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 Canada 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.
Business Strategy Through Four Phases Of The Coronavirus Crisis by Stephen Wunker on Forbes
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.
Hockeystick’s database of Active Funders in Canada is the most comprehensive list of funding sources for Canadian Startups and Scale-ups and includes equity, debt and government funding sources.
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.
A List Of Fintech Firms Providing Free Technology During The Coronavirus Crisis – the most comperehensive list of applications and software in the fintech space that are giving away tools to assist in the crisis.
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 ton 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.
Corporate Goodwill Efforts During COVID-19 Outbreak
@ScottMonty has created this google doc to document all the magnificent work companies around the world are doing to help in this crisis. Feel free to add to the document if you know any unsung heroes or your company is contributing and not mentioned yet.
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 the 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
Canadian Government resources
The Canadian Government and regional administrations have committed an unprecedented amount of resources to support SMEs during the crisis.
The main hub for information on all the available schemes and support mechanisms is Canada’s COVID-19 Economic Response Plan: Support for Canadians and Businesses
Government of Canada’s resources for Canadian businesses includes measures of support for employees, businesses, business travel and events and business in international markets.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce Pandemic Preparedness Guide for Business
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.
We hope this resource list is useful and you find value in it for your business.
If you’re curious about SR&ED 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.