The Washington Post - USA (2022-02-20)

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WORK ADVICE

The four-day week is gaining ground in Europe. It’s

time Americans gave it a serious look. G4

COLOR OF MONEY

Crypto is catchy, but 401(k)s and IRAs produced a

spike in the number of millionaires last year. G5

to constantly shift.

“Over the past few years, a

lot of CEOs have really had to

become armchair epidemiolo-

gists,” he said in an interview

with The Washington Post.

“When the pandemic hit, the

framing of health and safety

quickly jumped to the top” of

the priority list.

As a result, Blumenthal said,

Warby Parker had to learn how

to operate the company when

stores and offices shut down

and how to determine if and

SEE FUTURE OF WORK ON G5

After the outbreak of the

coronavirus, Warby Parker co-

founder and co-CEO Neil Blu-

menthal, like many company

executives, was in uncharted

waters.

He and his team had to

decide how to handle the thou-

sands of workers who cut and

fit the eyewear brand’s lenses,

sell its frames in stores, and

run the business from its two

corporate offices in New York

and Nashville. And as the pan-

demic dragged on with new

variants emerging, plans had

BY DANIELLE ABRIL

FUTURE O F WORK

At Warby Parker,

a flexible vision

To navigate tough times, leader advocates

focusing on health expertise and technology

BY BETH DECARBO

M

any businesses born during the

pandemic are now struggling to

survive or grow.

Rising inflation, supply chain

issues and labor shortages are expected to

continue at least for the short term, making it

harder for small businesses to succeed — and

jeopardizing the prospects of the historic

number of new ventures launched in 2021.

According to the Census Bureau, about

5.4 million new business applications were

filed last year. Of the businesses launched in

2020, 78 percent — or roughly 4 out of 5

establishments — are still active, according

to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a

Kansas City, Mo., nonprofit that studies

entrepreneurship.

The pandemic accelerated the new-busi-

ness boom in two ways, says Ken Szymusiak,

managing director of the Burgess Institute

for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Michi-

gan State University.

First, entrepreneurs saw opportunities to

serve millions of people who were working

and learning from home.

Second, a historic number of people quit

their jobs in 2021. Many people who were

downsized by their companies or were un-

willing to return to the office started their

own businesses out of economic necessity.

Some 30 percent of the new businesses in

2020 were started out of necessity, compared

with 13 percent in 2019, the Kauffman

Foundation found.

Experts and academics offer this advice to

rookie entrepreneurs: Don’t give up. “There

are always highs and lows,” Szymusiak says.

“If you’ve lost your passion or reached the

point where you can’t stomach the financial

repercussions, it’s time to ask hard questions

about going on,” he says.

Gallup has found that a craving for

independence, the ability to manage risk,

self-confidence and a sense of determination

are among the top characteristics of success-

ful entrepreneurs. Those traits — the same

that compel someone to start a business —

can be tapped when the start-up is struggling

to survive or grow, says Justin Lall, director

of strategic partnerships at Gallup.

To understand how new entrepreneurs

stay motivated and build their businesses, we

talked to three people who left jobs to go out

on their own, launching a cooking show, a

home decor business and a board game

company.

One is earning far more than he was at his

corporate job. The second is breaking out in

big ways on Etsy and through partnerships

with companies like Target. The third ven-

ture hasn’t fully taken off yet. Their experi-

ences show how an uncertain economy can

challenge the thrill of being your own boss.

SEE DREAM JOB ON G4

Given a window, they showed who’s boss

These three fled corporate America. In the throes of the

pandemic, their start-ups have survived and even thrived.

this happen. I wasn’t going to let

a pandemic stop me,” the 47-

year-old says.

After a couple of decades in

which fewer old firms died and

fewer new ones were born in the

United States, the pandemic saw

an unexpected surge in business

start-ups amid the economic dis-

ruption caused by the coronavi-

rus. For the past year and a half,

the number of businesses started

each month has been running

about 35 percent above pre-pan-

demic levels, according to Cen-

sus Bureau data.

SEE BREWERY ON G2

BY DAVID WESSEL

Starting a business is always
hard. Launching a retail busi-
ness during a pandemic is hard-
er. Opening a pub during the
worst pandemic in a century
seems somewhere between fool-
ish and crazy. James Warner did
it anyway, inaugurating a craft
brewery and taproom in June
2021 called City-State B rewing in
an empty warehouse amid the
rowhouses and 100-year-old in-
dustrial buildings in Washing-
ton’s Edgewood neighborhood.
“Six years of trying to make

Opening a brewpub in

a pandemic takes h eart

BY JEANNE WHALEN

In early 2017, Ukrainian forces

battling Russia-backed separat-

ists shot down a drone conduct-

ing surveillance over the eastern

flank of Ukraine.

The unmanned aircraft, nearly

six feet long with a cone-shaped

nose and a shiny gray body, had

all the external characteristics of

a Russian military drone. When

researchers cracked it open, how-

ever, they found electronic com-

ponents manufactured by a half-

dozen Western companies.

The engine came from a Ger-

man company that supplies mod-

el-airplane hobbyists. Computer

chips for navigation and wireless

communication were made by

U.S. suppliers. A British company

provided a motion-sensing chip.

Other parts came from Switzer-

land and South Korea.

“I was surprised when we

looked at it all together to see the

variety of different countries that

had produced all these compo-

nents,” said Damien Spleeters, an

investigator with the London-

based Conflict Armament Re-

search (CAR) group, who traveled

SEE RUSSIA ON G3

Russia got Western parts

for drones over Ukraine

KLMNO

BusineSS

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022. SECTION G AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM

KATHRYN GAMBLE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

SARAH BLESENERFOR THE WASHINGTON POST

TOP: Candice Luter, who previously worked at a commercial design firm, is shown

at her studio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she specializes in home decor.

ABOVE: Wonmin Lee left a job in coding and started to focus on board games.