👉 What happened on Tech Twitter in March

Secondary effects of the market crash, how your startup can survive, how companies are fighting COVID-19, Tweeter of the Month Suhail Doshi, and more!

Yo! It’s Brett again. March was one of the wildest months in history as COVID-19 ravaged communities around the world and sent financial markets into a tail spin. Tech Twitter transformed into epidemiology twitter, founders and VCs got in petty fights, and everyone still sucked at working from home.

Here’s what happened on Tech Twitter in March 2020.

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March 2020 Superlatives

Here’s the best tweets and discussions from March!

😳Most Controversial - Zach Weinberg

Zach Weinberg, Co-founder/COO of Flatiron Health, gave prominent investors and founders a piece of his mind.

His thoughts on Slack (click for full critique):

Zach Weinberg @zachweinberg

1/ Time for a Slack critique given I'm bored and I've lost way too much money investing in this company (altho I'm still holding to be clear).

Stewart Butterfield @stewart

@zachweinberg Lol at the finale ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ As for the rest: it's great feedback and very timely for us. Thank you 🙇

His thoughts on Sam Altman:

Zach Weinberg @zachweinberg

What might work: 1) Failed startup founder from 2012 stops giving advice. 2) People listen to actual experts. 3) Profit.

Sam Altman @sama

What might work: 1) Shut down everything non-essential in the country for a month and ask people to stay home. 2) In exchange, give everyone (including children) $1,000 to cover essentials. 3) Encourage ppl who don’t need $ to give it to someone who does. 4) Widespread testing.

His thoughts on Keith Rabois (click to see keith’s response):

Zach Weinberg @zachweinberg

It's possible that Keith Rabois is the dumbest, most over-confident piece of shit VC in the US today. This kind of stuff is dangerous and wrong. This is basic stats. If you don't randomize, you can't be sure the intervention you're testing actually drives the outcome. https://t.co/NkDXEF2JaP

Zach Weinberg @zachweinberg

Keith. I can't even see what you tweet thanks to your block yet people are sending me screenshots about how little you understand. If I were self interested, I'd be *promoting* non-randomized data YOU GIANT MORON. I'm literally arguing *against* Flatiron's approach here. 🤦‍♂️A

Mike Smith @MrMikeSmith

@zachweinberg @alexisohanian

The runner up for most controversial is VCs “open for business” statements. Turns out deal volume is going way down as many investors are being much tighter with their checkbooks.

Jeff Richards @jrichlive

Global VC Deal Volume via @danprimack morning newsletter + @PitchBook :

🤓Most Helpful - surviving the downturn

We’re officially in a major economic downturn. Investors share helpful advice on getting through it.

Eric Paley @epaley

Amazing startups were founded after 2008 financial crisis, but we don't forget startups founded 06-07 that survived *through* it: 🇳🇱 Adyen 🧪 Veeva 💡 OPower 📁 Dropbox ☯️ ZenDesk 💻 Wix 📣 Hubspot 🚘 CarGurus 🐦 Twitter 🎵 Spotify 🗺️ Waze ☀️ Workday (Now w/GEBFv1Nu00

Eric Paley @epaley

Some amazing startups were founded after the 2008 financial crisis, but we shouldn't forget the startups founded in 06-07 that survived *through* it: Adyen 🧪 Veeva OPower Dropbox ZenDesk Wix Hubspot CarGurus Twitter Spotify Waze Workday /1 https://t.co/CQ0KCIZvSg

Suhail @Suhail

1/ A slow, steady thread on how to survive a recession or macroeconomic stress test if you’re a startup. I had to quickly learn mid-2009 during Y Combinator, I was 20, and had just raised $500K. The ordeal would last ~18 months. Here’s how to survive...

Paul Graham @paulg

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy:

paulgraham.comWhy to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

🤩Most Inspiring - Companies helping to fight COVID-19

Despite Trump lying about 1500 Google engineers building a site for COVID-19, Google (via Verily) along with many other companies did help out.

