Anna (pseudonym), a Montreal-area startup founder, went through the emotional roller coaster we have all known since the starting of the Covid-19 pandemic. At first she tried to remain positive and keep a stiff upper lip. And then she fell to the ground and thought, “Oh my God, this is terrible; it will never end.”
The pandemic has had a devastating impact on small businesses. A survey conducted in June by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses states that 49 per cent of Canadian small businesses are fully closed or only partially open, 46 per cent are generating half or less of their normal sales, and a third have half or less staff.
For entrepreneurs like Anna who were just starting out – developing their product, looking for investors, and finding their first customers – the challenges are much more daunting.
So how do recent startups weather the storm?
Building a sense of community
For the last three months inside larger studyour team organized biweekly group calls on the Zoom platform with a dozen entrepreneurs.
These conversations led to the exchange of data, but just as importantly, we found that they helped entrepreneurs build a sense of community. As Anna said in our interview:
“Talking to other founders, hearing about the trials and tribulations, it’s just good to get some of that out… so people can have a sense of community and support.”
In our conversations, entrepreneurs discussed the recent challenges they face, which Benoit (a pseudonym) described as “back to square one.” For some, e-commerce was the only technique to save their business, but they lacked e-commerce experience.
How to rent a photographer to take photos of your products during isolation? How to interchange personal customer training with educational videos? What are the best channels to advertise your product? How are you able to achieve all this while reducing operating costs?
We also found that entrepreneurs needed information about recent opportunities. For example, in response to the pandemic, the Canadian government implemented a variety of programs for the start-up sector, including: financial support for small businesses. In our group conversations, entrepreneurs were desirous to share information about what programs were available, the right way to apply and who to contact.
Entrepreneurs also had concerns about managing their teams at a time when traditional office life is a thing of the past. How to recruit recent employees if you may’t meet them in person? How do you maintain team morale when everyone is working remotely? How do you organize online collaboration?
Sharing knowledge
Information sharing was not the only profit that entrepreneurs gained from group conversations. We noticed that even entrepreneurs who said in interviews that they didn’t gain much recent information from the meetings appeared to enjoy sharing their knowledge with others and still dropped into our Zoom chats from time to time.
We found that our group conversations about the experience of experiencing this special time together helped entrepreneurs feel less alone. One participant, Rodrigo (pseudonym), was “very happy to see how to do it [other entrepreneurs] they do and that they keep up and hang in there; it’s always very inspiring.”
Nina (pseudonym) stated that “it’s useful for her to see that there are actually startups that are in the same boat as us…”. Because we glance at social media and some industries are booming and you do not feel too good when they don’t seem to be.
(Pixabay)
Through interviews, we realized that while group conversations were originally intended to share information on the rapidly changing business landscape, they really created opportunities for deeper interpersonal interactions among members. After meetings, entrepreneurs described reaching out to their peers for further advice and guidance, and sometimes simply to supply personal encouragement.
Creating trust
Why may our group conversations have evolved from an information exchange to a community-building platform?
First, the entrepreneurs got here from different industries and didn’t compete directly with each other. This made them feel less limited in giving advice and openly discussing the challenges they faced.
Another necessary reason was that every one entrepreneurs personally knew the group facilitator, Renjie Butalidand many of them had previously participated in programs at Dobson McGill Center for Entrepreneurship. In this fashion, the groups’ success relied on pre-existing face-to-face relationships that helped build trust.
While our research is ongoing, the results so far point to the necessary role that peer relationships play in helping entrepreneurs weather the current crisis. They also suggest that universities might help entrepreneurs build peer relationships. These relationships play a key role in building a resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem.