While COVID-19 has severely impacted many entrepreneurs, there are many others who’ve shown resilience and even grown. That shouldn’t be all that surprising.

Entrepreneurs, essentially, are people who exist to solve society’s problems.

So if an entrepreneur is doing exactly that, there’s actually quite a lot of opportunity to use innovation in a positive way to solve society’s problems and indeed thrive during this time.

As much as things are tougher for everyone right now, if you’ve got a compelling solution to a problem that everyone sees, and most people experience, you’re likely to thrive. That does not, however, mean that things have automatically been fine for entrepreneurs. Many, particularly in the B2B space, have had to face late or deferred payments from clients. Rather than give up and shut down the business, entrepreneurs should explore what contract financing options are available, or whether they can access their banks’ COVID-19 relief programs.

If we really are serious about supporting entrepreneurs, the various stakeholders, including investors, banks and the government, probably need to get together and figure out what we’ve learned over the past few months, and how we can use those lessons to save small businesses. What lessons can we take from our experience when it comes to creating a new normal around funding entrepreneurs? We talk about a new normal to which entrepreneurs must respond, but everyone within the entrepreneurial ecosystem must come together and find ways to support them through that new normal.

Source Credit: Disrupt Africa