What I’m doing about Coronavirus as a startup CEO

I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but I think there is at least a 50% chance that major business events like #SXSW will be cancelled outright or deeply impacted by the Coronavirus heading into next month. IBM for one just pulled out of a large tech conference in SF occurring next week.As the CEO of a fast moving start-up I am starting to build budgetary and staffing contingency plans for Q2 and beyond. These include remote work scenarios, cancellation of conference and customer travel plans, and revised forecast modeling to account for slashed client budgets as supply chain bottlenecks start to impact the economy in a meaningful way.Unfortunately it will only take a minor spread of this virus in a major US city for the brakes to slam on everyday business as we know. I, for one, prefer to not be blindsided if and when this substantially hits our shores.

As a start-up you always have less margin for error. “Out of sight, out of mind” is not always the right approach and in this instance I think a bit of healthy paranoia is prudent. Let’s all hope I’m completely wrong.