Public, Private Sectors Must Work Together Toward New Normal

June 2020,

Startups serving government have come with a compelling value proposition almost every time: better, faster, cheaper ways to do the public’s business. Their pitches were often buoyed by the momentum of early wins elsewhere, the boundless energy of charismatic founders dedicated to game-changing breakthroughs, and deep-pocketed funders that provided a sufficient runway to prove out the new business model and attendant technology (or vice versa), that ultimately turned skeptics into believers that a new kind of government was becoming possible.

The startup narrative was a source of hope and aspiration in government for years. That is, until March 2020, when the magnitude of the global change wrought by the novel coronavirus became clearer to a watching (but self-isolated) world. Beyond the human toll, job losses in the U.S. alone were counted in the tens of millions and the economic rescue plans fashioned in Congress began in the trillions of dollars. The world had changed in ways that made the future largely unfathomable. And startups, those nimble self-styled agents of change, were among the displaced.

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