
People are describing the COVID-19 pandemic as a black swan event. They talk like we know what a black swan event is. I looked it up.
The phrase comes from a time when black swans were thought not to exist so seeing one was a rare event.
According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2007 book, The Black Swan, a black swan event has 3 attributes:
- First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.
- Second, it carries an extreme ‘impact’.
- Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.
As the Founder and CEO of an early-stage company, your world has changed almost overnight. You’ve done everything right to get to this point and something completely out of your…
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