Startups Paying It Forward During The Pandemic

In April, Oracle for Startups began covering the cloud technology costs of the paying startups in our program to help as they endured the business impacts of COVID-19. By providing three months of free cloud, we knew we’d be helping the startups keep more cash on hand for their vital business needs. But we never expected what many of these startups did in response. They started to pay it forward, making their services and solutions free to help other organizations and individuals in need.

To say we were blown away would be an understatement. Startups are known to be adaptive, innovative, and agile. When there’s a crisis or disruption, they are quick with a solution. This reminded all of us they are just as quick with a helping hand.

Many of those startups that received cloud benefits turned around and made all or some portion of their solution free to their business and individual customers.

Here is just a handful of the startups putting the good of humanity ahead of their own needs:

Evreka, a SaaS platform that improves waste collection and cleaning operations via high tech and environmentally friendly solutions, made its disinfection and cleaning ops platform free, to help increase and strengthen the fight against the virus.

GridMarkets, a cloud rendering and simulation company for studios and animators, supported out-of-work animation artists and creative studios that were struggling.

By doing so, GridMarkets enabled more than 30 different projects for animation artists and studios struggling or out of work, including Paul Richards from the UK who said, “This project is the most important thing in my life other than my seven-year-old daughter,” he told GridMarkets cofounder Mark Ross. “I am about to be furloughed from my job at the university, and I want more than anything to finish this film.”

Conversational AI and chatbot engagement and insights platform BotSupply lent its chatbot solution for free to organizations to handle the spike in customer calls and CSR engagements.

BotSupply quickly deployed chatbots for free across 10 organizations to help with their customer engagements and care, including with the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo, Central Africa), INAM Togo (Togo, West Africa) and Budapest Municipality (Hungary).

Kinetica, a streaming, real-time analytics platform, gave away its Active Analytics Platform for free to help organizations, researchers and data scientists better understand COVID-19.

Entrepreneurs are always willing to take risks in the spirit of innovation and progress. It’s part of their ethos. This display of goodness shows they are also willing to take a different kind of risk for the betterment of others. Operating in an unknown environment, they are putting their reputations and companies on the line in the spirit of humanity.

Governments across the globe are taking actions to help the economy, including supporting startups and small businesses. Big enterprises should also do their part, as startups are vital to enterprise innovation, solving big global problems, and as we’ve witnessed, also lending a much-needed hand to many.

It’s why we are proud to do our small part to support these amazing founders and their companies through Oracle for Startups. After all, it’s the startups that are doing the hard work as they pay it forward through their innovation and humanity. We’re just humbled to be along for the ride.