It’s an odd time in the industry, to put it mildly. World economies have certainly been challenged (again, to put it mildly). Still, Crunchbase reported that “Despite the turmoil of an ongoing pandemic, global venture funding for the second quarter of 2020 was not as dire as we expected, but it was down from previous years.” Specifically, it was down 7% from the first half of 2019.

According to CNBC the First half of 2020 sees 30% drop in startup deals; seed funding falls 40%. The big winners in overall funding: fintech, health tech and long-time also-ran edtech.

We live in strange times, again to put it very mildly. After all, Meditation app Meditopia raised $15m funding round. “Mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower reckons that the top 10 meditation apps generated $195m of user spending in 2019 – and that was before a global pandemic created a new spike in their popularity.”

Sign of the times, but will the investments pay off in the long run? Ah, there’s the question and let’s be careful out there. As a heads up, particularly to investors: we know that in general, you like the tried and true, meaning big traction (fair enough), serial founders/teams, and at least seemingly bullet-proof spaces (or founders), meaning those already not controlled by large companies (uh, video conferencing? Zoom?), in reference to the latter. Truth be told, there ain’t no such thing. Case in points: The Fall of Quibi: How Did a Starry $1.75 Billion Netflix Rival Crash So Fast? The services was the brainchild of the DreamWorks Animation co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and the former Hewlett-Packard and erstwhile eBay CEO Meg Whitman– “two billionaires deeply entrenched in the Hollywood and Silicon Valley establishment.” In the time of covid, when everyone is looking for entertainment and distractions, how could they possibly have failed so spectacularly? $1.75 billion, baby. Were they that out of touch with their potential audience? Or is Hollywood just not what it used to be (this is hilarious)?

We will remind you of two things, and this is to both investors and entrepreneurs: that some of the best companies rise out of the ashes of downturns, and that while the Spanish flu of 1918 resulted in 25M deaths (although some researchers feel it may have been 50M deaths), and masks were also mandated back then, schools closed, etc, they did not become the permanent ‘New Normal.’ As we’ve seen in our own lifetimes, schools did re-open, as did stores and restaurants. Nor did live entertainment and sporting events become a footnote in history.

As for the new normal,  and speaking of waiting for a magic bullet, “In June, the US CDC published a report on US mortality for 4 months from the first of February to the end of May. Pneumonia deaths outpaced COVID-19 deaths (and we have antibiotics for pneumonia),” the American Institute for Economic Research reported. There’s also Coronavirus good news for a change: “One eighth of the country already tested is a very large sample, statistically.  Applying the 8% baseline infection rate to the entire population, this means that every week after the beginning of April, another 2.67% of the people in the U.S. had recovered from COVID-19, were immune and non-contagious, and were not a threat to anybody… By July 17 (15 weeks), 40% of the country is now immune to the coronavirus, whether or not these people know it, and they cannot infect anybody else.

Considering that the Spanish flu hit in 1918 – roughly 100 years ago – this may well be a 100 year flu and now we know and we can get a bit of perspective.

Those spikes in the number of cases that we’re now seeing, in many cases, are largely from people who had it either without displaying symptoms or had mild symptoms. There are many people displaying pandemic hysteria out there and not to make light of the situation, but there was also a time when even Orson Welles’ broadcast of War of the Worlds sparked panic.

In the meantime, it is what it is and while covid did finally put Zoom on the radar, now comes mmhmm, or coming soon, if you’d like to grab a beta invite. The game is still afoot.

Speaking of game not over, we participated in an international tech-related gathering over the weekend, heavy on the networking and breakout sessions. Since people were participating from literally all over the world, several isolated at home and who knows how long that had been the case, there was an exercise where the host had people squeeze a pillow in lieu of physical contact with fellow humans. By the end of the day, his own pillow was in ruins. Never thought we’d say it, but in this period of remote work, remote .edu et al, is it seriously time for a new dating app? If that is truly the case, it is with a definite rolling of the eyes that we go onward and forward.