I like to think about unintended or non-obvious consequences of external forces on venture investing (and I’ve written about this before). External forces could be regulatory, geopolitical, or health-related.

Much speculative ink (or digital print) is being spilled over the impact of the coronavirus epidemic, its potential to cause a global pandemic, and its impact on health, travel (at the time of writing rumours swirl about the cancellation of Mobile World Congress), and the stock market.

Of course there are the obvious direct economic consequences. An impact on global supply chains is already surfacing, which in theory should adversely affect global industrial output, given that 6 of the 10 largest shipping container ports are located in China. Similarly, a nosedive in air travel could send oil prices crashing. There exists a plausible possibility (perhaps unlikely, but plausible) that the global economic impact of the coronavirus could quickly become non-linear (which the financial markets do not seem to pricing in, but I’ll leave that debate to the experts).

And some consequences are less obvious, such as the following example. One of my investment partners is currently sequestered in central China, in one of the large cities under residential lockdown. Schools are closed for weeks, leading many Chinese teachers and parents to cobble together home-schooling programs. Apparently, the most convenient platform on which to construct a home-schooling program on short notice is Dingding ( 钉钉 ), a collaboration app from Alibaba. The best comparison of Dingding would be China’s version of Slack, albeit Dingding already counts 200 million users.

Primary school children residing in Chinese cities under lockdown now find themselves forced to spend hours a day on Dingding, isolated at home reviewing lessons and receiving homework. Apparently for grade school kids, this experience is proving even more torturous than attending school in person.

Poor Dingding, now unfairly associated as an enabler of misery in the minds of young students, has witnessed an explosion of 1-star ratings and snide reviews. The app is on the verge of falling off the shelf. Unfortunate unintended consequences.