COVID-19: How Adversity Has Led Tech Square Entrepreneurs to Opportunity
Whether by necessity or demand, almost every business across the globe has needed to transform the way their organization operates since the COVID-19 pandemic began. This includes startups, which Eric Ries defines as an “institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty." But because of the extreme uncertainty that the pandemic has brought upon on a global scale, it seems like every type of organization is in the midst of some sort of rapid transformation — startup or not.
With her expertise in business modeling and lean methodology, we invited Georgia Tech Economic Development Lab Entrepreneur Educator, Brandy Nagel (pronounced like ‘bagel’) to host a virtual Power Meal. Together we gathered online during a lunch hour with a small group of entrepreneurs to discuss how they’re leading their businesses in this turbulent, but transformative time.
“(Lean startup – startup) + post-disaster recovery = Lean Recovery”
Image credit: Zero Damage
Lean Recovery is a new practice area that Nagel and her team are developing to teach entrepreneurs across the globe. This new way of thinking about economic development is like the lean startup methodology, but shape-shifted: she iterated upon the groundbreaking framework popularized by Ries to help business owners quickly recover from a crisis-induced slowdown, and adapt to an emerging new reality. Nagel realized the concept of this framework during her flight back home, after teaching a lean startup methodology program in Puerto Rico during the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017. “Even while I was teaching the class I was thinking, this is not the material that this group needs,” Nagel shared during our small online group discussion.
“They knew how to create a business. What they actually need is to figure out how to re-think a business under new circumstances.”
For a couple of Tech Square business leaders that shared the changes they’re managing thus far, there was a common outlook that adversity can lead to opportunity. Coordinated Care Inc., an ATDC HealthTech startup led by CEO Tee Faircloth, is focused on creating solutions for the rural healthcare crisis. They do this by offering a clinical protocol and HIPAA- compliant platform that streamlines the logistics of patient transfers. Nationally, over a third of rural hospitals are at risk of closing, while urban hospitals are dealing with capacity issues. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Coordinated Care Inc. worked with overcrowded urban hospitals to move patients to “empty” rural hospitals for their post-acute care. But as the pandemic began to ramp up and the concern grew that our national health system would reach its tipping point, the necessity of their services led to their expansion.
“We’ve pivoted [because of] the urgent necessity but we haven’t pivoted our core product. We’ve actually expanded on it.”
This urgency has even led them to get involved in Washington D.C., requiring Faircloth to write his first-ever senate bill. “We managed to get it from my twisted brain to the U.S. Senate floor in three days, but unfortunately it didn’t pass on the first go,” he said coyly. But they’re feeling hopeful for the next iteration he’s working on. “We have almost every candidate in the Democratic presidential nomination and several members of Republican leadership supporting this bill, so we're hoping to get this through.”
With travel bans mandated across the globe as a measure to prevent the spread of the virus, the team at MaxRewards, a TechStars-backed, financial technology startup, had to make a substantial change in their roadmap. Co-founded by Anik Khan, MaxRewards was created to empower consumers to make smarter financial decisions. Their award-winning app helps users manage their credit card accounts and maximize their credit card rewards and savings. “A big part of our focus is helping people earn points and miles so they can travel. The travel industry has been completely disrupted, so the urgency of wanting to use those points to go somewhere has changed,” Khan explained. They’ve had to shift their focus from maximizing their users’ travel-reward earning potential, to promoting local commerce.
“The demand for ways to save is very high right now. Focusing on that, we’re making sure that our roadmap supports this [new] world where people care [even more] about maximizing things they have, supporting local businesses, and creating commerce in a responsible way with all these restrictions.”
Coming up this month, the team is launching their Local Deals feature in Atlanta and New York City. The feature launch will allow users to earn extra cashback when they pay for a purchase using a card connected to the MaxRewards mobile app. Because the user pays for their purchase in full and gets extra cashback after the fact, the user earns rewards on the pre-discount total. To jumpstart the launch, they’ll be funding deals for up to 50 restaurants. With the help of users referring their favorite restaurants in Atlanta and New York City, the team expects to onboard hundreds of restaurants in the coming weeks.
There is a universal consensus that the world we are living in has fundamentally changed, and the right mix of creativity, agility, and strategic implementation will determine how businesses will proceed beyond this period of great uncertainty. How are you evaluating the opportunities and challenges presented by COVID-19? Perhaps doing the opposite of what you usually resort to has led you to new horizons? Or maybe you’re looking at backlogged ideas and asking yourself, “is now the time for it?” Let us know in the comments below.
About Brandy Nagel: Brandy Nagel is a Research Faculty & Entrepreneur Educator at the Georgia Tech Economic Development Lab. She works with campuses and communities all over the world to create communities where startups can grow and thrive. Lean startup is the methodology – and she's been doing it since 2012. Brandy has worked with entrepreneurship educators from some of the best schools in the U.S., India, South Korea, Chile and more.