Black Swan

MIT's campus in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. MIT is among hundreds of colleges and universities ... that have canceled live classes. Boston Globe via Getty Images It is hard to imagine many higher risk sites for the spread of the coronavirus than college campuses. Students live in close proximity, take…

Must be nice to be cash-heavy right now. The wealthy investors who constitute Tiger 21, a group with more than 750 members worth in excess of $75 billion, raised their cash positions last year to 12% of their diversified portfolio, a level not seen since 2013. As for the rest…

Getty Europeans once believed swans were only white. Then they discovered black swans in Australia. As investors, we continually face events that test our belief systems. Nicholas Nassim Taleb wrote a book on this subject titled, The Black Swan. ‘Black swans’ have three main characteristics: 1.    They are unpredictable 2.   Have a…

Black swan theory or a black swan event is a term used to describe a very rare or otherwise ... unexpected event that has a major effect. The term is based on an ancient saying which presumed black swans did not exist. Getty Black Swan events, as the thinking goes,…

The epicenter of Washington state's coronavirus outbreak has a disturbing status update.Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, outside of Seattle, has seen 15 of its residents die after contracting COVID-19, and dozens of its workers haven fallen ill. The center's remaining 55 residents are going to be tested for the…

When a health epidemic or pandemic impacts the way your business operates, it can feel as if things are completely out of your control. The coronavirus outbreak is the most recent example. The results will be short term and long term. How do you manage such “black swan” events? It’s…

Deep Kalra, founder & chairman, MakeMyTrip, Rajan Anandan, managing director, Sequoia Capital and Yashish Dahiya, co-founder & CEO, Policybazaar at ET GBS.Startups are constantly grappling with uncertainty ranging from changing investor sentiment around funding, business environment and a competitive landscape. But the outbreak of Covid-19 is an unprecedented event which…

As of this writing, COVID-19 has killed more than 3,400 people around the globe and the coronavirus has infected tens of thousands more. But its impact has gone much further, causing major disruptions in public markets and leading corporations to pull out of conferences and delay travel. Big tech companies…

Photo: GettyAs the novel coronavirus continues to spread—thanks in part to the disastrously inadequate response by failing governments like those in Iran and the United States—events are being cancelled faster than reporters can keep track of them, and employees in various industries are being asked to postpone all travel and…

Sequoia Capital, the seminal Silicon Valley venture fund, has urged its startups question every assumption about their businesses in order to survive the coronavirus threat. “Coronavirus is the black swan of 2020,” said Sequoia in a letter to founders and CEOs published to its Medium blog Thursday evening. “Black swans”…