Closing a Record Breaking 2021

Boardroom Governance Newsletter #22 | Dec 29, 2021

I started this newsletter in June of 2020, a few months after COVID-19 was officially announced as a pandemic. The number of cases went from 118,000 (4,291 deaths) in March 2020 to 13.3 million cases (with over half a million deaths) in July 2020. The current numbers are staggering: ~282 million cases with over 5.4 million deaths. The latter includes over ~53 million cases in the U.S. with over 819k deaths. Unfortunately, almost 2 years after the official start of the pandemic the new Omicron variant is prompting new lock-downs and restrictions, despite the fact that more than 4.52 billion people worldwide have received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, equal to about 59% of the world population.

But despite the health, economic and social crisis triggered by COVID-19, the markets have been on a tear and some sectors such as the technology industry and the startup ecosystem have thrived this 2021. Per the NYT, business applications in the U.S. are on track to surpass 5.4 million, up from 4…