Trends

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.

The most successful people in the world don’t get there alone. We believe strongly in learning from the success and failures of one another. So, every so often we bring in someone that we think has unique insights — whether they founded a huge business or deeply understand a problem that many of us face. We’ll continue to invite inspiring people to share their stories, and give you an opportunity to interact with them directly. We’ll update this page with any future AMAs, and welcome your suggestions of other people we should talk to (email brad@thehustle.co with your ideas).

On March 12, 2020, Sam asked the Trends community, “How has your business been impacted by coronavirus? Grown? Hurt?”

What are the biggest trends you see in 2020? We reflected on that question ourselves and shared it with entrepreneurs, investors, futurists, and Trends members.

At Jamestown Fish in Rhode Island, where Matt Tortora was a chef, customers demanded fresh, premium ingredients. The restaurant typically bought them from distributors. “I could pick up the phone, give them a call, and in some cases, same day, get what I needed,” Tortora says. 

In a Google-dominated world that even Microsoft couldn’t crack, is there an industry for niche browsers? Tenta has built a successful subscription business for a niche browser.

Stuart Rudick, founding partner of the VC firm Mindfull Investors, has long been an early adopter. When he was bar mitzvahed at 13 his father asked him what he wanted to do with the $2k he had been gifted. “I said, ‘I want to invest it,’” Rudick recalls. 

After a failed Y Combinator application in 2017, Pat Walls decided to bootstrap his next business. Hustling around his full-time job as a software developer, he built up Starter Story as a “solopreneur.”

Private equity giant Blackstone acquired the video advertising startup Vungle last week in a reported $750m deal.

Andrew Wilkinson has sold only two of the 20-plus companies he has founded. In a different world, one where private equity groups and hedge funds didn’t act like the private equity groups and hedge funds they are, he might have sold all of them.