Category: UNCATEGORIZED

When former Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst moved on to become president at parent company IBM earlier this month, the logical person to take his place was long-time executive Paul Cormier. As he takes over in the most turbulent of times, he still sees a company that is in the right place to help customers modernize their approach to development as they move more workloads to the cloud.

We spoke to Cormier yesterday via video conference, and he appeared to be a man comfortable in his new position. We talked about the changes his new role has brought him personally, how he his helping his company navigate the current situation and how his relationship with IBM works.

One thing he stressed was that even as part of the IBM family, his company is running completely independently, and that includes no special treatment for IBM. It’s just another customer, an approach he says is absolutely essential.

Taking over

He says that he felt fully prepared for the role having run the gamut of jobs over the years from engineering to business units to CTO. The big difference for him as CEO is that in all of his previous roles he could be the technical guy speaking a certain engineering language with his colleagues. As CEO, things have changed, especially during a time where communication has become paramount.

This has been an even bigger challenge in the midst of the pandemic. Instead of traveling to offices for meetings, chatting over informal coffees and having more serendipitous encounters, he has had to be much more deliberate in his communication to make sure his employees feel in the loop, even when they are out of the office.

“I have a company-wide meeting every two weeks. You can’t over communicate right now because it just doesn’t happen [naturally in the course of work]. I’ve got to consciously do it now, and that’s probably the biggest thing,” he said.

Go-to-market challenges

While Cormier sees little change on the engineering side, where many folks have been working remotely for some time, the go-to-market team could face more serious hurdles as they try to engage with customers.

“The go-to-market and sales side is going to be the challenge because we don’t know how our customers will come out of this. Everybody’s going to have different strategies on how they’re coming out of this, and that will drive a lot,” he said.

This week was Cormier’s first Red Hat Summit as CEO, one that like so many conferences had to pivot from a live event to virtual fairly quickly. Customers have been nervous, and this was the first chance to really reconnect with them since things have shut down. He says that he was pleasantly surprised how well it worked, even allowing more people to attend than might pay to travel to a live event.

Conferences are a place for the sales team to really shine and lay the groundwork for future sales. Not being there in person had to be a big change for them, but he says this week went better than he expected, and they learned a ton about running virtual events that they will carry forth into the future.

“We all miss the face-to-face for sure, but I think we’ve learned new things, and I think our team did an amazing job in pulling this off,” he said.

No favorites for IBM

As he navigates his role inside the IBM family, he says that new CEO Arvind Krishna has effectively become his board of directors, now that the company has gone private. When IBM paid $34 billion for Red Hat in 2018, it was looking for a way to modernize the company and to become a real player in the hybrid cloud market.

Hybrid involves finding a way to manage infrastructure that lives on premises as well as in the cloud without having to use two sets of tools. While IBM is all in on Red Hat, Cormier says it’s absolutely essential to their relationship with customers that they don’t show them any favoritism, and that includes no special pricing deals.

Not only that, he says that he has the freedom to run the company the way he sees fit. “IBM doesn’t set our product strategy. They don’t set our priorities. They know that over time our open source products could eat into what they are doing with their proprietary products, and they are okay with that. They understand that,” he said.

He says that doing it any other way could begin to erode the reason that IBM spent all that money in the first place, and it’s up to Cormier to make sure that they continue to do what they were doing and keep customers comfortable with that. So far, the company seems to be heading in the same upward trajectory it was on as a public company.

In the most recent earnings report in January, IBM reported Red Hat income of $1.07 billion, up from $863 million the previous year when it was still a private company. That’s a run rate of over $4 billion, putting it well within reach of the $5 billion goal Whitehurst set a few years ago.

Now it’s Cormier’s job to get them there and beyond. The pandemic certainly makes it more challenging, but he’s ready to lead the company to that next level, all while walking the line as the CEO of a company that lives under the IBM family umbrella and all that entails.

By the summer of 2016, Marie Outtier had spent eight years as a consultant advising media agencies and martech companies on marketing growth strategy.

Pierre-Jean “PJ” Camillieri started as a music software engineer before joining one of Apple’s consumer electronics divisions. Inspired by Siri, he left to start Timista, a smart lifestyle assistant.

