Crisis

While everyone I know feels the weight of being in the midst of the Covid crisis, we are actually dealing with the overlap of three linked crises. Understanding this, and putting it in historical context, has been helpful to me as I process real-time inputs and prioritize my activities. The three crises are (1) a health crisis (Covid-19) that has generated a (2) financial crisis, each of which has generated massive societal disruption which will generate a (3) mental health crisis. ...

A creative group of Boulder entrepreneurs, led by Vikas Reddy and Kyle Judah and inspired by San Franciso entrepreneurs/investors Frank Barbieri and Ryan Sarver have created and put into action a program that supports both frontline health workers and local independent restaurants. They’ve created a program called Feed the Frontlines Boulder that lets the community donate meals from local restaurants to health workers on the frontlines. Health workers get a nourishing meal, and local restaurants get badly needed business to keep running and keep staff employed. ...

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. https://www.slideshare.net/bfeld/colorado-governor-polis-doingmypartco-presentation-03272020 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. ...

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. ...

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.” ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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: ...

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