Archives / May, 2020

Uncertainty

I’ve been reading a lot recently about the relationship between uncertainty and mental health. Specifically, it’s well-documented that uncertainty drives significant anxiety. This is logical on many levels but what I didn’t realize is just how deep-seated it is. In a time when there’s an incredible amount of uncertainty, I think this is something that everyone needs to take a step back and understand. Even people who haven’t lost jobs, don’t have loved ones impacted by COVID, and whose kids are doing well in online school are affected. Uncertainty provokes a kind of “fight or flight” response in the human brain. As we try to escape the idea of uncertainty, we analyze a situation in an attempt to make ourselves…

Working Remotely – Extending WFH

A few weeks ago, I posted that Foundry had made the decision to remain out of the office until at least June 1st. We’re fortunate that we’re in the position to work effectively this way – because of the kind of work we do and the way our company is set up (not to mention that we’re a team of 14). While we miss seeing each other, we felt it was safer to keep everyone at home. I’d actually been thinking for months before the crisis about the changing nature of work and had intended to write a post titled something to the effect of, The Future of Work Is Remote – a trend that I thought would be accelerated when…

Join Me Thursday for a Business Town Hall with Rep Joe Neguse

Sorry for the short notice but I’ve been working with Rep Joe Neguse (CO 2) to put together a Business Town Hall this Thursday, May 21st at 11:00MT. Joe’s been a real champion of small business (in particular minority and women-owned businesses) and I’m really glad that he’s agreed to do this. Joe has been one of the most available Congressmen during his time in office holding over 24 town hall events in his first year in Congress alone.  Frances Padilla from the Small Business Administration Colorado will offer some thoughts on the call as well (she heads the SBA in CO and is super thoughtful). It’s a great chance to connect with him about the both the CO response…

An Update on The Colorado Talent Network

We launched the Colorado Talent Network on March 26 in direct response to Coloradans losing their jobs due to COVID-19 layoffs. To date, over 650 people have signed up and created a profile to gain more visibility with companies hiring. Since the launch, we’ve added the ability for employers to add open positions and job seekers to browse the 35+ companies actively hiring. We also decided to open this up beyond just the startup community adding professional backgrounds such as: Banking, CleanTech/Energy, Credit Unions, Education, Entertainment, Hospitality, Restaurant, Retail, and Other for those not captured. While we don’t have the systems to track everyone on the list, we do know that many have found employment (note that we do track…

Social Distancing or Social Distrust

I was at the grocery store the other day and thankfully most people were wearing masks (a big change from a few months ago when I was literally laughed at when I wore a mask to that same story, early on in the crisis). However, walking around, people’s body language really struck me. In our efforts to socially distance, we are going out of our way to stay away from each other. That’s exactly what we should be doing, but I felt like there was almost a veneer of distrust and mistrust between people. What people are thinking is made harder to understand because everyone’s facial expressions are hidden behind their masks. Is that person smiling at me or growling…

Circular Advice from the SBA

Quick preface to this note. I’m not your lawyer and I’m not giving legal advice.  As I wrote about at the beginning of the week, the SBA has made a mess of the Payroll Protection Program. Yes, there are some challenges to parts of the structure of the program, but I was referring in that post to the SBAs implementation of the program and the varied guidance they’ve given since the program’s launch. They have been inconsistent, unclear and sometimes contradictory to statements made by Treasury and administration officials. It’s led to confusion on the part of companies who applied (or were thinking of applying) and ultimately to greater loss of jobs as companies struggled to understand whether they qualified or not….

The SBA Needs To Get It’s Act Together On The PPP

The SBA’s implementation of the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) has been a mess. The intention was to provide needed relief to businesses that were impacted economically by the COVID-19 crisis. But, while very well-intentioned, it’s implementation has been flawed. In particular, the SBA has given inconsistent guidance that continues to change and evolve, leaving companies left to wonder if they qualify or not. The result has been not just confusion but also job losses that were likely not what Congress intended the program to result in. The Paycheck Protection Program was established by the CARES Act to help small businesses keep paying their workers. The program allows businesses with fewer than 500 employees to apply for low-interest loans to pay…

The Changing Nature of Entrepreneurship | EforAll

Entrepreneurship in the United States is changing pretty dramatically – in ways that many of us have failed to notice or understand. Specifically today’s American entrepreneurs are more likely to be female and non-white. In fact, the number of women-owned businesses has increased 31 times between 1972 and 2018 according to the Kauffman Foundation (in 1972, women-owned businesses accounted for just 4.6% of all firms; in 2018 that figure was 40%). Meanwhile, the fastest-growing group female entrepreneurs are women of color, who are responsible for 64% of the new women-owned businesses being created. There’s a lot more to dig into here, which I’ll do in future posts. But it’s urgent that we begin to understand this because we’re failing to…

Colorado is Opening Up. Foundry is not. Here’s our Thinking.

In mid-March, I wrote a post about how Foundry Group had joined a number of other businesses in the early adoption of work from home and other practices to stem the spread of COVID-19. We recognized that this would be an essential part of helping create social distance and by doing so, flattening the curve. As Colorado and many other states are moving to a more relaxed set of policies (although Denver and Boulder are waiting a few more weeks until they follow the rest of the state), we’ve decided that for Foundry we’ll continue our work from home policy until at least the end of May (Brad’s post on that here). We’re doing this because we’re in the fortunate…