Giving Compass' Take:

• Natalia Karayaneva encourages startups and VCs to focus on building products and technology that are relevant and useful after the pandemic.

• Why is it important to prioritize utility over hype and speculation during coronavirus? How can you work to develop useful products that benefit marginalized communities in your startup or VC?

• Find out how you can reliably fund startups and VCs during coronavirus.

This is a hard time for all of us. We must re-evaluate our businesses, investments, the status quo, and even our core values while preparing to crawl out of shelter-in-place directives to a new reality. What should we focus our energy on during this major transition period? As Marc Andreessen recently noted, “It's time to build.” However, his statement sparks a set of questions, such as, “What should we be building?”

Below, I share my thoughts on what is relevant for startups and VCs in the tech, real estate, and blockchain industries:

The pandemic forces old-fashioned industries such as real estate to adopt new technologies. It also forces overhyped emerging tech such as blockchain and AI to be re-evaluated and shifted toward incentivizing startups to “buidl” useful apps that are relevant for the future.

Inventors should invent. Builders should build. The funding loop should increase in length for startups that aim to make fundamental changes; there should be more milestones and more complex, deliverables-based financing.

It might sound like naive idealism, but I am a true believer that entrepreneurship is not just about making money. It has a higher purpose: creating value, building tangible products, and delivering on innovations that humanity needs. Over the long term, investors and founders should capitalize on creating value, rather than on creating hype and betting on speculation. Money is an effect, not a cause. Building useful products will not only make society happier and safer; it will also make money for everyone involved. We just need to figure out how to fix the system to make it focus on “usefulness.”

Read the full article about startups and VCs by Natalia Karayaneva at Forbes.