With Australia’s technology start-ups ‘already feeling the crunch of the COVID-19 economic downturn, with cancelled funding rounds, staff layoffs and founders going without pay, despite stimulus measures designed to help smaller companies,’ note Yolanda Redrup and Paul Smith, ‘founders and investors have told The Australian Financial Review that many companies in the previously booming sector have been forced to press pause on rapid expansion plans in favour of a battle to survive.’
Start-ups in tech fields are far from immune to the business chaos and market devastation that is accompanying COVID-19, but entrepreneurs know ‘downturns can also produce a new wave of business models and IP’, contends author Jonathan Barouch, founder and chief exec of a tech start-up in the volatile noughties who ‘knowingly signed up for the highs and lows of navigating a small business through an unpredictable and ever-changing landscape’.
Sources: Start-ups have the agility to survive, then thrive in virus chaos; Start-ups fight to survive COVID-19 I Australian Financial Review (AFR)