Out of the Crisis

Eren Bali arrived in Silicon Valley from Turkey in 2010 hoping to relaunch Udemy, his online education company. He spent a few years working at the tech startup Speed Date before following through with his original plan, after which Udemy went on to be enormously successful. When his mother became ill and Eren spent some months accompanying her to doctors in order to get the right diagnosis and treatment, he had a realization that led him to his true mission.

Now, as CEO and founder of Carbon Health, Eren is leading one of the country's fastest growing healthcare startups. It's mission is to provide really high quality healthcare to the entire population, with a special focus on underserved demographics. A provider of low-cost health clinics across the country, Carbon Health was also on the frontlines when the COVID pandemic hit--and even understood what was coming long before most people in the U.S. did. They pivoted to monitoring patients for COVID, then testing. Ultimately, the company partnered with the City of Los Angeles, and as Eren recalls, "seven days after the original handshake and launch into a scheduling website, we helped launch Dodger stadium, which was the single largest mass vaccination site in the country." From there, Carbon Health fully reinvented themselves as a full-stack public health company.

A few weeks ago, Coinbase , which facilitates buying, storing and purchasing cryptocurrency and also operates a cryptocurrency exchange, went public. It was one of the year's most successful IPOs so far, and has been heralded as a "landmark moment" for cryptocurrency's entrance into mainstream investing.

We are now seeing how damaging our weak response to the pandemic was in the US. Both on human lives and on the economy. But, how much would it actually have cost, if we had completely shuttered the economy for six weeks and paid everyone to stay at home? Would it be cheaper and more effective than the patchwork responses we are seeing now?

These questions are not easy to answer, so I spoke to two economic experts Brad DeLong and Noah Smith. Brad and Noah don't agree on much, or really anything. However, they came together on one idea. We missed and are still missing a massive opportunity to save lives and save the economy.

After Part One, you should have a sense of Zeynep. If you haven't listened, it is worth going back and hearing her impressive background and history. 

In part two, we changed our focus and started talking about the pandemic. We discussed her early work advocating for common sense policies, how we got our response so wrong, and what we can do now to begin the recovery. Given her history of being right, we should all pay attention to what she has to say. 

Zeynep Tufekci may be the most important account on Twitter. The reason being she has a habit of being early on the defining trends shaping our world. The pandemic was no different. Zeynep was sounding the alarm early in 2020, calling for common sense policies advocated by public health officials. It's safe to say, we would have been better off if we had listened to her.

Zeynep's life is unique, and I didn't want to cut the fascinating stories she told me. So, I split this conversation into two parts. In this first part, Zeynep discusses growing up in Turkey, learning to code, and tricking IBM into hiring her.

Ron Klain may know more about government pandemic response than anyone in the US. This is because in 2014 Ron lead the response to the Ebola epidemic, resulting in only 18 infections and 2 deaths. Ron was talking about a need to response to COVID as early as January of this year, when he authored an op-ed in the Atlantic saying we had moved beyond the "if" COVID comes to the US to the "how bad will it be" phase.

Ron and I spoke about his experience as the Ebola Czar, how we should have responded to this pandemic, and how Ron thinks we can end the crisis.

In these conversation, I have spoken with many every day people who managed to have a large impact in this crisis. Tomas Pueyo is, perhaps, the best example of this. 

Tomas began to notice what was going on with COVID early in 2020. He realized that there was no comprehensive guide on what governments needed to do to flatten the curve. So, Tomas set out and wrote "The Hammer and the Dance" After an initial share on Facebook, this article eventually reached over 60 million people. Tomas and I spoke about how he got the data for the article, the impact it had on government responses and what it means for governments to use the hammer and the dance. 

There are two types of unemployment we are seeing right now. Unemployed caused by pandemic, and unemployment caused by the lockdown caused by the pandemic. This is a serious issue and will have long lasting impacts on our country if we don't act now.

Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin were already tackling the issue of unemployment, and job training, well before the pandemic. Bitwise, the company they founded, specialized in providing technical training to people in what they called "underdog" cities. So, when the saw the rampant unemployment, they sprung into action. I spoke to Jake and Irma about Bitwise, the organization they founded in response to the pandemic Onward US, and what more needs to be done to fight unemployment.

Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Saenz Tobey had no idea that they were building a nationwide phenomenon when in 2006, they founded Revolution Foods. Their mission was simply to provide kid-inspired, chef-crafted food to school aged children. Fast forward to 2020, they were serving over 2 million meals per week to kids across the country.

When COVID hit and they saw their revenue decline, they made the choice to get into the fight. Kirsten and Kristin used their food supply chain to get meals to the most vulnerable among us at nursing homes and homeless shelters. While there is so much more work to do, Revolution Foods is providing crucial support at a time of need. We should all follow their example.

Sal Khan may be the most famous educator in the world. His organization, Khan Academy, was helping millions of students around the world supplement their learning. However, since the lockdown, Khan Academy has taken on a new role. Instead of just augmenting education, Khan Academy has become a provider. They are now partnering with school districts across the world to provide education to hundreds of millions of students.

I spoke with Sal to discuss how Khan Academy reacted in the early days, how they are operating now, and if a fully remote education system could work.