How Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Accelerated Blockchain?

In recent years, the one technology we have been hearing about repeatedly is Blockchain – which originated with the development of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. With the whole world seeking to find solutions to manage the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, many business owners have found the use of Blockchain technology valuable across industries. A 2019 Global Blockchain survey carried out by Deloitte revealed that 53% of the organizations believe that this technology has become critical for their growth.

Image source: Deloitte

While Blockchain technology was already growing, its growth has accelerated now due to the current Coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 related Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) market is predicted to touch $68 billion every year – according to the US Homeland Security Research

How exactly has COVID-19 accelerated the use of Blockchain technology? Let us look at some of the key areas.

Blockchain in medical supply chain management

Blockchain has proven to be a game-changer in the area of medical and pharma supply chains, beyond simply enhancing patient data storage. At a time when there is an acute shortage of medical supplies, Blockchain-enabled supply chain management is empowering the seamless delivery of any drug from the manufacturing company to the patient. 

Susanne Somerville of Link Lab envisions a future world, “where each time a drug changes hands, the technology can automatically verify the authenticity of the drug.” 

Major pharmaceuticals like Pfizer and Genentech are making efforts to enable Blockchain in their supply chains – in order to track their drug supply and establish more transparency.

Overall, Blockchain in health care provides the following advantages:

  • No third-party vendor costs 
  • Improved transparency
  • A streamlined medical supply chain
  • Elimination of counterfeit drugs

Tracking donations using Blockchain

As a philanthropist, you may face the uncertainty of not knowing where your charitable donations are going. Is the charity spending your money on the right channel? Alex, the founder of Giftcoin, opines that “lack of trust and transparency in charities is among the major challenges” in this field. Plus, a recent survey in the U.K. reveals that donors would be ready to spend nearly 50% more money, if they could track how their money was being utilized.

With Blockchain, there is no longer any issue related to a lack of trust and transparency. It can not only eliminate any intermediaries – but also provide complete security and guarantee for every charitable transaction.

An example of this is Binance Charity Foundation’s (BCF) launch of a Blockchain-supported donation portal for charities and other non-profit organizations at the UNCTAD World Investment Forum. With its tagline, ‘We make giving transparent,’ each transaction done in this charitable platform is stored using Blockchain – with details that are traceable, immutable, and dependable. 

Contact tracing using Blockchain

Since the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, contact tracing has become a favorite “buzzword” and tool used to control the spread of this deadly virus. 

Among the primary modes of pandemic control, medical personnel need to have seamless access to the latest medical data – as well as track any Covid-positive individuals, and track the health of those who have come in contact with them.Recent research conducted by Washington Post shows that digital privacy is one of the main concerns behind the resistance to these  contact tracing apps. 

Image Source: Statista

How then does Blockchain help in automatic contact tracing – without the use of any apps? According to Hasshi Sudler of the Villanova College of Engineering, 

“Blockchain can be the data source that allows medical facilities to share this information internationally.”

Additionally, it is difficult to tamper with Blockchain data as changing one block requires all the connected blocks to be changed as well. This technology can prevent the spread of false information – such as false symptoms, travel history, or even inaccurate data from faulty testing kits.

Blockchain in contact tracing provides multiple benefits including:

  • Reducing data privacy concerns
  • Improving data verification
  • Transferring of medical information to health authorities more efficiently

Blockchain and COVID-19 vaccine distribution 

Can Blockchain help in the rapid distribution of COVID vaccines? As per the latest market reports, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is partnering with many pharmaceutical companies in the area of vaccine development. Some of the vaccines that are likely to be distributed include mRNA-1273 from Moderna, AZD1222 from AstraZeneca, and BNT162 from Pfizer & BioNTech.

While the development of the COVID vaccine is progressing at full pace, its distribution might cause problems with over-burdened health authorities and the current distribution systems. Even with successful vaccine trials, COVID vaccines cannot be deemed effective – if they are not trusted and efficiently distributed amongst the larger population. Add to that, 77% of Americans are concerned about the overall safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

Blockchain technology can infuse faster delivery, transparency, and accountability into the vaccine distribution system. Gina Perry, a pharmaceutical sales executive at VAI, is of the opinion that 

“Blockchain-based COVID supply chains would work well as they will instill trust for consumers.”

