COOhort in the Year of COVID

As 2020 comes to a close, I'd like to take this opportunity to give a huge thanks to the COOhort community for rallying together in what for many of us has been the hardest year of our lives, both personally and professionally. I'll begin with a few brief reflections, recap this year's events, celebrate some of the many successes within the community, and wrap up with a few thank yous.

REFLECTIONS

On March 18th, I wrote to the community:

"These are crazy times. I know many of you are personally worried about your own health, that of your families near and far, your businesses, our communities, our economy, and society in general. For those of you who have read 'The Hard Thing about Hard Things,' Ben Horowitz talks about wartime CEOs versus peacetime CEOs. Whether or not you like it, you are now a wartime COO. At best, some of our companies are focused on maintaining business continuity. At worst, some of our businesses are worried about survival.

With all this doom and gloom aside, this is also a time of great opportunity. An opportunity for each of us to demonstrate resilience and leadership in the face of crisis. An opportunity to show our employees that our businesses can and will adapt to changing circumstances, for that is what all startups and scale ups do with or without global pandemics. COOs are already the glue that keeps a company on track and moving in the right direction. We are built for this."

And thus kicked off the first of 17 virtual town hall meetings for members to share whatever was happening within our respective companies and get advice on or share best practices to protect and manage our employees and businesses in the face of uncertainty. Topics generally fell into one of the following four categories:

• People: Managing the transition of our teams to long-term remote working (from productivity to mental health), managing furloughs and redundancies
• Operations: Managing vacant office spaces, disrupted supply chains, hiring freezes
• Cash: Protecting and growing revenues whilst cutting expenses, managing cash flow in a challenging time for fundraising, seeking COVID-specific grants/funding
• Communications: Managing internal comms to employees and external comms to customers

Over the past 9 months, I have watched this community demonstrate incredible resilience and agility. The first 2 months we were all in panic mode, and then settled into 4 months of relative stabilisation, followed by the past 3 months of widespread burnout after multiple rounds of cost-cutting, constant scenario planning, and infinite hours spent on Zoom. So, my Christmas/New Year's wish for all of us is some desperately needed, desperately deserved offline rest and relaxation.

EVENTS

In February, we co-hosted an event with Ops Stories, called “So You Want to be a COO?” featuring COOs at different stages of their career, each sharing experiences scaling their respective businesses. A huge thank you to our panelists Phill Burton (COO at Bloom & Wild), Kelsey Traher (COO at Marvel App), Lyndsay Morgan (Operations Director at Climb Online), Sarah Touzani (COO at Creditspring), and Chris Smith (COO and Co-Founder at AVA Experience), for sharing insights to help aspiring COOs to understand what a COO actually does and what you need to know to be successful as one. If you missed this event, check out the recording here.

In April, we hosted an online event called "The Art of Marketing Ops Skills" to help members better articulate the key skills necessary to market themselves as a successful Ops Manager or COO. Guest speaker James Mitra, Managing Director of JBM Consulting, offered tips for building a recruitment toolkit: a solid brief bio, an eye-catching LinkedIn profile, and how to prep for interviews. If you missed this event, check out the recording here.

In July, we organised an online workshop based on the content of the first chapter of our "Survival Guide for COOs, by COOs" titled: "Challenge Accepted! Advice for Newbie COOs," authored by Kalie Gold, COO of PULA. Kalie and I shared our personal experiences and advice on becoming COOs for the first time and then we broke up into small group discussions so that aspiring COOs could learn from the more experienced COOs within each breakout room. If you missed this event, check out the recording here.

In November, we held an interactive workshop with Brad Magrath, Founder and Former CEO of Zoona. Brad shared practical advice on how to lead your startup/scaleup to survive and thrive in uncertain times, including how to squeeze cash from your balance sheet, reduce future expenses, and communicate staff cuts. If you missed this event, check out the recording h?ere.

In December, we rounded out 2020 with a Holiday Happy Hour around a virtual fireplace thanks to Spatial Chat, which allows attendees to move freely between conversations without the restrictions of centrally-managed breakout rooms. Although it didn't hold a candle to last year's Holiday Dinner and Fireside Chat with Shefali Roy over Italian food, it was still wonderful to catch up with a few of my favorite fellow COOs and celebrate the end of a very long year for all of us.

CELEBRATIONS

As COOs are often the unsung heroes of their companies, I'd like to take this opportunity to celebrate some of the individual and corporate successes of some of our COOhort members, especially during a year with as many challenges as 2020. I'd love to grow this list, so if I haven't mentioned a win, please do send me a LinkedIn message and I'll add it!

• Alicia Levine: As their COO, Chipper Cash raised a $13.8M Series A round shortly followed by a $30M Series B led by Ribbit Capital with participation of Bezos Expeditions — the personal VC fund of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
• Andrew Garza: As their Co-Founder COO, pharmacy tech startup Lifestores Healthcare raised a $1M seed round.
• Charlene Chen: In March, I transitioned from COO of pan-African fintech AZA to COO of UK healthtech Lantum, and was named one of the Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech.
• Eddy Vaisberg: As their COO, HR tech company Fuzu raised a $3.86M Series A round.
• Fraser Hopper: As their Head of Operations, Chattermill was selected as one of the top 20 fastest growing businesses in the UK in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50.
• Karen Kerrigan: Karen transitioned from COO of Seedrs to COO of MoneyBox.
• Kate Jarvis: As their COO, DryGro closed a $4.7m Series A to sustainably replace soy in livestock feed.
• Mary Roach: Mary transitioned from COO of sanitation and energy company Loowatt to Co-Founder and COO of Boost Technology, which empowers informal small businesses to thrive in Africa’s digital economy.
• Meredith Karazin: Meredith has transitioned from COO to President of Moringa School.
• Shefali Roy: As their COO and Chief Compliance Officer, TrueLayer raised $25M in a Series C funding round joined by Anthemis, Connect Ventures, Northzone and Temasek.
• Simone Maini: While COO of Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, Wells Fargo added $5M to their $23M Series B funding round, and then Simone was promoted to become CEO of the company.
• Varun Sharma: As their Co-Founder and COO, ENIAN raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding.
• Many COOhort companies were shortlisted for BusinessCloud’s London Tech 50 (Chattermill, Citymapper, Cobalt, Essentia Analytics, Festicket, Fluidly, Hubble, Kheiron, Laka, Lantum, Marvel, Seedrs, Switchee, TrueLayer, and WeFarm), but it was Seedrs and TrueLayer that made the final cut - congratulations to Karen Kerrigan and Shefali Roy (again)!

THANK YOUS

In this season of thanksgiving, I'd like to extend my gratitude to:

• Elizabeth Mercer (Acting COO of Conduit Capital), who has been contributing to COOhort leadership since its founding in 2018. She has moved from the UK to Canada, so will be less active given the time difference, but I hope will start a chapter of COOhort in Vancouver!
• Lyndsay Morgan (Director of Operations at Climb Online), who joined the Leadership Team at the beginning of the year and has brought fresh energy to the community ever since. I wish her the best of luck as she takes on her newest operational challenge while on maternity leave next year!
• Kalie Gold (COO of PULA), who has agreed to join the Leadership Team and thus creates the bridge between COOhort Europe and COOhort Africa. She has been a huge contributor to our fledgling "Survival Guide for COOs, by COOs" and has made plans to host COOhort's first ever retreat in Kenya!
• Theo Sutherland (Former Head of the African Leadership University), who was the driving force behind both our "COO for Newbies" and "Surviving is Winning" events. I am grateful to work with someone who shares my passion for curating and sharing valuable insights to inspire and empower leaders across the globe!

And last, but certainly not least, a huge thank you to all of YOU for being such wonderful peers and for the leadership you provide to your respective companies. I know sometimes it can feel like a thankless job, but know that you are the quintessential glue that holds your businesses together through thick and thin. I wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year wherever you are in the world, and look forward to seeing you online in 2021!

Stay COO, Charlene

P.S. If anyone reading this feels inspired to join the Global Leadership Team, please let me know. We are always looking for people to help ensure that community engagement remains high and the knowledge-sharing keeps flowing! We're grateful for whatever time you can contribute out of your busy schedules...