Business as usual will never completely go back to the way it was before, for better or for worse. At the Founder Institute, we are internally saying ‘BC’ and ‘AD’ to mean ‘Before COVID’ and ‘After the Disease’. The fact is that, while this level of disruption is in many ways unprecedented, so too are the new opportunities for fast-moving startups to take advantage of, to gobble-up new market shares as whole new business categories are born into existence, and others are completely reshaped.
For entrepreneurs with agility and grit, times like these are when new fortunes are built by sweat equity and out-hustling the big competitors, too caught up in their own internal reshuffling schemes to properly position themselves for the new, emerging opportunities.
But knowing how to go about business development during a global pandemic can be a challenge, particularly when this challenge is one unfaced by almost all living humans. Certainly, going out and knocking on doors in the classic, old-fashioned way of drumming-up new business, is very much now discouraged in the post-COVID world. The following resources, guides, and articles are ones the Founder Institute team has found useful, in thinking through how business development is likely to change going into the future.
Post-COVID Biz Dev Guides & Resources
- Also known as asking for the Coronavirus Discount, Eric Goldschein of Fundera discusses How Businesses Can Negotiate with Lenders and Suppliers During Coronavirus Outbreak.
- Steve Blank offers practical advice on how to go about Customer Discovery In the Time Of the Covid-19 Virus.
- Pilot, a provider of business bookkeeping, tax, and CFO services, provides a collection of resources to help startups take action and to secure their financial position in a challenging market.
- The CPA firm Bennett Thrasher has 5 steps business leaders can use to maintain business continuity and to keep customers happy.
- Bijan Sabet sets business planning expectations to use as a guideline for Q2, Q3, and Q4 of this year, based on original plans companies had for the year.
- Paul D'Souza, an expert in increasing company revenue, offers advice and examples of when startups should pivot in the webinar "The Art of the Pivot."
- SaaS businesses should focus on efficient growth according to the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.
- Brand Marketing Through the Coronavirus Crisis is a Harvard Business Review article that informs business owners of how to adapt their marketing to the current market.
Special thanks especially to our friends at TechStars, the good folks at Grasshopper Bank, and to JetBlue Technology Ventures’ Ashley Lowes and Sarah Mattina, each of whose own resource lists and guides the Founder Institute team referenced in the creation of this COVID-19 compilation survival guide.
Founder Institute portfolio companies are creating positive social and environmental impact around the world, using structured processes to define impact KPIs that scale sustainably with their business. Read the most recent featured reports on our impact companies at FI.co/good, or learn about the Founder Institute's own global impact at FI.co/impact.