When the two joined forces to co-found Aiden.ai, the combination was potent — one was a consummate marketer, the other, a specialist in machine learning. Their goal: create an AI-driven marketing analyst that offered actionable advice in real time.

Humans who manage ad campaigns must analyze vast amounts of numbers, but Outtier and Camillieri envisioned a tool that could make optimization recommendations in real time. Analytics are vast and unwieldy, so theirs was a no-brainer proposition with a market crying out for solutions.

The company’s first office was at Bloom Space in Gower Street, London. It was just a handful of hot desks and a nearby sofa shared with four other startups. That summer, they began in earnest to build the company. A few months later, they had a huge opportunity when the still 100% bootstrapped company was selected for Techcrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield competition.

Interviewed by TechCrunch, they explained their proposition: Marketers wanted to know where a digital marketing campaign was getting the most traction: Twitter or Facebook. You might need to check several dashboards across multiple accounts, plus Google analytics to compile the data — and even if you conclude that one platform is outperforming the other, that might change next week as users shift attention to Instagram, potentially wasting 60% of ad spend.

Aiden was intended to feel like just another co-worker, relying on natural language processing to make the exchange feel chatty and comfortable. It queried data from multiple dashboards and quickly compiled it into flash charts, making it easy to find and digest.

Eventually, instead of managing 10 clients, marketing analysts would be able to manage 50 using dynamic predictions as well as visualizations. Aiden incorporated Outtier’s expertise into its algorithms so it could suggest how to tweak a Facebook campaign and anticipate what was going to happen.

Was appearing at Disrupt a significant moment? “It was a big deal for us,” says Outtier. “The exposure gave us ammunition to raise our first round. And being part of the Disrupt Battlefield alumni gave us many meaningful networking and PR opportunities.”

A few weeks later the company had raised a seed round of $750,000. But not without difficulty. By this time Outtier was in the latter stages of pregnancy. Raising money under these circumstances was difficult, but, she says, “it can be done. It’s tougher than ‘normal circumstances.’ It’s a bit like running a marathon, but with a fridge on your back.”

Following an explosive report about the dark past of its founder and CEO Damien Patton, Utah-based company Banjo is facing a backlash in its own backyard. After revelations of Patton’s former ties to a branch of the KKK came to light, Utah’s Attorney General and the University of Utah froze their relationships with the company. Now, the company will suspend all of its contracts in the state.

Following the actions by the state AG’s office, Banjo announced that it would suspend all of its state contracts in Utah, “not ingesting any government data or providing any services to government entities” until an audit could be conducted. Banjo signed a $20.7 million contract with the state of Utah in 2019, a relationship set to span five years.

“The Utah Attorney General’s office is shocked and dismayed at reports that Banjo’s founder had any affiliation with any hate group or groups in his youth,” Reyes’ office said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “Neither the AG nor anyone in the AG’s office were aware of these affiliations or actions. They are indefensible. He has said so himself. ”

In the investigation on Patton, OneZero revealed that not only did Patton have ties to active KKK members at the age of 17, but that in 1990 he drove a car past a synagogue in a Nashville suburb while a KKK member shot at the building. Following the incident, he reportedly went into hiding at a white supremacist training camp. According to the reporting, Patton’s affiliation with white supremacists continued into his adulthood after he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, though Patton frames those ties as solely during his youth, after he “was taken in” by white supremacists while living on the street.

In a statement to TechCrunch and published on the company’s blog, Patton expressed remorse for his actions while not directly addressing how his violent, extremist past never came up when telling his own story as a founder:

“I have worked every day to be a responsible member of society. I’ve built companies, employed hundreds and have worked to treat everyone around me equally. In recent years, I’ve sought to create technologies that stop human suffering and save lives without violating privacy. I know that I will never be able to erase my past but I work hard every day to make up for mistakes. This is something I will never stop doing.”

Once a proximity social networking app, Banjo pivoted in recent years to become a real-time intelligence platform for police departments and public officials. Its core product, Live Time, purports to provide “life-saving information in seconds” in order to mobilize emergency responses, but has faced criticism for its surveillance-driven mission. As Vice recently observed, the company’s desire to conduct realtime AI-powered monitoring on public surveillance camera feeds is “something that has terrified security and civil liberties experts for years.”

