxRevu
Mike Gionfriddo, CTO, Pie Insurance
Paul Berberian, CEO, Sphero
Joshua Reeves, CEO, Gusto
Chris Klein, CEO, Rachio
Mark Frank, CEO, SonderMind
Pete Holst, CEO, Oblong
Rachel Carlson, CEO, Guild Education
Josh Dorsey, Managing Director, Silicon Valley Bank
Amit Shah, VP Operations, Virta Health
The following from C. S. Lewis. was on my fraternity email list this morning. It was written in 1948 after the dawn of the atomic age.
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
Of course, since it was a fraternity email list, it included:
and
Regardless, it’s important to remember the iconic Battlestar Galactica message. “All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.”
I’ll end with something to ponder for the weekend, which is C.S. Lewis’s punchline recast for Covid-19.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by a virus, let that virus when it comes find us doing sensible and human things, but with social distancing in the near term to slow it down—WFH, teaching remotely, reading, listening to music on our stereos, bathing the children, exercising at home, chatting to our friends over a video conference—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about viruses. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.