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Just over 3 months ago, Julia Cheek, the CEO and co-founder of Everlywell, appeared as a guest on our My First Million podcast. At the time, the coronavirus had just begun to spread to the United States, and her company — a 5-year-old startup that provides at-home medical testing kits and lab results — had no plans to produce an at-home test to detect COVID-19. She even laughed the idea off as a little crazy: “If we did, I don’t think I would be here right now,” she joked.

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve turned to all kinds of people — including virologists, Ph.D.s, and market analysts — to explain the challenges we face in the present. But who can help us better understand the next-order effects of this crisis?

Where is the unseen opportunity in a post-COVID world?

When you look across industries, which sector do you foresee this crisis affecting the most over the next 10+ years?

What is your job as a futurist?

Which industries do you foresee this crisis affecting the most in the long term?

Picture this: It’s April 2021 and you’re meeting a friend for dinner. You can’t decide where to go because your favorite tapas place is closed — communal food is a thing of the past. You eventually agree on a spot, but it’s hard to get a reservation since restaurants are only accommodating half their normal number of patrons.

Josh Wolfe believes that society’s outcasts are the ones who hold the secret to human progress. And he’s dedicated his life to spotting them early. 

Last week, we sent out a survey inviting businesses that made it through the Great Recession to tell us how they did it. We got hundreds of responses, creating a database that shows the mix of strategies they used to cope with the economic fallout.

This week we’re publishing our third (and likely final) installment of our “Coping with Coronavirus” series (here’s part 1 and part 2).

The final mini-case studies, all from new industries, cover 7 thriving businesses forced to pivot during an unprecedented era: