Mark E. Watson III
1 min readMay 25, 2020

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Cloudera

Common link?

They ALL started during the last recession.

Successful startups can — and — will launch during this downturn. There are four primary reasons why:

(1) Talented engineers, coders, product managers, designers, creatives, and others are suddenly out of a job — and many will devote themselves to new ideas.

(2) As a result of the pandemic, health care, e-commerce, logistics, delivery, alternatives to traditional, commercial real estate and more represent opportunities ripe for disruption and transformation.

(3) For those founders who can secure funding right now — they’ll have less competition especially vis-a-vis large incumbents which are in survival mode; and hiring talent is easiest in a downturn.

(4) Most of all: America’s economy and its entrepreneurial spirit is resilient — especially when our backs are against the wall.

We’re all living through a painful and difficult time. But, especially now, a number of successful ventures will start up, scale, and ultimately help to make the world a better place.

https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-startup-wave-0cb5a972-2314-45af-9d30-8b249fe1400d.html

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Mark E. Watson III

Mark E. Watson III is the founder and principal of Aquila Capital Partners, helping entrepreneurs in their 10x growth through financial and intellectual capital