COVID-19 has changed our world faster and more profoundly than any other event in recent history. This is also an opportunity to lift eachother up, to support businesses in any way we can and to show how together we can grow resilient.
For this reason, we’ve collected the most relevant resources for businesses in Australia at this time.
Notion’s Remote Working Wiki – Probably the most extensive and comprehensive roundup of resources on remote working, the how the what and especially the why.
The working from home guide – tips and advice from Sifted readers on how to navigate working in self-isolation. Some useful nuggets on technology to use, how to interact remotely and why wearing perma-sweatpants is not as awesome as it sounds.
A Guide for Working (From Home) Parents – Tips on how to manage working and caring for children during self-isolation. Emphasises the need for creating structure and finding creative ways to keep the children entertained and learning.
HBR’s tips on effective and engaging virtual meetings – virtual meetings are the new norm, here’s how to make them suck less.
A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers – for companies that have just been forced into creating a remote work policy, it’s sink or swim without any careful or gradual adaptation period. Here is the quick and dirty way to manage the change for your workforce.
Microsoft’s learnings after 2 weeks – includes the 5 main lessons managers at the tech behemoth have learned about how to manage a fully remote workforce, also a link to their internal presentation on best practices can be found at the bottom of the page.
Seth Godin’s manifesto for the future of online interaction – or how to use the experience of one of the best marketers in the world to make your meetings into conversations.
From HBR: 15 questions about remote work, answered
GitLab’s Remote Work Emergency plan – For leaders who are suddenly managing work-from-home teams, there are five things you can focus on right now to maximize stability.
GitLab’s Remote work starter guide for employees: how to adjust to work-from-home – how to create a space that’s both productive and lets you avoid burnout at home.
Slack’s guide to remote working – great pointers from the people who make remote work easier.
Zapier’s guide to remote working – a comprehensive guide from a remote working veteran organisation.
The Center for Disease control’s guidance for companies and employees
From HBR: Building Resilience in the face of a crisis
From HBR: What organizations need to survive a pandemic
Sequoia Capital’s advice for entrepreneurs urges realism and a recognition of the fact that Coronavirus is The Black Swan of 2020
From HBR: How Chinese Companies have responded to Coronavirus
A coronavirus survival strategy for your startup, a realistic situational assessment on Venturebeat by serial entrepreneur Steve Blank.
McKinsey’s situational assessment on Covid 19 and the micro- and macroeconomic implications on a global scale is one the of the most comprehensive analyses to date and leans on McKinsey’s global experience with hundreds of affected businesses.
Tech Nation has compiled a comprehensive list of things to do when fundraising in a lockdown. With contributions from top VCs, these are the current best practices to keep your business afloat, extend your runway and get funded in these uncertain times.
Our Complete Guide to Startup and Scaleup Funding is still relevant in these times, though more restrictive terms may apply on particular funding methods.
Free apps & tools
Coursera is providing free courses during this time, and a new community platform – Coursera Together. Never a time like the present to learn something new and build your skillset.
Zoho is offering its Remotely suite of tools free of charge until July 2020. It includes everything from videoconferencing, to cloud storage and project management collaboration tools.
CreativeLive is streaming a selection of amazing Health and Wellness courses for free, including The 4-Hour Life with Tim Ferriss
Serif is making its Affinity apps on Mac or Windows completely free for three months, with a new 90-day downloadable trial.
This roundup of free apps from Appleinsider has a tonne of great offers ranging from wellness to boredom-busting games for the kids.
Google’s Covid-19 Information Hub covers everything from visualisations of outbreak data to health and pantry staple-based cooking videos.
NYT’s Coronavirus Briefing Newsletter – An informed guide to the global outbreak, with the latest developments and expert advice about prevention and treatment.
The Next Web’s Coronavirus in Context newsletter – weekly news on the pandemic and the technology that’s trying to stop it.
Vox’s VoxCare Coronavirus newsletter
The oft-crashing, but highly relevant Coronavirus Tech Handbook, a Google Docs based collaboration tool for technologists, has an almost endless list of tools and tricks and is an open (literally) invitation to trying to solve the coming problems through technology, together.
Andreesen Horrowitz’s a16z Collection of Coronavirus Resources & Readings is probably the single best source of data points about the macro-impact of Covid-19 on the global markets, supply chain and technology sector and a features an amazing curated list of twitter accounts to follow on the science and global context of the outbreak.
The already famous Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard Launch Initiative to Speed Development and Access to Therapies for COVID-19
Sam Altman of Y Combinator fame has announced in a blog post that he is looking to fund companies trying to solve problems related to COVID-19 either from the perspective of solving the engineering challenge of shortages or the therapeutic challenge of vaccines.
The Founder Institute’s Public Health Startup Fellowship Programme
Australian Government resources
The Australian Government has committed an unprecedented amount of resources to support SMEs during the crisis.
The Treasury’s Economic Response to the Coronavirus is a comprehensive roundup of the government’s measures to support businesses through the outbreak.
Coronavirus (COVID‑19) updates on the Australian Government website.
Airwallex & Fundsquire Webinar – Global Pandemic: Managing uncertainty through adaptability
Join us in a live webinar with Airwallex and Fundsquire, two global businesses operating across China, Hong Kong, Australia, UK and Europe, to learn more about:
- Economic impact: What can we expect based on historical pandemics?
- Adaptability amidst uncertainty: How to identify untapped markets, experiment and adapt business models in this environment?
- Funding: What are creative funding options available to businesses?
Standard Ledger is giving an online workshop on the 1st of April: All your COVID-19 financial questions answered – for startups and SMEs
It will cover:
- How to think through scenarios and the cash impact
- Understand what federal and state government as well bank support there is available to help you in the short term
- R&D tax incentive, and R&D loans
- Q&A – to listen and address any specific questions
Standard Ledger have also made their guide: Coronavirus (COVID-19) business support and assistance tips in Australia available to SMEs, together with their Free PAYG Stimulus Calculator, so you can easily assess what you are eligible for.
BlueRock have also hosetd a series of useful webinars on topics ranging from Rent to raising finance under COVID-19 which you can acces here, on their events page.
Grant Thornton’s Pandemic Risk Assessment Tool – A data driven assessment that quantitatively determines risk factors and offers focused resiliency plans to protect your business, customers, and shareholders.
BDO Australia is holding a webinar to prepare businesses for coronavirus.
From our partners at VentureCrowd: The Founder Circle is a free peer support group – where founders and entrepreneurs can share their experiences and support each other in a safe environment.
Lawpath has given a comprehensive webinar on the legal implications of Covid-19 and how it can impact businesses. The link is to the recorded version.
We hope this resource list is useful and you find value in it for your business.
If you’re curious about R&D finance or startup and government funding more generally, feel free to contact us at Fundsquire. We’re always happy to help if we can or at least point you in a useful direction.
If you have any other useful resources for SMEs during this crisis, please feel free to drop them in the comments. We will update this list as things progress.