Reyes noted that while he “believe[s] Mr. Patton’s remorse is sincere,” the Utah AG’s office would suspend its use of Banjo while a third-party investigates the state’s implementation for “issues like data privacy and possible bias,” suggesting that other state agencies using Banjo should follow suit.

“Banjo’s mission is to save lives and minimize human suffering to help first responders in emergency situations while not invading people’s civil liberties and rights,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing plans to pause state contracts. “We are looking forward to the audit to show that we can build technology to help save lives and protect people’s rights.”

Directly taking on Google and Amazon generally seems to be an ill-advised strategy for a young startup. It’s even more complicated when you’re competing on the home assistants front, a technically-complex, capital-intensive future platform that both tech giants have dumped substantial sums into.

Over the past few years, the small smart home startup Josh.ai has attempted to do just that, capitalizing on public distrust of the big voice platforms to sell an intelligent assistant to users weary of sticking a Google or Amazon-owned microphone in their homes. The company has built its business catering to customers seeking professionally-installed pricey outfits of their home, costing upwards of $10,000 on the high-end.

The company just secured its largest funding round to date, an $11 million Series A round which brings the startup’s total funding to $22 million. A spokesperson for Josh.ai said their investors have asked not to be named, though he confirmed the round was led by corporate investors.

For people with an Echo Dot or Google Mini in their home, Josh.ai’s approach feels familiar. The platform boasts a number of third-party integrations so you can use the platform to switch off lights, turn on devices, play music, and answer some simple commands. Basically, the bulk of home-centric commands popular on Google Assistant and Alexa.

The startup recently introduced Josh Micro, its own take on the Echo Dot. It has a futuristic vibe and because it’s installed by professionals, users are privy to a sleek look with wires neatly tucked away inside walls. CEO Alex Capecelatro says their competitors in the professionally-installed space have been pushing wall-mounted screens with UIs that often aren’t updated and don’t age well. He hopes their more low-key display-free devices can keep less focus on the hardware and more attention on their software.

“Our philosophy is that you shouldn’t be talking to puck, it should feel fully immersive,” he says.

Capecelatro had originally seen the best path to existing alongside Google and Amazon as working with them and leveraging their platforms, but he soon found that not working with them proved to be the startup’s biggest asset.

“In terms of direction, what became really clear in the past three years was the importance of privacy,” Capecelatro told TechCrunch. “A lot of our clients are just people who care about their privacy, it’s part of every conversation.”

On the tech side, Capecelatro says the startup’s platform is designed around its own natural language processing stack so most voice requests can be processed locally thought the startup does leverage tech built by Google and Microsoft to handle speech-to-text processes. While the company uses anonymized data to improve its services, the startup has also introduced specific software features to keep privacy-focused users satisfied including their own take on a smart home incognito mode.

There are few silver bullets in smart home tech and robust third party support often leaves room for uncertainty, which in Josh’s case can mean the difference between lights turning on or staying off. Capecelatro says ensuring smooth compatibility with supported devices has been a pretty big focus for their engineering team.

“The more things we work with, the more things we have to QA and the more things that could be impacted,” he says.

While Capecelatro says that around 80-85% of their business goes to single family homes, he says the startup is starting to find business in commercial sectors, outfitting hotels and condo buildings.

“The reality is we’ve found is that the professional installed space is a really big market that the consumer companies don’t really think about,” Capecelatro says. “I think for us the likely future is that we’ll focus on areas where you have a professional installer in a non residential arena.”

The company says the pandemic has actually given their business a bump, with April being their best month of sales to date as home-owners stuck in their houses look to finally act on long-considered home improvement projects.

Two years ago, the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) took the wraps off a dedicated crypto fund from a subset of its limited partners, who’d provided the firm with $300 million in capital commitments.  Now, the firm says it has closed a second fund in the same vein, this time with $515 million in capital commitments.

As general partner Chris Dixon — who leads the fund with general partner Katie Haun — tells Fortune: “It’s very rare that major, new computing paradigms come along, and we think this is on the scale of cloud and mobile for the Internet.”

Certainly, the firm has less competition for crypto deals at the moment than it might have back in 2018. Many VCs pulled back last year, with overall funding in 2019 down 28% from 2018’s peak of $4.3 billion, according to CB Insights.

Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency markets were also hammered along with the broader stock market in a downturn sparked by the COVID-19 crisis, causing some to conclude they are as vulnerable to a lot of other instruments to stock market shifts.

A big upswing since — along with this obvious endorsement by a16z — could turn those trends around, however. Indeed, the entire market capitalization of cryptocurrencies jumped $35.3 billion in 24 hours as of 2.19 p.m. Singapore time, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com and reported by CNBC.

Bitcoin, specifically, which fell below $4,000 last month, shot up to $9,388.30 by earlier today (though, as this is being written, it has slipped to $8695.41).

Industry participants attribute the rally to  central bank monetary policy and the “bitcoin halving” that’s expected next month, when for the third time in the network’s history, the reward for mining a block will be divided by two.

Andreessen Horowitz has invested directly in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, along with a range of other bets that include Coinbase; the crypto lender Compound; and Anchorage, a cryptocurrency custody service.

It’s also a member of both the Libra Association and the Celo Alliance for Prosperity, both of which are inviting developers to build decentralized mobile apps that are based on their own cryptocurrencies.

To drum up even more deal flow, a16z last month kicked off a free, seven-week program for cryptocurrency startups that aims to educate and “supplement — not replace — the many other excellent programs and resources that help founders learn about building tech startups,” Dixon wrote of the school late last year.

The firm isn’t taking equity in the startups, it says.  Instead, it’s apparently looking to build connections to and between founders who it might want to work with in the future.

The coronavirus outbreak has driven more consumers to turn to their smart speakers for news, information, music and entertainment, according to new data released today by NPR and Edison Research. Around three-quarters of U.S. adults 18 and up said their routines have been impacted due to COVID-19 and their media habits have changed as a result. Since the outbreak, 35% of U.S. smart speakers owners say they’re listening to more news and information through their device, and 36% say they’ve increased their consumption of music and entertainment.

These figures skew even higher when looking at the 18-34 age group.

Here, 50% report an increase in news and information consumption and 52% said they’ve increased their listening of music and other sorts of entertainment.

In addition, the report found the total time spent listening to news content via the smart speaker has increased since the same time last year. In Spring 2019, 30% said listened to 3 or more hours per week, 40% said 1 to less than 3 hours, and 30% said less than one hour.

In the quarantine-fueled Spring 2020, these numbers increased to 32% (3+ hrs.), 43% (1 to <3 hrs.), and 25%(<1 hr), respectively.

Smart speaker owners working from home during the COVID-19 outbreak were also more likely than smart speaker owners in general to make requests for news from their device on a weekly basis, but not as likely to ask for the weather, the time, or other updates.

In the work-from-home group, 65% said they use the device — at some point — to listen to the news while 62% of all smart speaker owners said they do.

Quarantined adults may also help to drive increased sales of smart speakers as they realize the value in spreading out the devices in the home.

A large number of smart speaker owners who have children said they’re now thinking of buying another device to entertain their kids.

Last spring, only 47% said they were thinking of buying a new device for the kids. Now, it’s 71%.

The data in the report referencing the changes after COVID-19 comes from a survey that took place from March 31 through April 1, 2020, the organizations said.

“With tens of millions of Americans no longer commuting, smart speakers are becoming even more important as a conduit for news and information,” said Edison Research SVP Tom Webster, in a release, “and this increased usage and facility with voice assistants will likely increase demand for this technology in vehicles once our commutes resume.” he said.

The report also claimed that smart speaker adoption among U.S. adults has now reached 24% of the U.S. population, or 60 million users. This is a more conservative estimate than another recent report on smart speaker adoption from Voicebot.ai, which said one-third of U.S. adults have a smart speaker, or 87.7 million.

The further report examined other smart speaker trends, unrelated to COVID-19, including the use of smart devices with a screen and voice assistants on phones.

The Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF) just went through a major leadership change, with executive director Abby Kearns stepping down after five years (and becoming a CTO at Puppet) and the CFF’s CTO Chip Childers stepping into the top leadership role in the organization. For the most part, though, these changes are only accelerating some of the strategic moves the organization already made in the last few years.

