Shark Tank Coach On Business Resilience During Covid-19

Gabriel Paunescu has worked in the startup space for over ten years and lived in 3 countries. He was the CTO of an e-commerce company in Paris, an IoT company, and worked as a consultant for large banks and real estate companies in the US and UK. Gabriel also advises various tech startups, serve as an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), and mentor for the Founder Institute. He was also a startup coach for the TV show Shark Tank in Europe.

Carina Ayden: Covid-19 ravaged many industries; how was the technology sector affected?

Gabriel Paunescu: You know when your boss told you that your job can’t be done from home when you asked for a work-from-home day? Guess what, it can be done just as well, maybe even better. Meetings that can be video calls and video calls that can be emails have been a huge waste of time. The culprit is corporate culture, middle-managements need for control and the inability to trust and train the team. Sherwood Partners, a Silicon Valley company that helps companies with bankruptcy proceedings, went from 3 per week to 4 per day, so yes, the problem is real.

For early stage startups it’s the best time to be alive. The status quo is changing, innovation is all that matters and big companies will be looking for solutions to become lean and competitive.

Carina: There’s a perception that with the economic downturn it will be harder for startups to raise capital. You’ve worked on a Shark Tank television series in your home country of Romania. You’ve observed and helped prepare hundreds of founders with their investor pitches. What are your top three tips for making the best pitch and should your pitch change in consideration of the post-coronavirus environment?

Gabriel: Coronavirus will influence your go-to-market strategy, your traction and revenue will take a hit, your financial forecasts should be cut in half and your hiring strategy should reflect the revenue cut and user growth adjustment.

Tip 1: Research your market again. Call potential customers and understand how they were affected by coronavirus.

Tip 2: Cut your numbers. Financial forecasts have more to do with astrology than with finance, but nevertheless, be realistic.

Tip 3: Change your problem/solution slides to reflect the new market conditions. If the problems you solved pre-coronavirus is something no one cares about now (because they have bigger issues) search some more.

Of course, it depends on the sector. In some sectors you’ll have a hard time raising, in others it will be easier. Don’t forget: most venture capitalist firms have to deploy their capital in a fixed amount of time, coronavirus or not, so don’t stop pitching.

Carina: How can you ‘future-proof’ your startup to make it resilient to imminent disruptions like Covid-19?

Gabriel: Stay online and stay innovative. Keep a small staff and work your ass off. Don’t over-hire.

Carina: Can you share a few tips that help you build and maintain mental stamina?

Gabriel: I love building companies, I love working with smart people and I love searching for solutions to real-world problems. I’m passionate about system architecture and deal-making. I’m lucky enough to do both on a daily basis so I don’t really feel like I’m “working”. I don’t have the concept of after-work or before work, it’s just life. I guess if you are passionate about the process, you’ll make it through hard times.

Carina: What innovations do you predict will take place in the health care system?

Gabriel: Asset management and facility management software is antiquated and the fact that big companies like Netsuite, Infor, Oracle etc are charging millions of dollars more than they should doesn’t help. If companies had modern facility management, there wouldn’t be such a problem tracking down ventilators and other essential equipment.

Purchasing of medical equipment is still done by phone or fax and payment by check in the mail. We’re in 2020 and that’s happening. All the inefficiencies lead to a gridlock of equipment and lack of medical essentials.

Carina: Is there a single technological solution to help solve the situation around Covid-19?

Gabriel: No, but I hope this is a wake up call for large companies to understand how business management software can help them stay remote, make more money, cut risks and understand their landscape better.

Carina: What are you working on right now?

Gabriel: Currently, I am the CEO and co-founder of Naologic. We built Naologic with one goal in mind: to democratize the ERP (enterprise resource planning) industry and offer every company the opportunity to have a business management software that is in line with their organizational model and can adapt over time.

Long story short: building your back office is expensive, risky, and requires expertise. By using code automation, we reduce the cost by 50% and the delivery time by up to 90% for apps that always work.

Before Naologic, I co-founded Reylabs, an IoT analytics company in Silicon Valley. We patented technologies to achieve energy saving through machine analytics and failure prediction. I worked as a technology consultant for the Primer Minister’s cabinet in Romania and was a cybersecurity consultant for the French Ministry of Interior for over seven years.

Carina: Human history is full of examples of how adversity spurred creativity and innovation. There are a few tech companies that ‘scratch the tip of the (coronavirus) iceberg’ with their creative products. What are the most exciting new products you’ve seen out there?

Gabriel: Some products I’d like to mention that we use on a daily basis, even before coronavirus: Clubhouse for project management, Zoom for meetings, Slack for chat and Loom for problem solving. These products went from 1–2 million users to tens of millions.

Coronavirus accelerated remote work by 10 years and I’m very excited about that. Remote work forces everybody in the company to be more efficient, to learn time management, to learn how to identify problems, how to explain solutions and how to be a more effective communicator. I hope this trend continues even after Coronavirus.

I also believe this will be a big boost for electric cars. All of a sudden we are seeing how cities are less polluted, even though we were told it’s impossible. Oil demand has been decreasing for years and now it’s at an all-time low and it no longer makes sense to invest in oil companies.

Carina: Coronavirus exposed the vulnerabilities and inefficiencies of our healthcare system. It also showed how our disconnected approach to a global pandemic created a mass shortage of the most essential protective gear for not only the public, but for the healthcare workers themselves. The need for building a unanimous system where everything can be tracked and distributed accordingly is important. But in modern times, inter-connectivity comes with a higher risk of cyber attacks. What is the best protocol hospitals can follow to prevent hacks?

Gabriel: Update, update, update. It doesn’t matter the software vendor you use if the software was made in 2008 or if you are still using Windows XP (most are). Hospitals MUST end vendor lock-in contracts with big corporates who deliver overpriced and antiquated software that barely works. It’s also a user problem. Healthcare professionals don’t use computers as much, but that’s because the software solutions suck.

Carina: Where is health care technology most ripe for innovation?

Gabriel: Patient management software and facility management is crucial for hospitals to operate. Vendor lock-in situations where you can’t go to another vendor because the current vendor is hosting your data and won’t give to you, or is charging millions of dollars to migrate your data, shouldn’t be possible. Equipment acquisition should also change. Hospitals should be able to charge to a credit card, use any wholesaler they want and buy the equipment that works best.

Carina: The food supply chain has been significantly affected and, therefore, so have food businesses. How can technology help mitigate issues in the supply chain and how should food entrepreneurs consider moving forward?

Gabriel: Post-covid we will see wild swings in demand and supply. People will go back to work, but Covid is here to stay. It will most likely be as seasonal as the common cold. I wouldn’t be surprised if later this year we see some cities quarantined again, or countries. Supply chain management and stock movement data will become essential for CEO decisions because the market will fluctuate more. That’s something we’re building at Naologic: a cost-effective solution for e-commerce to operate, to understand supply cycles and most importantly — to work with vendors and suppliers as if they were all part of the same team.