COVID 19

“If we had been three months late we would not have existed today. We would not be alive.”

“We kind of took the opposite, and we went wholesale heavy, so I was about 90% wholesale over COVID.”

“We were selling equipment for streaming church services. We were selling guitars for first-time owners, and our business that year grew by 40%.”

“We had aggressive plans that year, and then I think early April of 2020, we had gone from this company that was growing like this to maybe revenues down over 90%.”

“And we did bring back about 10,000. Prior to COVID, I think it was around 10,000 bears that we had found over the years and brought back to kids.”

“Nobody was saying, no, we're not going to work during COVID. Too dangerous and we're scared. I'm not saying people weren't scared. Everybody was willing to go. Men, women, everybody.”

“COVID, you know, the first week actually the business, you know, tanked 80%. It tanked massively because everything was shut down. And then, you know, the next week, you know, Everything all of the dining rooms were closed, but the kitchens were open. And so, …”

“People will assume in our business that COVID created a spike in demand for us. The reality is that it didn't happen because nobody knew us or like awareness on top of mind was Close to zero.”

“We said no to an offer before COVID hits and post-batch, I was just, man, what a bad decision that was to say no to that term sheet.”

“I was starting this and I had talked to a VC fund and they said, look, we'll give you three million dollars for a fifteen million post. And that's it. We'll take the whole round. Great, like ideas resonating, blah, blah. And then COVID happened, right? And COV…”

“They were the first company to let people go. And they got so much shit on, ah, for it because they fired people Over Zoom, as if there was any other way they could have, and they still got a lot of shit from the press”

“Shutting schools down for COVID may be the safest thing to do, but you damage kids, you cause a lot of collateral damage, and it was never dangerous to healthy young kids in the first place.”

“A hundred percent of our customers went to zero starting March 12th.”

“We dropped. 75% of the business. I put people on furlough, which was ended up being a good move instead of laying them off completely.”

“We were hit on our face by COVID, right, so we had almost 304 hundred people being let go in a week, and so I had to do that on four calls, asking people to go, people who have, I have hired like three months before saying that, You know, we'll make a life-cha…”

“The employees would reflect a lot on the weekends, and then more would be scared to come in, and that Monday, we had 70% worker call out.”

“And then a few months later, my chief of staff pulled all the data off of the government websites. And it was very clear the demographics that were actually impacted by COVID. And that had very deep policy implications in terms of what you should be doing soci…”

“And at least in the early days of COVID, that's something that China really had where manufacturers were working really well together. Tech companies were making it really clear where the fever clinics were on the mapping services and the government really ste…”

“So during COVID, India had a refugee problem. Nobody calls it a refugee problem. It was one of the largest mass exodus when workers from the metros, they walked, cycled, sat on trucks and trailers, Sharmik Expresses, to go back to where they come from. It was …”

“So when COVID hit in early 2020, prior to, just prior to it hitting, there was a building that came on the market in Los Feliz, and I was one of three people, I think, who had looked at it and walked some of the units. Anyway, we ended up in a multiple offer s…”

“In private, Anthony Fauci is saying, I'm fifty-fifty, whether this came from the lab or animals.”

“And COVID initially was like, seemed like a disaster. We lost 60% of our revenue. Obviously no one was starting new businesses in March, 20 20.”

“And then literally that was March and then April. We, like, doubled. Like, it was insane. April and May, 2020 was this, like, insane growth spurt, because, you know, e-commerce kind of blew up, bank branches were shut down, so people had to go to a digital exp…”

“15 people, twenty million odd in ARR and COVID hits. And at this point, we've never been profitable”

“So we did have a couple of months of negative revenue, but that's when we started to say we really, really focused also on the business”

“Right around that point is also when COVID hit. So essentially we went from doing millions in revenue to essentially like nothing because RICP was higher end restaurants. So Japanese seafood restaurants, Italian restaurants. So the first kind of segment of res…”

“I think there were fundamental cracks with the model. And we may have lived on. And we may have raised more capital, but I think it was, it probably would have been like that by a thousand cuts instead of like one, you know, stab.”

“For us it was the decision that ultimately made Get Your Guide into what it is today, because just six months after we raised that money, COVID hit. So we would be bankrupt without that round.”

“It took three weeks from that board meeting to us being at zero revenues, literally zero.”