If you’re unfamiliar with the open-source Cloud Foundry project, it’s a Platform-as-a-Service that’s in use by the majority of Fortune 500 enterprises. After a lot of technical changes, which essentially involved building out support for containers and adding Kubernetes as an option for container orchestration next to the container tools Cloud Foundry built long before the rise of Google’s open-source tool, the technical underpinnings of the project are now stable. And as Childers has noted before, that now allows the project to refocus its efforts on developer experience.

Image Credits: Cloud Foundry (opens in a new window) / Flickr (opens in a new window)

That, after all, was always the selling point of Cloud Foundry. Developers stick to a few rules and, in return, they can easily push their apps to Cloud Foundry with a single command (“cf push”) and know that it will run, while the enterprises that employ them get the benefits of faster development cycles.

On the flip side, though, actually managing that Cloud Foundry install was never easy, and required either a heavy lift from internal infrastructure teams or the help of outside firms like Pivotal, IBM, SAP, Suse and others to run and manage the platform. That pretty much excluded smaller companies, and especially startups, from using the platform. As Childers noted, some still did use it, but that was never the project’s focus.

Now, with the Kubernetes underpinnings in place, he believes that it will become easier for non-enterprise users to also get started with the platform. And projects like KubeCF and CF for K8s now offers a full Cloud Foundry distribution for Kubernetes, which makes it relatively easy to use the platform on top of modern infrastructure.

To highlight some of these changes, the CFF today unveiled its new tutorial hub that will not just explain what Cloud Foundry is, but also feature tutorials to get started. Some of these will be hosted and written by the Foundation itself, while community members will contribute others.

“Our community has created a learning hub, curated by the Cloud Foundry Foundation, of open-source tutorials for folks to learn Cloud Foundry and related cloud native technologies,” said Childers. “The hub includes an interactive hands-on lab for first-time Cloud Foundry users to experience how easy the platform makes deploying applications to Kubernetes, and is open for the community to contribute.”

Blue Origin was among the companies selected by NASA to develop and build a human lander system for its Artemis missions, which include delivering the next man and first woman to the surface of the Moon in 2024. The Jeff Bezos -founded space company chose to deliver a bid that included a space industry ‘dream team’ of subcontractors, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper, and its Artemis Human Landing System will use the expertise of all three.

The Blue Origin bid was one of three that ended up winning a contract form NASA, alongside SpaceX’s Starship and a human landing system developed by Dynetics working with a range of subcontractors. Blue Origin originally debuted its vision of a human lander last year, first with the unveiling of its Blue Moon craft in May, and then with the announcement of its cross-industry ‘national team’ at IAC later in the year.

Now, the company has released an animation of how its landing system will work, including Blue Moon docking with a transfer element to bring astronauts over from the Orion capsule that will carry them to the Moon from Earth, as well as the descent stage to actually land, and the ascent stage to take-off again from the disposable lander platform and return the astronauts to their ride home.

Here’s where each each company is involved and what they’re contributing to what you see above: Blue Origin is building the lander proper, which is that platform with legs which you see first in the video, and which is left behind on the Moon at the end. Lockheed Martin builds the bubble-like vehicle which attaches to the lander, and which takes off from it at the end. Northrop Grumman builds the long cylinder that connects up with the lander and provides its propulsion through low lunar orbit as it readies to land, and then disconnects before the actual descent. Draper is behind the senses across all of this, delivering avionics for flight control and the landing itself.

As mentioned, Blue Origin is one of three companies selected by NASA to develop these lander systems, but its team brings a lot of combined expertise in spaceflight and spacecraft development to the table. The launch system itself will arrive separately from the astronauts on board Orion, making the trip either via a New Glenn rocket built by Blue Origin, which is still in development, or via the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, another in-development spacecraft which is set to take off for the first time next year.

A LabCorp shareholder has filed a lawsuit against the laboratory giant, accusing its board of concealing details of two data breaches that affected millions of patients.

The derivative suit, filed on Tuesday by shareholder Raymond Eugenio, targets the company’s leadership and board members, including its chief executive Adam Schechter.

The first breach hit third-party billing provider AMCA in 2019, affecting 7.7 million LabCorp patients and millions more from other lab test providers, including Quest and BioReference. A second security lapse discovered by TechCrunch earlier this year involving the exposure of thousands of patient documents was also referenced in the suit.

At the heart of the complaint, the shareholder claims LabCorp’s “insufficient cybersecurity procedures” contributed in part to the two security incidents, and that the board fell short of its fiduciary duty by not disclosing the security incidents to shareholders. LabCorp is also accused of not informing patients and customers of the breach, and it’s claimed the company did not properly inform attorney generals’ offices within the time given under state data breach notification laws.

The suit also accuses LabCorp of failing to “disclose this breach in any widely disseminated public release or SEC filing,” adding that the incidents noted in the complaint were “unlawfully concealed from LabCorp shareholders.”

News of the suit was first reported by Bloomberg Law.

A spokesperson for LabCorp did not respond to a request for comment.

Achieving a sense of community has been the pursuit of businesses trying to attract the experience-over-items millennials and Gen Z who want their consumerism to have a positive impact on the world. “That’s what brands want — activism, human connection and how to be local,” Olu Alege, owner of the New York-based boutique strategic branding agency No Noise, said.  

“Community” is defined as a group of individuals with a common characteristic or interest within a larger society. The key to building a positive community is allowing members to speak and be heard and, subsequently, be provided for as they contribute. The same rules apply to building a business on the concept of community, and this foundation doesn’t suddenly change during a pandemic. Sure, the needs fluctuate (as do the funds), but voicing the need — hearing them and attempting to accommodate them — should not. 

The world is collectively shifting during the COVID-19 pandemic. The demand for community is arguably greater, as shelter-in-place directives have resulted in extreme isolation for some. And while these extraordinary circumstances have seen some purveyors of community step up, others have unfortunately fallen short and instead haphazardly execute “community” as a talking point rather than a reality that benefits … communities.

Co-working places and social clubs like SoHo House, WeWork, The Wing and New York’s Ethel’s Club hawk community to small businesses and entrepreneurs by bringing loosely like-minded people or those with similar lifestyles into the same space.  

Brick-and-mortar retailers like Nike’s Live locations have leveraged localized data to bring specific communities back out to shop in-store. Shopify’s Los Angeles location’s initiative is to foster community by offering educational programming and other resources within their permanent physical space. Both brands saw the value in organizing communities and adopted the concept to further their core business. 

Even before COVID-19 upended everyday life, cracks in the business of community began to hurt beloved brands, as pulling the curtain back revealed unethical treatment of team members and work environments unaligned with their outward-facing brand or company mission. 

Fitness brand and inclusive community Outdoor Voices’s “smoke and mirrors” utopia came crumbling down when 14 employees anonymously shared with BuzzFeed News stories of verbal abuse and a real life “Mean Girls” office environment.

The Wing’s downfall came when 26 employees shared with The New York Times stories of racism, virtue-signaling inclusivity and white-washed feminism. Seemingly, their motto “empowering women through community” was intended for a smaller set of women than their PR and marketing let hopeful members believe, despite each employee also being a card-carrying “Winglet.”  

And WeWork has been bleeding employees, investors and direction in the wake of Adam Neumann’s exaggerated investment in himself, such as when he personally trademarked the word “We” and subsequently net $5.9 million when WeWork was renamed We Co.

Since early March 2020, when we saw the shutdown of major sport events, the cancellation of conferences like CES and the postponing of festivals like Coachella, we’ve also seen these offenders continually fail their community with a lack of communication and foresight resulting in acts of desperation over safety in the face of coronavirus. 

Despite Neumann’s exit from WeWork in fall of 2019, company culture doesn’t change overnight, and their shaky idea of community persisted as the U.S. declared a state of emergency. WeWork opted to stay open despite shelter-in-place orders in cities with their largest locations, offering renters slashed rates and even incentivizing employees to come in with a $100 daily bonus, according to an internal memo received by The New York Times.  

A number of The Wing’s staff learned of the layoffs via this story on Vice that went up at 11:19 am EST on the day employees were supposed to be informed by 6:00 pm EST. SoHo House members shared that the club took until March 27 to allow members who requested it to pause memberships (which wouldn’t start until June 1), offering promises of complimentary food and drink until then. 

The glaring disconnect in these self-appointed authorities of community is the lack of care for the people that contribute to the community’s foundation and convenience-based investment in its members. 

