Good morning,
As 2020 comes to a close, it’s tempting to want to forget the insanely stressful, uncertainty-filled days that characterized the earliest months of the Covid pandemic. I know I’m ready for a fresh start. So is the business owner who, earlier this week, told me that his team worked 20-hour days for a month straight.
But it also feels like the right time to revisit and marvel at how some companies, against seemingly insurmountable odds, managed to pull off incredible achievements this year. In our May/June print issue, we wrote about Austin-based health tech startup Everlywell, which makes at-home diagnostic tests for common health issues like sexually transmitted diseases and vitamin deficiencies. In early March, founder and CEO Julia Cheek decided to offer at-home Covid-19 tests, too--inadvertently launching a roller-coaster saga involving conflicting and confusing guidance from the federal government, a national economic tailspin, and frantic pleas for help from the public.
“I went outside for the first time in six days,” Cheek, who had also been working 20-hour days, told Inc. three weeks later. The fruit of the company’s sudden pivot: In May, Everlywell was granted the country’s first emergency use authorization for at-home Covid tests by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, beating out massive competitors like Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp.
Read our story from the Inc. archives for an exclusive look into the lead-up to that breakthrough--and what it took for Cheek to emerge with her sanity intact. |
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