The Reasons I'm Doing a Startup During COVID

And why others should consider it, too

I’m starting a company with some of my favorite people from Plaid. But this post isn’t about the company; this post is about why I think now is a great time to start a startup for a certain profile of team & product. I won’t bury the lede, here’s why COVID hasn’t dissuaded (and in many cases, has emboldened) me to start now:

Strengths that are COVID-neutral, i.e. COVID hasn’t nullified

• Our product & market has no direct COVID exposure. We won’t be at the whim of macro effects like real estate fluctuations or retail unemployment.

• We already work well together. We’ve all worked together at Plaid, so the risk of cofounder chemistry issues or anxiety is extremely low. We have the same values for building great products and focusing on customers. We can be honest with each other 1:1. Even successful companies have early cofounder disputes, but we’re as close to a local minima as possible here.

• We have a great network of Plaid and ex-Plaid colleagues for advice and early funding. We don’t need to cold call or email or go to hosted mixers or events to get intros or raise a friends & family round. We’ll do those things if we think they help, but our professional network gives us a head start.

• Visa’s acquisition of Plaid is a strong external signal to potential customers and investors on the strength of the founding team. This is important during product discovery & customer conversations since it gives us credibility & faith that we can execute.

Strengths that are COVID-positive, i.e. some other teams are missing these for the next 6+ months (or however long until a vaccine)

• We are effective at remote work. We aren’t mind-body awareness gurus or remote toolchain thought leaders, but we’ve found ways to cope with (and be effective during) lockdown. We take care of our mental health by actively traveling to be closer to friends & family. This is gives us a 6+ month lead against any competing team that hasn’t adapted to remote work.

• We can build a distributed-first foundation into the company. This has already paid dividends — we likely wouldn’t have been able to work with the amazing Michael Kelly if lockdown hadn’t extended past May, since he had moved to Washington while the rest of us were in San Francisco. This give us a 6+ month recruiting advantage over larger companies that are still trying to figure out remote recruiting & onboarding.

• Early stage fundraising hasn’t slowed down, and is in fact astonishingly available during the remote era. We don’t need in-person meetings to start discussing terms (+Calendly is a godsend for scheduling teams >2). We’re also more open to speaking with investors outside of the Bay Area, and vice versa, which likely wouldn’t have been true in a no-COVID era.

• Talking to customers and advisors is astonishingly fast because people have more schedulable time (silver lining for an era with little socializing). Like with fundraising, video chats are the gold standard for sales & customer discovery. We won’t have to hop offices over the Bay Area to do demos or help with initial integrations.

I know a lot of people in a similar situation to mine (not just Plaids - there have been a ton of IPOs and exits in 2020 and more to come in 2021). If you’ve been interested in doing a startup but feel discouraged because of COVID, I’d ask you to:

1) Take an honest look at their situation & how many of these advantages apply

2) Reach out to me to chat about it — it never hurts to get feedback early and often!

Remotely,

Omar