Resilient

12Holy Crap—A Pandemic!

Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed.

—Lucille Clifton

Ever close a funding round during a pandemic? I don't think many have. Yet, after all that due diligence and all those meetings and calls, we finally got our round closed on March 22.

I remember weeks earlier, I could feel the tensions rising across the country, particularly among VCs. Then SXSW, one of the largest interactive conference and festivals drawing people from film, music, interactive media, and tech from all across the world, was canceled. I had planned to attend this year because I was selected for the advisory council. I believe that SXSW being canceled confirmed that COVID-19 would hit the tech industry—and every industry, really—in an indisputable way.

People began to panic and though we were watching as the entire world shut down around us, the United States had in many ways been in a bubble.

To think, just weeks before we had Mardi Gras in New Orleans. There was no talk about COVID-19 other than what was happening in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the disease, and we certainly had no idea that we would be impacted by it in such a catastrophic way.

I sent my then COO and CTO a message telling them that I felt we were going to be asked to quarantine. I told them I had heard rumblings that the cities were going to start closing down. They felt I was slightly overstating what was to come, but the large majority of what I saw coming ...