Trevor McKendrick @TrevMcKendrick

Amazon is hiring 100,000 people during one of the biggest economic declines in history Netflix saves the internet infrastructure of the EU Facebook enables free video calls The NYTimes' take? "Be afraid of tech companies getting bigger"

nytimes.comBig Tech Could Emerge From Coronavirus Crisis Stronger Than EverAmazon is hiring aggressively to meet customer demand. Traffic has soared on Facebook and YouTube. And cloud computing has become essential to home workers.

Jack Ma @JackMa

The first shipment of masks and coronavirus test kits to the US is taking off from Shanghai. Al the best to our friends in America. 🙏l

Sam Altman @sama

helpwithcovid.com now has lots of projects that can use non-technical volunteers! Amazing projects and people. Also now supports offers from companies to help.

helpwithcovid.comAll ProjectsA clearing house for projects and volunteers that want to help with the COVID-19 crisis

Elon tried his best.

Butt Praxis @buttpraxis

Looks like Elon Musk bought $1M worth of CPAP machines because he thought they were ventilators

EVent Horizon @evdefender

Why 1255? Because if you gave your team instructions to buy up CPAP machines as "alternative ventilators" for less than $1,000,000 they'd have a unit price of around: $1,000,000 / 1255 = $796.81 https://t.co/UyFLvs5qiE https://t.co/FC9E7m4YBz

🤔Most Interesting - Effects of the market crash

As lockdowns around the world took effect, so did the beginnings of a major financial meltdown that we’re still trying to understand the full impact of.

Dani Burger @daniburgz

Congratulations, you all just survived the most volatile month. Ever.

nic__carter @nic__carter

Well there you have it. 90-day pearson correlation of daily BTC and S&P500 return hits ATH. coinmetrics.io/correlation-ch…

Dare Obasanjo @Carnage4Life

If you're in tech and currently looking for work, Candor has created a real-time list of tech companies that are hiring, rescinded offers, instituted hiring freezes or had layoffs. FAAMNG seem to have a mix of still hiring and some offers rescinded.

candor.co[LIVE] Who’s freezing hiring from coronavirusWith coronavirus and a possible recession, many companies are cutting headcount in 2020 and pausing hiring — learn who’s affected.

Matt Turck @mattturck

Running list of startups / categories that are proving anti-fragile to the current mess: * Remote work: Zoom etc * Gaming, online entertainment * Social (Twitter), messaging * Food delivery: Blue Apron etc * Online education * Telehealth, digital thermometers * What else?

Runner up - play-by-play of the CEO of Slack’s last few weeks.

Stewart Butterfield @stewart

My day job (also: night job) is CEO of Slack, a publicly traded company with investors to whom I am a fiduciary, 110k+ paying customers of all sizes, and thousands of employees I care about very, very much. The last few weeks have been 🤯😳😢 Here’s what it's been like. [Thread]

😂Funniest - bad WFH takes

Here’s a great one from Casey.

Casey Newton @CaseyNewton

Tips for working from home: - Spend the first hour of the day in silent contemplation of your regrets - At lunchtime open your front door and challenge any passersby to a fight - Develop an elaborate theory of WFH and re-post it to Twitter daily

✨Tweeter of the Month - Suhail Doshi

Suhail was a wealth of great tweets this month, including a 37-tweetstorm on surviving the downturn (posted above). He also helped raise awareness for wearing homemade protective masks!

Suhail @Suhail

Perhaps this would be useful to others but these are a quick list of questions I ask most founders to rapidly get a sense of the business. At the very least, maybe it'd be helpful to folks at least have answers to them while you brace for impact...

Austen Allred @Austen

#MaskOn (thanks @Suhail) https://t.co/3DZ3bm0jjJ

Niv Dror @Nivo0o0

Mask on. thank you @Suhail https://t.co/vy3BKbocY9

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