“After COVID and the injections, a lot of young people, these turbo cancers that are happening, because their immune systems have been harmed, and so now everything starts to shake up.”

“We lucky that Ian closed around in 2020 when our revenue halved and COVID happened and, you know, stock down 30%”

“Something like 40% of our business evaporated overnight.”

“So when COVID hit in March, 2020, we lost like 90% of our active users within a couple of days.”

“And then during COVID, they created a medical supplies business called Dream Medical Group. So they have Dream Auto Group, and they created Dream Medical Group, and sold over a hundred million dollars of PPE during COVID 19.”

“Car sales went to zero the next month. We were scrambling, trying to figure out where we're going to do the business, and furloughed some employees, kind of really turned off anything that, that you know, wasn't helping sell cars.”

“We were actually in 2019 preparing, you know, to go public. Obviously, COVID shelved those plans.”

“So I think effectively in the end, COVID was not a good thing for us.”

“April was 98%. Yeah, May was 95. Whew. It was just an absolute brutal set of decisions to, you know, having to lay off you know, close to 70% of the company.”

“Like, if we would have survived COVID, or if COVID didn't happen, the NFT thing would have happened, and then we would have raised so much money.”

“To be quite frank, I don't think there are many investors who are even, you know, spending a lot of time investing in new companies to begin with.”

“In fact, going to negative, right? Like each day, there were more people requesting refunds than there were people making new bookings, right? So you're literally like refunding money more than new cash coming in, and you're like, wow, this is a bad situation.”

“I mean, if things had continued with, like, zero new bookings, and the refunds that we saw, and we didn't make any changes, we were talking, like, months, right? Like, four months, six months, like, that type of, yeah, that type of situation”

“So we took a decision at that point to do small secondaries in two of our companies so that we have the capital to help our portfolio if needed.”

“Nobody builds a plan where your revenues fall 90, 95% in a matter of days, which is what happened in the early weeks of COVID.”

“We had a board meeting on the Friday when the NBA shut down and we were like, okay, let's model out if it gets cut in half the business. And then we were like, two days later we were selling like 10% of what we were like at the board meeting.”

“Literally, the day it was its lowest, I sold 100% of everything I owned.”

“Working your ass off and hustling is like has always been able to get you ahead, but there was a culture pre COVID where that was like table stakes and what everybody did and you were in the office all the time and you showed up at eight and left at six. And i…”

“COVID hits our re our revenues plummet at 70% overnight because everyone's, like, shelter in place. Like, no one's working. If people aren't working, we have no one to advance pay early to. And so, twenty-twenty was a crazy year where we basically had, like, a…”

“So COVID hit, and in four weeks we went from just massive, like, about two hundred million of revenues to losing 85% of that.”

“And if you go look at the first week of COVID, our business dropped by 50% the first week of COVID.”

“First week of COVID, everyone gets a week off. And I said, okay, it might be great. Everyone can adjust the new situation. Like the opposite was the case. Like purpose was gone. So I think that was a mistake.”

“We lost like 85% of our revenue overnight and we're three weeks away from going bankrupt.”

“We, when I say hardly, like we had runway that was measured in months. It wasn't even in quarters at some times, but we were given like hundreds of thousands of dollars of payment relief because it was the right thing to do.”

“That's something that is that's part of the reason why I've you know, I've, Started thinking about businesses and started thinking about investing my money, right? So my life after cricket can be taken care of. I know there'll be a huge dip in the amount I ear…”

“Revenue went from 4000 dollars a month to zero in, like, 24 hours.”

“When the laws were changed because of shelter in place for telemedicine visits, you know, it used to be illegal to do a telemedicine visit across state lines. But now all of a sudden with COVID and shelter at place, not only was it made legal, but it could eve…”

“Where it originally came from was the Wuhan lab. I happen to think it escaped from the Wuhan lab.”

“I mean, the kind of the case study here is when social networks decided to block anybody Suggesting that masks weren't very useful during COVID or block anybody suggesting that maybe COVID had leaked from a Chinese biology research lab. And I think now, I don'…”

“When COVID came and the Queen's Gambit hit and our numbers like five X overnight, it grew the game of chess five X.”

“So when COVID happened and government started to stimulate, we sort of got really interested in whether the world was changing, and I felt like we had to reposition not just the portfolio, but the mindset of the organisation around the world being different no…”