How Covid19 gave an unexpected boost to my startup

We have all heard about and felt the consequences of the coronavirus outbreak. Companies have gone bankrupt, people have lost their jobs and many people have lost their investments.

I am no exception. But one of my startup experienced an unexpected boost, while all my other activities pretty much went down the drain. My consulting firm Gugin provides cross-cultural training to companies around the world. That activity died rapidly. I also teach at a number of business schools and universities and do a fair number of speeches at conferences every too. These activities died too.

But in the middle of the darkness, sadness and frustration one of my startups started to gain an unexpected momentum.

It was The Educated Singles Club, which I founded years ago. It is a global club for well-educated singles, who want to meet linke-minded singles in an environment, where they can be sure, that the members are who they pretend to be and where all information remains in the club and not shared with 3rd party companies in order to gain revenue.

Obviously a lot of people who are single felt more lonely during the coronavirus outbreak because they had to stay at home, alone. We knew from our previous research that well educated singles usually have a very active social life. Well educated singles are more satisfied with being singles than other, less educated groups, because they have this very active social life. But suddenly they had to stay at home, which is why they started looking for alternatives.

A lot of the traditional dating sites are filled with fake profiles and people who pretend more intelligent, more well educated and more beautiful than they really are. That is tiresome if you are looking for someone with whom you can feel intellectual attration.

So we started to get a lot of new members from pretty much all over the world for which we are grateful.

What can we learn from a crisis?

We can learn a lot of things, but what we learned was that a crisis like the one we have right now also opens new doors. Fortunately I have always had a very diversified pool of activities, which saved me and my companies during the ongoing crisis.

We, as human beings have some basic needs we seek to fulfil no matter how the conditions are. One of the basic needs is the need for socialising. We were fortunate and lucky to have a service that fitted that need perfectly for the narrow segment we address.

So instead of fucusing on what you have lost, try to flip the coin and look for new opportunities. They are there!