It’s a long road
“Are we being overly-zealous?” my friends and I asked ourselves on the very long ride back from South Carolina to Boston about this coronavirus threat our upcoming big Costco run together and whether our worries and preparation were going overboard. That was March 1 and by the next day, when I returned to the ins and outs of startup life, I brought the question of coronavirus preparation to work with me.
“We are hosting and co-hosting our first two big events in two weeks. What is the percent chance the world as we know it will be spinning by then?”
Similar conversations occurred several times, with several people, and they would generally follow this pattern:
Me: It seems like this virus is going to <fill in the blank>
- pervade every American city and overwhelm healthcare providers
- fundamentally change the entire American supply chain
- create semi-permanent economic depression
Them: That seems alarmist or exaggerated.
Me: It’s only alarmist if the outcome I am envisioning is actually exaggerated. Let’s look at the dozen+ reasons I came to this conclusion and find any fallacies.
· Me: So in conclusion, there is plenty of evidence suggesting the need for alarm and no strong reasons not to be alarmed.
At Costco, my friends and I continuously posed the same questions to each other when it came to whether we should or shouldn’t make a purchase: “If coronavirus is a thing at all, will I want to have this? If coronavirus wasn’t a thing at all, will I regret having purchased this?”
At Clove, we decided to devote half of our event-preparation efforts to a virtual model- no small effort given part of the events hinged partially on our very-physical crypto wallet. As predicted, the entire Boston Blockchain Week in which our events were a part was cancelled with only a couple days to spare before our first event. The preparation paid off and we were able to host our events, as planned, fully virtually, with the first iteration of what would become our true flagship product. Instead of using a physical wallet to demonstrate the power of Tezos proof of stake (PoS) for the event and to facilitate DApp game play during our event, we were able to leverage a primitive email version of a wallet. Directly after the event, this first-draft email wallet became the starting point for our fully non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet. Our go-to market wallet is based on the premise that the complexity of blockchain should be removed where possible from the user experience. By replacing the onboarding complexity of costly physical wallets and undesired app downloads, with simpler concepts of emails and passwords, the world of blockchain becomes accessible and intuitive to people. At the same time, the email wallet provides producers & distributors of tokens & DApps low-cost access to distribute assets and connect with their users.
Looking back, I don’t regret any of my Costco purchases, but I do regret not purchasing some things. By the same token, I am thankful we took these steps and more to mitigate the impact of coronavirus on our business. In the face of the global pandemic Black Swan event, we did a SWOT analysis of ourselves and our products. We found that our strengths and opportunities centered around agility, speed & broad usability and our weaknesses and threats required agility, speed & broad usability. By taking action as soon as the future of America and the world began to change shape, we believe our company and products have adapted to meet the future for ourselves and our users. None of us can be sure what happens from here but visit us at http://www.CloveCrypto.com and follow our journey to the future with blockchain at the foundation.