Even IBM’s Blockchain solutions leader, Mark Treshock agrees with the effectiveness of this technology. According to him, it offers a 

verifiable and immutable solution that represents…the fact that I’ve been vaccinated. Because it is Blockchain, it is immutable, so it ties back to a very verifiable record that represents my status…vaccinated.

Infectious disease tracking using Blockchain 

Although the current pandemic has accelerated the adoption of Blockchain technology in the healthcare sector, it can bring multiple benefits in the area of tracking infectious diseases. 

With both communicable and non-communicable diseases largely spreading at a community level, strong public health surveillance – based on Blockchain – is an absolute necessity. An example of this is the Nipah virus that can travel very fast and cannot be stopped with an inefficient disease surveillance system. 

The flow of medical information among self-regulating organizations, patients, and physicians need to be centralized for seamless and effective results. Thus, a decentralized public ledger like Blockchain can be used for efficient management of infectious diseases – through proper tracking and preventing their further spread.

Success stories of Blockchain technology apps for fighting the pandemic 

  • PHBCalerts.org recently provided free vendor monitoring services to around 2,800 health authorities with the help of vendor-alert Blockchain. This goes a long way in helping the health warriors in this pandemic as it verifies vendors supplying COVID-19 protective equipment. The viability of the vendors is thoroughly checked with the help of verified hospital reports that are stored for each vendor in the Blockchain. It becomes easier for healthcare authorities to only use vendors that are legitimate.
  • Data visualization tool Hashlog, introduced by Blockchain-enabled technology developer Acoer enables real-time tracking of this virus. The service provided includes a platform for supporting medicolegal death investigation named ‘Health Data Explorer’, data on clinical trials, dementia, and mortality with the help of a data analytics dashboard, and a platform for Hedera Hashgraph, which is a decentralized ledger technology. 

Conclusion

As it is now evident, the development of Blockchain technology has been significantly accelerated during this COVID-19 pandemic, specifically due to the demands in the healthcare supply chain. These advancements will translate to many other industries. Blockchain is here to stay.

How COVID-19 Impacted the Investment Theses of Family Offices

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the modern world into uncharted waters at an alarming speed, bringing the global economic activity to a near halt as the world tried desperate measures to bear the brunt of its onslaught.

From startups to global conglomerates, everybody in the economic world was hit by the crisis. Family offices were no exception to this economic mayhem. They, like most others, are exposed to unprecedented challenges and unforeseen changes arising from the so-called new normal. Inevitably, family offices needed to be more prepared than ever to take on the changing circumstances in their realm of interest and operation.

Often overlooked, family office investors are actually major players investing in startups. According to the Family Office Club, currently more than 3,000 family offices are operating in the United States alone, and these offices, which generally have a minimum of $100 million in assets, often consider alternative investment opportunities, prominently in startups.

The pandemic has compelled family offices across the world to rethink their positions and strategies. KiwiTech recently invited a few top-tier executives from leading family offices across the United States for a panel discussion on the impact of COVID-19 on their investment theses. Let’s take a look at some of the excerpts from the panel.

The markets changed in many ways; some parts have accelerated, some have decelerated. On being asked how these changed circumstances have updated investment theses of family offices and what they are doing differently as compared to before the pandemic, the panelists shared their experiences in taking on the impact. 

Francisco Sacasa, Operating Partner and CFO of Bee Cave Capital, a family office based in Austin, pointed out that the pandemic has not influenced their long-term investment strategy. He said, 

“We at Bee Cave Capital like supporting the local economy. There is always the profit motive, but also the altruistic side of giving back to the community influences our investment decisions. In the long term, our thesis hasn’t changed. We’re still the same. However, there is a short-term impact. During COVID-19, we saw a return to value. Valuations have come down. It allows for the ability to deploy capital become a little bit smarter because the risk profile has changed. We’ve seen change in deal structure. The second part for us is we are a bit of contrarians, we are looking at the other spectrum – the industries, the sectors of the economy that have been very negatively impacted and almost destroyed value in the current COVID environment, we’re looking at making investments there because this is the perfect time to buy, because we believe those sectors will bounce back.”

Responding to the question, Rohit Gupta, Partner at GFO Companies, a family office based in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City, said, 

“Primarily, we invest in people. Most of our investments tend to be early stage, because we like the return profile. We’re flexible, we recognize the need of the times. On the flip side, what happened with COVID-19, valuations have come in line with our expectations a bit more. The old days of really frothy companies raising absurd valuations dropped. COVID-19 has made entrepreneurs rethink their expenses. It has made us move 5-10 years faster than we thought that we would on remote working.”

Matt Oguz, CIO of IRIS Family Office, an investment group located in the San Francisco Bay Area, highlighted some macro-economic factors that have influenced decision-making processes at family offices. He said, 

“We make about two to three investments a year. With COVID-19, the money supply out there has increased tremendously. Capital across the world has reached over $400 trillion of all individual wealth, in the United States alone it has become $120 trillion of household wealth. A level higher than ever before. That access capital along with access capacity in production, which stops inflation at least for the time being, plays a huge role in valuation of publicly traded companies. With that, investors are bringing more capital in the US public markets, because this is the best place to invest. When that happens, private companies feeding into that are speeding up their efforts, their ambitions, their outlooks to get into that game and to grow. Also, we think it is an exciting time for development in life sciences to battle COVID-19. Over the next 10 years, we’ll take a closer look on companies into life sciences.”

Ricardo Taveras, Managing Partner at Taveras Private Holdings, a family office based out of New York City, is of the opinion that the pandemic has created opportunities for family offices to venture into areas earlier not considered by them. He said, 

“Our focus areas are B2B SaaS companies in healthcare and education tech. Our investment thesis that decides whether or not a company is a good fit for us is highly determined by our ability to speed up their growth more than they anticipated to do on their own. With COVID-19, we’ve seen an opportunity to adventure into other spaces. Our focus has shifted a little bit towards debt structures, cash advances, and different liquid deals and structures that some companies in our portfolio really needed, and gave us an advantage to increase our profile a little bit while being liquid. It is really important for us to be liquid in COVID-19 to capture the opportunities.”

To sum it up, although these unprecedented times have brought family offices face to face with unique challenges, they have also brought new investment opportunities for them. Crises will always occur, the key is to prepare yourself now for whatever the future holds for you. With that in mind, it is certain that family offices are there to stay and continue investing large amounts of capital in the startup ecosystem.

KiwiTech has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs connect with investors through its various events involving angel investors, VCs and family offices. If you are actively raising seed or growth stage capital, click here to check out our upcoming events!

Pitching to Investors: Best Practices During the COVID-19 Crisis

Certainly, it will not be an exaggeration to say that the year 2020 has been an unprecedented one for startup companies in the U.S. and globally. While venture funding across the globe fell around 6% in the first six months of 2019, the first half of 2020 witnessed a sharp fall of 17%.

In the U.S. market, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis continues to unfold in startup funding. While startup deals reduced by around 16% following the 2008 financial crisis, funding deals in the first quarter of 2020 declined by around 6%.

At the same time, the U.S. accounted for 97% of the overall funding in North America in the first half of 2020 – with the major share of funding going toward late-stage financing and technology domains.

 
Image source: Crunchbase

While the COVID-19 crisis has negatively impacted venture capital for tech startup funding, it has certainly not spelled the death knell for the startup industry. Having said that, American startup founders and business owners do face plenty of challenges on how to generate the next round of funding for their businesses. 

Among the latest trends in startup funding, entrepreneurs have taken to remote pitching – to get funding from investors. As an active angel investor and entrepreneur, Chenoa Farnswith presents seven tips on how to gain an investor’s attention during a virtual pitch. 

As Chenoa quotes it explicitly,

“not all investors are writing checks right now.”

Despite having a great idea or product, every investor may not be willing to put their money into your startup. Before agreeing to the pitch, do your homework in finding the right investor – including their previous investments, interests, and the type of business model that would excite them.

“It’s almost always harder to raise capital than you thought it would be, and it always takes longer. So, plan for that.”

– Richard Harroch, Venture Capitalist

Once you find the right investor, how do you go about pitching your business? Here are four of the best practices that you can adopt – keeping the COVID factor in mind.

1. Look for hidden opportunities in the current crisis

As a business owner, you do not need to wait for the current crisis to end – before pitching to potential investors. As a rule, start looking for business opportunities that have become relevant – thanks to the ongoing crisis. 

