Welcome to the new, revamped Courier Weekly. As all of us are being forced to become more resilient and scrappy than ever before, we wanted to make Courier Weekly even more useful in getting you through the global outbreak. We’ve also launched a new daily podcast, focused on bringing you insights, skills and inspiration. As always, let us know what you think.

 
 PIVOT 

How businesses around the world are adapting and evolving.

Tunis: Taxi startup IntiGo has temporarily become a delivery service. For $4/hour, the company will deliver groceries and other products to customers. 

Los Angeles: The food truck turned restaurant Guerrilla Tacos has just launched several ‘Emergency Kits’. The $149 option contains enough produce for 60 tacos, plus a roll of toilet paper. 

London: Signature Brew is paying out-of-work musicians to hand-deliver its ‘Pub In A Box’ product – with glassware, snacks, a music quiz, playlists and beer. From Hammock, a landlord expenses platform, comes a business called SOS Supplies that connects healthcare workers with urgent medical supplies. 

Helsinki: Samuji Studio has elevated its IRL gift cards with handwritten notes. 

New York: Ethel’s Club, the clubhouse for PoC which we covered back in July, has launched a digital membership, with live streams and video content broadcast three times a day. 

 TALK 

 
‘Right now, you have to show you are the captain of your ship’

Arlan Hamilton, venture capitalist
Los Angeles

As a black and gay woman, Arlan Hamilton stands out in a white, male-dominated field. She built and grew Backstage Capital during a period of homelessness, and has made it her mission to give money to underrepresented founders.

When we last caught up with you (Courier Issue 29), you told us you were a big fan of WFH. We’re guessing that hasn’t changed… 
No! At Backstage, we’ve been using Zoom for the past 2.5 years, and we’ve always used Slack. I feel like everyone is finally coming around to our world, our way or working. 

Will the workplace go back to how it was? 
I can’t see us going back to the status quo. Already there’s been a marked change. 

Like what?
People are being told to take whatever mental space they need out of the working day. The idea that you have to hustle all weekend to be a proper entrepreneur isn’t cool anymore. Instead, take a nap. Make that your new hustle. It will give you an edge. 

It’s been a rough few weeks for the easy majority of founders and people working at startups. What’s been going on at Backstage?
It’s not been easy. We’ve had to lose a couple of people. I put some of my own money and savings into Backstage so we could give better severance packages. I’ve also been giving a lot of emotional support to some of the founders in our portfolio, as well as linking them up with the resources they need – right now, mainly things like legal advice.

How else have you been affected personally? 
Speaking engagements are one of my most lucrative revenue streams. But over the past couple of weeks, speaking gigs throughout the year that would have earned me $200,000 have been wiped out. That’s a huge, huge amount of money for me. Initially I thought, ‘Wow, that sucks!’ But life goes on.

Raising is going to be difficult, if not impossible, for most founders for the next few months. 
Correct. Bootstrap if you can.

How does the current climate impact underrepresented founders in particular? 
A lot of investors are closing up. They certainly aren’t taking on people in new networks – which is how underrepresented founders have to find them, because they aren’t ever in traditional investment capital networks to begin with. So the vast majority of investors’ networks will remain homogenous. Which is really sad. We were just getting to a place where we could see a good horizon.

Who will adapt best to this new normal?
Weirdly, the people who have the most money are the ones freaking out the most. People living paycheck to paycheck are adjusting better, even though they will be the ones who are eventually hit the hardest.

Are there any positives from all of this? 
Yeah, sure there are. Founders with already tough odds are stepping up. For example, Helen [Adeosun] of Care Academy and Emma [McIlroy] of Wildfang have been really transparent about what’s going on with their respective companies. They’ve been communicating really well with all of their shareholders, from employees to investors. More than ever, you have to take clear and decisive action.

 TOOLBOX 

1. Bloomberg Businessweek outlines how to keep your business running in nine steps, from updating your HR guidelines to assembling a skeleton staff. Our pick of the bunch: ‘Execs should spend their time making decisions, not calling Asia to track down what’s where. Digital supply networks link businesses with suppliers, customers, and logistics companies.’ 

2. Andreessen Horowitz has put together a long list of articles, videos and podcasts ‘for leaders in uncertain times’ – including 'Which way do you run?' by Ben Horowitz, which looks at how ‘most founders and CEOs have a gnarly gut instinct when something is wrong. What do you do with that feeling?’  

3. 28 moves to survive (and thrive) in a downturn. From the San Francisco-based venture firm NfX, the article is broken down into three main sections: managing loses, gaining ground and managing psychology.  

4. ‘If you’d like to impress those on your screen, while also keeping people from seeing how your bedroom is getting progressively messier, please meet The Infatuation’s library of Zoom backgrounds’ – featuring sushi and pepperoni.

 BRIEFING 

At home in Milan on a cold, sunny morning in the middle of January, Tommaso Puccioni picked up his phone. ‘I think you need to increase your production – fast.’

