How can we deal with this COVID-19 impasse and what are the solutions that we can provide as entrepreneurs, tech professionals or action people in general?
At our first Digital Roundtable, we gathered three international founders to discuss these current concerns that have taken space in most of our minds and to get into the depth of how this period affects us in order to portray some of the best scenarios and solutions.
Our guest speakers were Newton Howard — Chairman of Ni2o, Jerry Kennelly — Founder of Riverbed and Frank Meehan — Co-Founder of Equilibrium, moderated by our well-known host — Philipp Kandal.
You can watch the full video on Youtube, but we’ve also taken some notes, highlighting the best takeaways from this discussion:
What has driven our guest speakers to take action in finding solutions for this crisis?
Jerry Kennelly has started a new company that helps to track the COVID-19 evolution, alongside a team of developers from Budapest. He tends to see the bigger picture in all his entrepreneurial endeavours and acknowledges that this is the time to help communities and to help each other, stating that this is a driving factor in the way he thinks about life and about the world.
What are the actual solutions that are work in progress at the moment?
Besides Jerry’s great idea, Newton Howard and his team are also working on a device that can ease the process of testing and can be used as a speed-test at home.
Discover how it looks like and how it works in the video below 👇
How can we adapt and what do we have to learn from the appearance of this virus?
“I think the virus is an inhabitance of this planet, just like us, and for a much longer time, we just came to learn of its existence and its lethality through its invasion into our bodies and its desire to use our body as a vessel for its existence.” said Newton Howard.
One thing that is obvious now, after finding it out the hard way, is that such viruses can emerge into our lives at any time and this type of disruption is prone to happen again in the future. What we need to learn from this period are the healthy habits that we have developed — maintaining social distancing, being more careful and mindful and adapting to new structures and forms of living.
“We could maintain a type of lifestyle that could actually prevent these type microbial viruses of their invasion on us.”
What are the immediate solutions for companies to cope with this period?
Our work-lives have sensed many shifts in this period, and companies have been faced with decisions they didn’t have in plan. How to adapt to fully remote working? How to maintain the course of projects? How to adapt the company structure to a lack of demand?
Jerry Kennelly has a pragmatic approach when it comes to business and his view on this matter consists of restructuring the company around the demand and around his current employees’ needs.
“I think you should have a demand model — you should have a revenue model and you should have a model for the percentage of your business: what percentage is the marketing, what percentage is the development etc.” 👇
What guidelines should we follow when going for fundraising during COVID times?
In times when everybody is concerned about cash flow, investors are no exception to this rule. The right strategy for this period is concentrating our resources in the best way possible and analyze our type of businesses. While there are certain areas that are worth investing in because this turning of situation favours them, this is not an easy time to raise money and investing will be more meticulous.
“If you’re a new company and you try to take advantage of the new shape of the world, that’s a very different game and that’s something that you can potentially go for, but not the way you would do pre-COVID.”
What are the biggest opportunities foreseen in the next few years?
In anticipating this type of disruption in the future, our society is likely to invest in solutions for better coping with these certain situations. The areas where we’ll be most inclined to advance more are: health, security, climate, sustainability, automation, drones, military, food service, according to our speakers.
Frank Meehan is thinking about autonomous vehicles the most 👇
While Newton is concentrating on areas related to our well-being and expects even a “facelift for Zoom”: “I think things that have to do with well-being (what we eat) — there’s gonna be some serious innovation in the nutrigenomics space to address food security. I think there will also be an in-depth look at communication for the next generation — we’ll have hologramic interaction and augmented reality will be put into place so Zoom will be facelifted, if you will.”
These are our main takeaways from the talk, but every topic debated was valuable food for thought. And to end on a funny note, as we’re all caught up in Zoom calls, we’ll leave you with this:
For the entire conversation, please visit:
