The work-from-home economy is booming. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Shopify say that some employees can work at home permanently even after the pandemic passes. 

But, says Sarah Cannon, a partner at Index Ventures, much of the decentralized workforce talk will be headiness.

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Every startup founder loves to prompt for questions from investors and potential key team members about their vision, and the huge opportunity that can be had with their disruptive technology. Yet if you are on the other side of the table, there are some other key questions that you need to ask, which will tell you more about the real success prospects for this business.

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If you’re thinking about starting a part-time business in retirement, you’ll want to avoid the following five mistakes:

1. Not having a well-thought out plan to make the business run. “Don’t make the transition on the day you retire. You need to research and make a plan” for your new business, says Philip Phan, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and an EIX editor. (Full disclosure: EIX, the Entrepreneur and Innovation Exchange, is part of the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation which is a funder of Next Avenue.)

Image: You'll want to avoid these mistakes if you’re thinking about starting a part-time business in retirement. FILE PHOTO — MediaNews Group

One of the biggest economic challenges currently facing the American economy might well be an even bigger one after the COVID-19 pandemic: the decline in American entrepreneurship. As John Dearie of the Center for American Entrepreneurship wrote earlier this year:

After remaining remarkably consistent for decades, the number of new businesses launched in the United States peaked in 2006 and then began a precipitous decline – a decline accelerated by the Great Recession. From 2002 to 2006, the economy produced an average of 524,000 new employer firms each year. 

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It only took a few weeks for economists to agree that sweeping shutdowns to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus had plunged the US economy into a recession. 

Now, just two months since the first stay-at-home orders began, the ensuing downturn has surpassed the Great Recession that spanned 18 months between 2007 and 2009. 

Happy Memorial Day from Rich Bendis and the Innovation America Team!

Simon Mainwaring: How would you describe what’s unique about the Kauffman Foundation?

Larry Jacob: We believe all people – regardless of background – should have the opportunity to learn, to take risks, and to own their success. We have the ability to focus on the future of work and learning simultaneously. Those two sides come together because of our history supporting entrepreneurship and education.

When I was younger, if I had to give a presentation at school, I’d barely sleep the night before. Instead, I’d lay awake half the night, agonizing over all the ways it could go wrong. Before my name was called, I’d be sweating.

Once in front of the class, I’d stumble through my presentation, and by the time I was back at my desk, I’d be exhausted from the stress of it all. Embarrassing side note -- my crush nicknamed me "tomato mode" because of my incessant blushing.

Information about immunity to SARS-CoV-2, both in the context of COVID-19 disease pathogenesis and in the context of how to develop a good vaccine, remains limited. But developing a vaccine and predicting how the coronavirus pandemic will unfold until such a vaccine is available are both contingent upon the understanding of whether the immune system can mount a substantial and lasting response to SARS-CoV-2 and whether exposure to other, common, circulating coronaviruses provides any kind of protective immunity.

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Every day, what we knew as normal before coronavirus fades away, and we find ourselves in a transitional space where we cope with the crisis day by day and wonder what we’ll be doing whenever the next normal arrives.

In early April, as covid-19 cases and deaths in New York City were rising to horrifying numbers, Tal Zaks, the chief medical officer of Moderna, a Cambridge-based biotech company, was concerned about time. In just three months, his company had created an experimental vaccine to inoculate against covid-19, and begun to inject the vaccine into humans, under the guidance of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a Phase I clinical trial involving forty-five healthy men and women.

As the United States approaches the ominous threshold of 100,000 deaths resulting from the novel coronavirus pandemic, federal agencies on the frontlines of the fight against the virus are seeing growing death tolls as well. 

While the rate of coronavirus spread in the federal workforce has slowed somewhat, as it has in the country as a whole, hundreds of thousands of employees continue to operate at their normal workstations or in deployments specifically to fight the pandemic.

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — When Kabria Newkirk returned home after two weeks in the hospital fighting COVID-19, the last thing on her mind was getting outside.

Her mother and other family members delivered food and other necessities to her front door. Everyone took great care to socially distance while Newkirk was isolating and recovering from the virus.

Diagnostic testing is part of every college's plan for reopening campus. But whether college administrations can get their hands on enough tests, or afford them, is still being worked out.

Test and trace, test and trace, test and trace.

So goes nearly every college announcement that campus will be open for students in the fall.

Hundreds of thousands of small businesses that took Paycheck Protection loans finally have a path to getting their loans forgiven, but much delayed guidance released by the federal government is nowhere near final.

On Friday, the U.S. Treasury and Small Business Administration released an 11-page loan forgiveness application with instructions on how to complete it. While the document clarifies a number of administrative queries, such as when, exactly, does the eight-week covered period begin, it fails to address several key issues. Those include whether bonuses can count as cash compensation, and how quickly forgiveness will work.

Some good news for the world today. According to a new report from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surface exposure is not a particularly effective way for the virus to infect its host. Here is what you need to know about COVID-19 spreading on surfaces. 

On March 10, 2020, as part of the annual Budget, Québec's Minister of Finance announced several tax measures for individuals and businesses. Two of the main measures announced with respect to businesses are the introduction of the incentive deduction for the commercialization of innovations (“IDCI”), and the introduction of the tax credit for investments and innovations (“C3i”).

The world has changed. This is not a drill. Older workers are especially vulnerable to being left behind. No matter what our career is, we are all facing a new normal in our work life. There are more than 100 million people in the U.S. between the ages of 40 and 65. All of us need to consider new options to create value and work in the future. If older workers wait for help, we will likely find ourselves waiting a long time.

In March, as small businesses across the country were shutting down amid the spreading coronavirus pandemic, Shanel Fields was about to open one up.

For Ms. Fields, the timing couldn’t have been better. Her company, MD Ally, allows 911 dispatchers and other responders to route nonemergency calls and patients to virtual doctors, to help local governments improve their emergency response systems.

Image: Shanel Fields launched MD Ally, a health care start-up in Philadelphia. She raised $1 million and recently signed up her first customer.Credit...Aaron Ricketts for The New York Times

I was listening to Dan Primack’s podcast on Pro Rata and he was interviewing Senator Klobucher who is now publicly and vocally speaking out against Uber purchasing Grubhub and has tried to mobilize against this.

Her argument is that if Uber buys Grubhub (which itself once merged with Seamless) it would mean that Uber Eats / Grubhub would control half the market and that with DoorDash the two together would control 90% of the market. I think that’s a largely flawed fight to be picking and of all the uses of Senator Klobuchar’s I could think of some much more productive fights to be having.

Image: Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash