During COVID-19 Crisis, What Can We Learn From Post-Katrina Rebuilding? Ask Launch Pad

Launch Pad is a national network of coworking spaces that, together with its nonprofit Launch Pad Foundation, works to support individuals working entrepreneurially and activate entrepreneurial communities in “momentum markets.” The first Launch Pad location was established in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the city’s recovery. To understand what that experience means for today’s crisis, I spoke to Anne Driscoll, CEO of Launch Pad.

Q: The beginnings of Launch Pad are found in a crisis. Talk about that experience.

Anne: After the storm and disastrous aftermath, many people chose not to return to New Orleans. Among those who did, after months as evacuees, the path forward for the city was unclear. For entrepreneurs coming home or choosing New Orleans, they wanted to rethink the way the city worked and support the creation of a thriving and vibrant ecosystem for companies and startups. For them, the choice to return was intentional. It was a grassroots movement of individuals coming together to create, inspire, and build.

It started with love of the place we wanted to be in and the desire to rewrite the traditional approach. That communal love created the foundation of support organizations who came to incubate and support new ideas: Launch Pad, Idea Village, 4.0 Schools, Propeller, and many more.

Now, the nation is having its Katrina moment. We have a new opportunity to rebuild entrepreneurial communities across the country that learn from how NOLA did it and solve the problems that ecosystems face. 

Q: What lessons are you applying from that experience to today?

Go for it. Lead the change you want to see—the cavalry is NOT coming to help you build or rebuild your life or business. We learned that in Katrina. So if you want to be a leader, then grab the baton and be the leader. 

Embrace the journey. Things won’t be the same—that doesn’t have to be all bad, but it’s going to take longer to go back to the “new normal” than you think. It was months before we could return to New Orleans, and years before we started changes result. 

Create your community. Bailouts and government dollars don’t flow efficiently and they won’t be enough for stimulus to the economy. You have to get nimble, creative, and figure out how to operate in a new world and who your partners, clients, and customers are going to be.

Champion others. An ecosystem needs diversity of ideas and offerings. It’s easy in early stages of a startup or in the middle of a “pivot” to wholly focus on yourself and your needs. The businesses that survived and grew after Katrina and are still relevant evolved as the market matured, and worked together to support each other.

Q: Let’s talk about the crisis today. Remote work has spiked. It may remain much more prevalent for a longer time than before the crisis. What do cities and regions need to do to prepare for this new era of work?

Remote work has obviously been around for a while, at least at a small level. Now, more established businesses must incorporate it; the real estate dimension of markets and businesses has shifted; and, cost and quality of life are a larger part of business strategy. We also have the potential of a whole new pool of entrepreneurs and small businesses emerging from furloughed employees who decide to start something on their own rather than look for a new job.  

Successful economic development will no longer be scored by those who recruit businesses to relocate in their city. It’s about the workforce you offer to the global marketplace and how you develop that workforce. This is the opportunity for cities. Cities need to do four things:

• Start attracting talent by creating small business incentives and supporting entrepreneurs.
• Invest in lifestyle infrastructure based on what the xennial and millennial populations desire. They’re now thinking about where to put down roots for the future.
• Develop and promote existing talent to major companies looking to recruit remote workers.
• Provide training to support entrepreneurs in the market and connect those working remotely to others working entrepreneurially.

Q: Coworking spaces are physical collections of people working together. What is their role in a new world of remote work?

Right now coworking is being pummeled—operators sit in a tough spot between the landlord and their customers. Rent and OPEX are still due, yet many of their members can cancel or are themselves in dire need of relief. Coworking spaces need to maintain a positive relationship to retain their customers. 

But the future is bright: in a world where work starts being more remote, companies will see the coworking space as an amenity for their teams, a way to convene meetings and a way to support their employees’ need for culture and in person connection. Let the community be that, not the large HQ. 

Q: Launch Pad has helped broaden the inclusiveness of the cities you operate in. If we really are in a new phase of higher levels of remote working, what do we need to be doing for greater inclusiveness?

Long before the COVID-19 crisis, innovation and technological progress weren’t reaching diverse communities—geographically, demographically, and more. At Launch Pad, we’ve always recognized the need to be deliberate about this. Last year, we started Launch Pad Foundation, which focuses on supporting greater inclusiveness for entrepreneurial communities. Coworking spaces themselves are key to that.

As our organization expanded, we worked harder to quantify our impact. That helped us focus our business plan on the communities we were serving, the impact we wanted to have—and it made us a better business. We have worked to make sure entrepreneurial communities and resources are accessible, and we will continue to do this even if those communities are virtual.

Q: Let’s talk more about that impact. Launch Pad focuses on what you call “momentum markets.” Talk about what you were seeing in those cities before the crisis and what LP’s impact has been there.

Access to capital in many markets was an issue pre-COVID, and will continue to be so if we are not deliberate. Momentum occurs when communities come together. In every Launch Pad market, that is the core of the growth we experienced and our members created: 9,000 jobs, $230M in capital raised, 1.1M square feet of office space leased across our markets. This is possible again, maybe even more so now. Launch Pad has always been about helping communities create connections between the innovators and the capital, so we are evolving and evaluating markets every day with this new reality in mind.

Q: How is Launch Pad adapting in terms of strategy? What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs?

We are no different than the entrepreneurs who are our members. We are right now focusing on how our spaces respond and work within the guidelines being set by local governments to keep everyone safe, and to operate responsibly. Our advice for entrepreneurs in this moment is to think about the long game while you stay focused on your immediate needs. Think about your community and your place in it so you can use your network and resources to help others you rely on (and who rely on you) weather this storm. Your resilience is important to the community you are part of and is the foundation for your growth.

At the same time, we are evolving in this moment in ways that we think make us a stronger platform and more resilient company. We have transitioned our operations to provide a virtual resource center for our members and to the public. We are investing in technology platforms to grow our digital presence through twice weekly “LPTV” (Launch Pad TV) shows featuring community leaders and educational guests. Our goal is to keep our community connected while also connecting our members to experts who can help them by sharing resources. 

We want to build upon the virtual resources we are adapting for our business and the businesses who work at Launch Pad and the broader community, while also preparing to grow our network of coworking spaces as the time becomes right. We hope to continue to be an important gathering space for entrepreneurs in cities that will need a lot of help in recovering from this crisis. 

Our advice for other entrepreneurs is to use this time to take risks, try things, adopt a pivot if you want—the stakes have never been lower to try something, and they’ve never been higher to sit on the sidelines and wait for things to return to normal. The world will move forward, and it will find a new normal, now is the time to lead and shape what that looks like for you, your business and your team.