It was his distributor calling from Hong Kong. ‘He told me there was a new kind of SARS over there and that it was going to spread fast,’ Tommaso, 39, explains. ‘At first, I was sceptical. But the following week, orders started to rain in.’ 

Never mind that Banale sells toothbrushes, yoga mats, backpacks and travel pillows. All of the orders were for just one product: a washable, anti-pollution mask aimed at cycling commuters. Designed with a felt and polyester shell, it comes in grey and black with fluorescent straps: the kind of slick accessory that might look better suited to the runways of Milan than its hospital wards. 

When Banale first started selling the masks, even Tommaso didn’t wear them. He wasn’t overly concerned with pollution or the spreading of bacteria, he says, ‘but we noticed there wasn’t anything similar out there, so we designed our own.’ Since then, Banale, an Italian travel accessories company founded by Tommaso and Stefano Bossi in 2015, has been thrust into the global respiratory mask sector projected to be worth over $37bn (and that was before the outbreak).

While it might sound like the ultimate case of being in the right place at the right time, especially for a business that up until this point sold anything between 1,000 and 10,000 masks per month, the sudden increase in demand brought with it an entirely new set of hurdles to overcome. Banale initially ramped up production of its masks five-fold. Looking back, planning on this kind of scale seems ridiculous. ‘Customers started asking for thousands of units for each model rather than dozens. Then tens of thousands,’ says Tommaso. ‘And after one week, I had the Bank of China asking for a million pieces.’

Banale continues to receive 200-300 emails and 200-300 phone calls every. A day before his interview with Courier, Tommaso took a call from the chief of the Italian Police, who asked for 150,000 masks; a few minutes before the interview, Tommaso turned down an offer from Portugal to buy 50,000 units at an inflated price. ‘We simply don’t have that production capacity.’

With all manufacturing done in Italy, Banale are one of the few companies that produces masks in Europe – around half of the world’s masks come from China, and a further 20% from Taiwan – while its business model is geared to selling its products worldwide. Over 90% of sales come from outside of Italy. 

In early February, this seemed like a huge positive. China had banned mask exports and business was ‘booming’, Tommaso emailed Courier at the time. But given the global nature of the pandemic, the situation didn’t last long. Italy, like many other nations, started to severely restrict international exports of protective gear. And Banale’s business model was obliterated. The company shifted away from serving international consumers to becoming a domestic social utility company – the only reason why Tommaso and his two colleagues are still able to travel to the factory each day and continue production. 

The best course of action was to sell directly to companies, opening up a new business line. ‘We decided to make the best of it in terms of volume, not change prices and dedicate special conditions to companies that need our mask for their workers to continue work,’ says Tommaso. 

While competitors continue to raise their prices, Banale decided not to. Still, that hasn’t stopped the company from being accused of profiteering. A recent Instagram post promoting the mask with #coronavirus immediately received negative comments. ‘Masks are now tough to advertise,’ he concedes. 

Despite high demand, the short-term is uncertain for Banale. The company isn’t planning to increase production further, and expects its factory to shut down soon – which is ironic, when you consider the product’s usefulness. In Italy, it is illegal to ship and courier items without wearing a mask, so delivery companies have been closing down because they cannot guarantee their drivers have access to them. 

Looking past the pandemic also comes with huge uncertainty. ‘We sell low quantities of goods to numerous international accounts. We sell everywhere in the world – to retailers, wholesalers, distributors, DTC.’  It remains to be seen when, and under what conditions, exports of masks will resume. 

Like many founders right now, Tommaso is working six days a week at a pace he acknowledges is ‘too tough’. Long-term strategy and what the future holds for Banale once Italy returns to its new normality is, at best, an afterthought. ‘At least our travel pillows are still selling well,’ he says. ‘But I have no idea why.’

 COURIER LIFE 

Breathing affects anxiety, decision making, energy levels, the immune system and mental concentration. Alex Potter, founder of human behaviour practice KAIZN METHOD, outlines three techniques to bring into your daily routine.

1. Thai Method: 

• Inhale through your nose, initiating and driving the movement with your belly.
• Take a full inhale for a slow count of four seconds.
• Exhale slowly through the nose or mouth for a count of eight seconds.
• Repeat that cycle for the desired time or breath count.

2. Box Breathing Method: 

• Sit upright or lie on your back, maintaining a neutral spine.
• Slowly inhale through your nose for five seconds.
• Hold inhale for five and then exhale fully for five seconds.
• Repeat breath cycle x10.

3. 4-7-8 Method: 

• Place tip of tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your front teeth.
• Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
• Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
• Hold your breath for seven seconds. Exhale through mouth. Make whooshing sound for eight seconds.
• Inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

 FURTHER READING 

Airbnb hosts are turning into weed dealers.

Gift cards are not the answer.

The resurgence of the milkman.

When your star dish is blamed for spreading coronavirus.

Yuval Noah Harari’s take on the world after the pandemic.

Will this finally pop the DTC bubble?

Food trucks are trying anything to pivot.

The origin story of the N95 mask.