For example, Kognition – an enterprise-level AI solution provider for smart buildings – presented the design for a thermal camera that used image recognition to screen the body temperature of people entering a building. The company also offered a limited trial period of thermal camera technology for free – something that would not be thought of in the pre-COVID world.

2. Create the perfect pitch deck

Next, you need to create the perfect pitch deck – with 15 to 20 slides – that covers all aspects of your business including the problem to be solved, your solution, product details, targeted consumers, and business strategy. Above all, your slide presentation should complement your business story and presentation – and not just be about putting all the information on a presentation deck.

Entrepreneur and investor, Rizwan Virk, shares an interesting take on a story for selling a video game – comprising of the following talking points:

  • The growing market for mobile games
  • Having over a million active players daily
  • Why players love our game?
  • About how they are making their profits – and so soon!
  • And finally, about how to make more money by investing in their proposed plan.

3. Prepare yourself for a remote (or virtual) pitch

Having a face-to-face meeting seems just a distant reality in today’s COVID environment. 

Remote work is likely to continue even in the post-COVID era – as confirmed by the findings of the 2020 State of Remote Report where 98% of the surveyed workers plan to work remotely (at least partially) for the rest of their careers.

So, what are the best practices when it comes to remote pitching to investors? First, avoid any cold business emails to investors, as they simply do not work. Share your presentation deck beforehand with the investor to get them interested in meeting you – and ask questions.

Second, before the pitch, make sure your Wi-Fi Internet is working – and you are familiar with how video conferencing tools like Zoom work. Plus, talk about all your presentation slides – that you have shared with your investor – during the video sessions.

4. What investors check for in your first interview?

Preparing for your first interview with a potential investor? What do they really look for? Business metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV) can be a good start. Also, show how quickly you can acquire new customers. A case study shows how Shared inbox company, Front raised over $10 million in the first round of funding – by showing their organic growth – and another $59 million in subsequent funding rounds.

Image source: Startup Freak

When it comes to investing in product startups, technical expertise and product readiness are what most investors expect from you. For example, if you have developed a fintech product, then make sure your pitching team knows everything about the fintech industry.    

Bonus tips

Here are a few more bonus tips for you to create the perfect pitch for your potential investors!

  • Funding for a product company? Do remember to talk about what your product does.
  • Anticipate the investor questions that you will be asked – and prepare to answer them and dispel other common concerns.
  • And finally, when it comes to money, be clear on how much money or capital you are expecting from this round of funding.

Need help in preparing pitch decks? 

Here are some useful tools that can help you prepare effective pitch decks:

  • Prezi: A presentation sharing tool that was ranked as the most innovative tool by PC World in 2018.
  • Haiku Deck: a fast and user-friendly free tool for preparing presentation decks – with a functionality that matches MS PowerPoint.
  • Google Slides: a low-cost solution from Google that is easy to use for making and sharing high-quality decks.

Conclusion

As startup investors tighten their pockets, the right pitch can help you succeed in getting the right amount of startup funding to take your business to the next level. Hope the best practices and tools presented in this article help you achieve your goals.

KiwiTech has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs connect with investors through its various pitch events including demo days, techathons and venture fairs. If you are actively raising capital and seeking opportunities to pitch to angel investors, VCs or family offices, find a KiwiTech event tailored for your startup stage!

Do Women Entrepreneurs Refrain From Asking for Help?

As we celebrate what seems to be a steady increase in female entrepreneurship in the United States especially over the past few decades, seeking and raising capital remains increasingly difficult for women entrepreneurs. 

Pitchbook and the National Venture Capital Association recently came out with their Q3 numbers, which suggest that while overall investment remains robust and resilient even amid the economic volatility brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a significant decline in the investment in female-founded companies — falling from 2.6 percent in 2019 to 1.8 percent as of September 2020. And as we must, we ask why. More importantly, we ask the women among us in the entrepreneurial shoes about their understanding of the situation.

We recently held our Female Founders Demo Day, a quarterly event that started as an effort to lead by example and raise awareness in an industry that tends to overlook successful women entrepreneurs. The event also included a panel discussion with four remarkable and successful women entrepreneurs who talked about their experiences, successes and failures, as leading women playing multiple and diverse roles within the space. They discussed their opinions on important topics such as what helps investors choose startups to promote, what qualities they look for in the company or in the team, and alternately, what are the factors that help startups choose investors to go after and what makes viable partnerships.

While the panelists agreed that being communicative and expressive about concerns, queries and knowledge gaps, knowing when to seek help, and identifying problem areas are some of the traits that are crucial to a good partnership, they paused at the question of the difference between men and women entrepreneurs when it comes to asking for help.

Lindi Sabloff, co-founder and managing director at Nouva Management LLC, who was also the moderator for the panel discussion, mentioned at the very beginning of the session that there does exist an “unconscious bias” towards women entrepreneurs specifically when it comes to investing. Reiterating that it remains increasingly difficult for women to raise money, she spoke of her own experience as an advisor and mentor to early-stage technology founders. 

“Women try to put their heads down and struggle through it and try to appear as though everything is effortless.”

This was also something that all the other panelists appeared to agree on. They confirmed that as female founders, they had personally felt the need to refrain from asking for help and instead try harder to reach the elusive concept of perfection.

Erika Lucas, angel investor and co-founder of StitchCrew, highlighted the same by saying, 

“Even though growth and perfection don’t coexist, a lot of women do have the tendency to avoid seeking help when it is needed.”

 Nancy McIntyre, Founder and CEO of Fingerprint, said that in her personal experience as a woman executive, she had often felt that “asking for help was a sign of weakness” and therefore faced a hard time expressing the need for help. Interestingly, she also said that while she did find it hard to seek help, she was not sure whether it was something she felt as a female founder-executive or as an individual. She was of the view that showing the “weakness” of seeking help can often lead to self-doubt such as — 

“Am I less investible, am I less partnerable?”

Discussing the ways to counter the inability to ask for help, the panelists spoke about their own coping mechanisms. Lindi said that within her career as a mentor, she had had to force herself to get “proactive” and approach female founders to point out to them that while they were brilliant and doing great work, they did need help and advice “from somebody outside their head.” Erika talked about launching VEST, a curated network of C-suite women working together to expedite the pipeline of more women in power, for women entrepreneurs and executives to “bounce ideas and to ask for help” in a safe, non-judgmental environment.

Nancy reaffirmed that forcing oneself to highlight concerns and initiate a conversation in any way that works is the best way to get to a point where one can seek help or guidance that is needed. She said, 

“Once it’s out of the bag, it creates a conversation and people want to help.”

Which she felt is easier than directly asking for help. She added that it is important for women executives to find tools that force meaningful conversations.

Going further from the acknowledgment that female founders hesitate to ask for help, Samhita “Sam” Jayanti, founder of Ideamix, said, 

“The failure to be expressive or communicative can point toward or lead to a lack of curiosity which is a big impediment to become a successful founder or entrepreneur.”

Sam stressed that it is important to be open about expressing knowledge gaps or problem areas that female founders feel and to work proactively to find out where these gaps exist.

In closing remarks, the panelists agreed that being honest with oneself, forcing necessary conversations, having a strong support group, and not allowing internal doubt and fear of failure take over are crucial elements for women founders to work on as they venture into the market to seek investment. They also spoke about measures such as having regular check-in mechanisms to keep the target in sight, engaging with the teams, and speaking to customers upon every opportunity as pointers that women founders should consider and follow for success.

This brings us straight back to our initial concern — Do Women Entrepreneurs Refrain From Asking for Help? However, like our panelists, we, too, cannot limit our query to a yes or no response to this question. Why do women entrepreneurs feel shy asking for help? Why do they feel the evidently unreasonable pressure to figure things out by themselves even when they need help and guidance? Are there prevalent attitudes in the industry that need to change for this situation to improve? If so, what are they? Does it have to do with continuing prejudices regarding the abilities of women to successfully lead a business? Or are these prejudices only alive now in the minds of the female founders who self-impose the pressure to overcompensate to justify their roles as leaders? 

These are questions that need to be understood and answered within the industry so that a more encouraging atmosphere can be created which will be conducive to providing the required help for women entrepreneurs and executives and thus lead to better investment and more success stories. We hope that more such discussions on these issues with both men and women business leaders will give us better insight into what needs to be done to achieve a more egalitarian and encouraging business space.

KiwiTech takes pride in building a startup ecosystem that empowers women, minorities and other underrepresented groups of entrepreneurs. We host a variety of events to help these entrepreneurs close the funding gap – click here to learn more about our upcoming ones!