Governor Jared Polis had an excellent and extremely data-driven press conference yesterday to provide quantitive support for his stay at home order (among other things.) The presentation is embedded and worth paging through.
The basic message is that unless it is absolutely necessary for you, please stay at home to prevent the spread of the virus. While it is frustrating and constraining in the short term, if you stay at home, your actions will contribute to saving many lives. If not, your actions will contribute to killing people. I know that’s a harsh statement, but the data shows that we are clearly in the middle of a relatively short period where our collective action of staying at home can have a huge positive impact.
There is a new, private-sector volunteer organization (and a non-profit) called Citizen Software Engineers (CSE) run by Tim Miller (you may know Tim as the Rally Software CEO from near inception through their acquisition by CA) that is part of my Innovation Response Team. CSE has a data team that is generating significant data around Covid-19 and wiring up publicly available data in a system for rapid feedback, analysis and response.
The actual data is extremely fast-moving and anyone familiar with complex systems or system dynamics knows that today’s inputs generate tomorrow’s outputs which are the new inputs. So, the action we take immediately can have profound positive or negative effects on what happens next.
Jared completely understands this and is using all the data he has to make decisions that have both short-term and medium-term impact. Right now we are in the middle of what I am calling “the surge” to help people I’m working with understand that the next 30 days (through the end of April) is a critical/urgent time to act since we didn’t act as a country 60 days ago.
While many things are setting the groundwork for dealing with Covid19 over a longer period of time, I’m not counting us a magical solution to this. Consequently, our actions every minute, every hour, and every day will make an impact on the magnitude of the surge, and whether we can flatten the curve enough so that we can handle it in Colorado.
Please do your part and stay at home. I know it’s tempting to go outside today, especially given the beautiful weather. I know it’s natural to say “fuck it” after a cooped up week and go for a hike. Understand the constraints of the stay at home order and follow them. Please. You will be saving lives.
Amy and I recently joined a campaign created by Dave and Suzanne Hoover to fund a $100,000 match for the Impact on Education Foundation for Boulder Valley Schools Critical Needs Fund.
School closures due to COVID-19 have a direct impact on BVSD students and families. This fund supports BVSD food services to ensure families receive nutritious meals. It also provides school supplies to assist with at-home learning.
On Monday, I talked about our matching gifts to Boulder Community Health Covid-19 Relief Fund and the Covid-19 Response Fund Boulder County. Both funds have happily completed their match, but are continuing to raise additional money. They are both Covid-19 Relief Funds to consider if you want to support immediate and high-impact activity in Boulder.
Amy and I are continuing to work with specific organizations and volunteer teams in Boulder County on creative and immediate matching campaigns. We have at least one more coming next week, but if you have financial resources, please support anything that appeals to you.
If you are looking for specific organizations to fund, the following are some that Amy and I are long time supporters of that have an immediate impact in Boulder County, organized by the category they address.
Seniors: Meals on Wheels and Via Transportation Services
Kids: Community Food Share, EFAA Emergency Family Assistance, Donors Choose, and Attention Homes
Domestic Violence / Child Abuse: Blue Sky Bridge and Safehouse Shelter
Hospice / Critical Illness: There With Care and TRU Hospice
If you want to see all the organizations Amy and I support, take a look at our Anchor Point Foundation site. But the ones listed above are the ones we think have an immediate impact.
If you have any others to suggest, or know of active campaigns in Boulder County highly relevant to the Covid-19 crisis, please put them in the comments.
Every day counts right now in the Covid fight, so if you have resources and the inclination to give, please do.
In addition to his leadership at Foundry, the companies he’s involved in, a number of initiatives in Colorado generally and Longmont specifically, and with his family, my partner Seth Levine has written several excellent posts in around the Covid Crisis.
His first, Dealing with evolving information about Covid-19 was deeply personal and explained why it is so important to “being open to new and evolving information is so critically important in a time when what we know about Covid-19 is changing so rapidly.”
Then, he had a post about Decision making in uncertain times. He explored several ideas: Don’t Panic, Move quickly but don’t rush, Prioritize, Be comfortable with ambiguity, You can’t control what you can’t control, and Make contingency plans. This helps explain why even though we want to make the “right” decision, we should endeavor to make the “best” decision since the idea of “right” doesn’t exist in times like these.
At the end of last week, which feels like several months ago, he has a series of practical thoughts for all CEOs that were a synthesis from all the stimuli of that week. And yesterday, as layoffs are starting to roll out extensively across all types of businesses in the US, he had a series of tips for anyone who is job hunting in the midst of a crisis.
Seth has really found his writing voice in the past few weeks. He’s always been an excellent writer, but I’m finding incredible value in many of the things he’s saying, both privately (inside our partnership) and publicly (on his blog) as we all do our best to help out in this crisis. I encourage you follow him and read everything he’s putting out right now.
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.
Earlier this evening we celebrated my dad’s 82nd birthday using the appropriate COVID-19 social distancing approach.
St. Patrick’s day has always been a special day for my family because of my dad’s birthday. Ever since I was a little kid I can remember the outrageous green outfits with the green buttons and the green bangles and a bunch of other green things my dad would drag around each year on March 17th.
My mom always makes a super delicious chocolate cake. We usually sneak in chocolate ice cream sometime during the day. If I’m lucky, we pull off a DQ Choco Brownie Extreme Blizzard when my mom isn’t looking.
While we weren’t together in person this year, we had 30 minutes of laughter on video at the end of another intense day.
My parents are healthy, happy, and settled into their own social distancing routine at home in Texas. I have a small family, but deeply love my parents, my brother and his wife, their daughter, and my wife Amy. In times like this, I realize how lucky I am.
Dad, thanks for being you, even on days when The Hulk would be jealous of your outfit. And Mom, thanks for always being there with the cake and the candles.
As the world shifts underneath us around Covid-19, Amy and I have focused our immediate philanthropic efforts on our local community in Boulder County.
If you have the ability to contribute anything philanthropically, helping locally will make a huge difference right now. While many of us are hunkered down at home, we’ve got numerous frontline providers at hospitals and in the community out in public helping us all get through this.
Amy and I made two matching gifts in Boulder County. Note that we are focusing on “Boulder County”, not just “the City of Boulder” right now as many of the people who serve us in the city of Boulder live in the surrounding towns that make up Boulder County.
The first gift is to BCH for the Boulder Community Health Foundation COVID-19 Response Fund. They have identified two priorities.
- BCH People: Assist BCH staff who are facing unanticipated financial challenges (e.g., needing child care due to the closing of schools, financial hardship from a spouse/partner being out of work, etc.). BCH will provide the assistance they need by significantly expanding the depth and breadth of support provided by the BCH Employee Assistance Fund.
- Remove any barriers to providing the best treatment for COVID–19. Support BCH’s significant investment in their testing capability, expanding telehealth access, and planning for an increase in cases, including supply management, space capacity, and flex training for our staff and physicians.
The other gift is to the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County for the Community Foundation COVID-19 Response Fund Boulder County. This fund will ensure essential services for community members who find themselves at the intersection of being most vulnerable to the virus and most impacted by inequity. It will focus on continuing access to care, food, hygiene, shelter, housing, and other services for the most vulnerable.
If you have any financial giving capacity of any amount, please consider a gift to either the Boulder Community Health Foundation COVID-19 Response Fund or the Community Foundation COVID-19 Response Fund Boulder County. Your support today will make a difference right now.
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.