“I have a problem with these companies that tend to talk about it when it’s convenient, when it’s okay for everyone to do it,” Alege shared. Some will argue that it’s for the better of the business, but that argument says more about the claimant than circumstance, as there are communities and businesses that are stepping up in this time of need. 

“Whether or not information is provided is where I feel like you can see the differences in a company’s mission,” Alege points out. He goes on to say companies that communicated to their teams and had everyone on board in preparation for an impending recession, or actively started to take precautions as the virus spread through other areas first, inherently care more for their teams and community, even if and when layoffs happen.

Brooklyn’s Ethel’s Club is the first private social and wellness club created intentionally for people of color with priority of their identity and experiences. On March 13, the club announced the precautionary shutdown of their HQ in anticipation for COVID-19. 

Upon making the decision, Ethel’s Club founder and owner Naj Austin said she took a lap around the club and asked some members their thoughts and what they’d like to see from Ethel’s Club should they shut down the space for a month or so. 

“They were like, ‘Oh, it’d be really cool if we could still have the community, somehow. Can you do it online?’ In my head, I’m thinking we have no capacity for this, but I guess we’re going to have to figure it out,” Austin added. “In exactly the same way that Ethel’s Club was started — by talking to our customers about what they wanted to see out of it — we used the same formula. It very much felt like we were starting the company all over again.”

Giving herself and her team a deadline of five days, they decided to pause the 225 members’ dues and open up a digital membership nationally for $17 a month. They’ve added more than 300 digital-only members to the existing members. 

The new digital membership still focuses on social and purposeful wellness. “In the morning we have programming that’s meant to intentionally address how you start your day, so super uplifting, assuming that you open your phone and read the news first thing. How can we combat that? How can we make your day successful?” Austin said. 

Strategically timed sessions include topics like “Radical Self Care For Radical Times,” full body at-home workouts and writing workshops, with the final session of each evening being loosely focused on celebrating the day. “When we’re in the new normal, I think people will still need this. I think people need the structure in this new world as people work from home more and just for whatever’s going to be on the other side.” Austin says this is to give members something to depend on, in this time where that is lacking.

They also launched their digital clubhouse, an Ethel’s Club members-only directory and portal for members to communicate. 

A community-based business model adopted by existing brands should be offering tools to foster the community. Communities formed on Instagram, Twitter and Slack have simply transformed without disappearing. 

IG Live has brought a plethora of wellness professionals live streaming — offering workouts to meditation — and resulted in legendary music producers Swizz Beatz and Timbaland bringing other recording artists together. This has resulted in the likes of T-Pain versus Lil’ Jon and Teddy Riley and Babyface going head to head and playing through their hits, as other musicians, producers and fans converse in the comments. 

Animal Crossing has seemingly established itself among these platforms as well, offering a place for existing communities to congregate despite being unable to be physically in the same room. 

New York-based DJ, Jubilee shared what the game has offered in this time, where she won’t be internationally touring for gigs like she normally does. “Yesterday I did a photo shoot with my DJ friend Teki Latex that lives in Paris. He had a bunch of us over at 10 pm his time. He even styled some of us and he got a photographer. It was so ridiculous, but it was also really fun and cute.”

With such uncertainty around when she will see her worldwide community, it seems Animal Crossing has allowed space for Jubilee and other creatives to still socialize, collaborate and have some variety in their creative output. 

Despite mounting privacy issues, Zoom has offered the quickest fix for those still working, while no-invite-necessary Houseparty offers video conferencing plus games for users to play together. 

Community-less platforms (and their users) like Netflix have benefited in this time of desperate need for community via the Netflix Party Chrome plug-in, which allows people to watch Netflix programming together from different locations. 

Meanwhile, Venmo has been watching what’s transpired on their platform and started to send money to people who have been using Venmo for good. A quick search of #venmoitforward will show Venmo sending $20 to people who are pouring into their community, whether it’s sending money to healthcare workers for lunch or extra cash to musicians and DJs live streaming their performances. 

As we persevere through this pandemic under an administration built on divisiveness, community is becoming increasingly important, as a slow response from federal leadership has left a lot of additional responsibilities on local governments and essential workers. Whether you’re keeping it among your established community or participating or building new ones, doing your part can be as simple as staying home, and now more than ever, with access to the internet, you can find some sense of community.