COVID

The pandemic didn't make Zoom successful. It just made everyone else realize they needed what we had already built.

COVID didn't create the demand for online therapy. It revealed how massive the demand always was. We just happened to be ready.

On January 25, 2020, I read a medical paper about a new virus in Wuhan. By January 27, we had started designing the vaccine. There was no committee meeting. I just told my team: this is it.

COVID hit and suddenly everyone needed masks. Etsy sellers made 29 million masks in the first month. No corporate memo. No supply chain meeting. Just two million entrepreneurs responding in real time.

We designed the COVID vaccine in two days. Two days. January 11, China published the genome. January 13, we had the sequence locked. Everything after that was testing and manufacturing.

Moderna was the most hated biotech stock before COVID. No revenue. No products. Billions in losses. Short sellers loved us. Then we made the vaccine that ended the pandemic and became a $100 billion company.

The NBA used Oura rings to detect COVID before players showed symptoms. Temperature spikes at 3 AM — three days before a positive test. That moment put us on the map.

Quick bites. Ten minutes or less. Premium content on your phone. The thesis was perfect for the subway commute. Then COVID happened and nobody was on the subway.

I blame everything on COVID. The pandemic killed us. People say that's an excuse. Maybe it is. But launching a mobile video service the month everyone was locked at home with their TVs was genuinely terrible luck.

The student loan pause almost killed us. The government froze student loan payments for three years. Our core product — student loan refinancing — went to zero overnight. We survived by diversifying fast enough.

During COVID, the UK government needed to distribute emergency business loans. The big banks were slow. We processed Bounce Back Loans faster than anyone — 18% of the entire UK scheme. A four-year-old bank outperforming institutions that are 300 years old.

COVID gave us 10 years of growth in 10 weeks. We went from 2 million visits a year to 2 million visits a quarter. Overnight, every doctor in America became a telehealth doctor. Whether they liked it or not.

We built the product for 8 years before anyone cared. Then COVID happened and suddenly every company on Earth needed a digital whiteboard. We were ready. Most of our competitors were not.

COVID sent 25 million people to work from home overnight. Every single one of them needed a way to explain things without scheduling a Zoom call. We were already there with a polished product while everyone else was scrambling.

COVID proved that supply chains are the most important infrastructure in the world and also the most neglected.

COVID made every Indian student an online learner overnight. When it ended, half of them went back to physical coaching. We had to adapt.

COVID took 80% of our revenue in eight weeks. I thought we were dead. Six months later we went public. The lesson: do not count out companies that people love.

I committed $1 billion to COVID relief — 28% of my wealth at the time. When the world is on fire, sitting on cash is not an option.

The pandemic created perfect conditions for live audio — people were lonely, stuck at home, and craving real-time human connection.

From 10 million daily participants to 300 million in four months. I still cannot believe those numbers when I see them.

COVID proved that virtual tours are not a nice-to-have. They are essential. Overnight our TAM exploded.

COVID almost killed the restaurant industry. It also proved that restaurants need technology to survive.

COVID didn't create remote work. It accelerated what was already inevitable.

During COVID, we were the most important company in America for millions of people stuck at home.

COVID was existential for us. Nobody rented dresses when nobody went anywhere. But we survived.

We processed millions of COVID tests during the pandemic. That infrastructure now powers our cancer screening platform.

COVID didn't make Instacart. It accelerated something that was already happening. People were going to stop going to grocery stores eventually.

COVID should have killed us. Instead, it proved our thesis. When travel restarted, nobody wanted to go back to the old way of booking work trips.

During COVID, we couldn't build rowers fast enough. The waitlist was months long. Then the world opened back up and we learned the difference between demand and need.

COVID destroyed our revenue overnight. Zero classes. Zero bookings. We laid off more than half the company. It was the worst day of my career.

When COVID closed every studio in the world, our customers couldn't pay their bills. We couldn't charge them either. The entire industry nearly collapsed.

What the crisis will bring to us is something very different, which is the power of one for real.