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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:

1. 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.
2. Second, it carries an extreme ‘impact’.
3. 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…