The coronavirus. They say they plan to release enough tests so all 50 states can free at least 2 of their residence. Joining us from amazons home seattle,he mayor of jenny durkin jenny durkan. We doubt that seattle was one of the early epicenters but early moves prevented seeing some of the dismal numbers we have seen elsewhere. Give us a status update in terms of the Testing Capacity. Mayor durkan on the good news front, at the height of the outbreak, we had a transmission rate of about three. We were seeing cases rise really quickly. We were able to do our measures pretty quickly, first by having the Tech Companies telecommute as well as the cities and larger employers. Today, the transmission level is below one, so every person who gets the virus is not even transmitting it to another person. All of the epidemiologists are saying that is where you need to be for a significant period of time. I think probably the worst news is that we are nowhere near the Testing Capacity that we need in this city to really open up our economy in a meaningful way. Capacity on testing a significant level and we will need more Contact Tracing. What mayor bloomberg is doing in new york literally needs to happen in every major urban area and state if we want to get this right and restart our economy. Emily what is the Testing Capacity you would like to see . If the white house is saying they will release enough tests to test 2 of residents in the state of washington, is that enough, and do you believe they can get to that number . We wererkan comparatively almost down to zero in seattle on our ability to do test. Had test responders kits, but like the rest of the nation, we are struggling with our adult senior homes and the number of outbreaks. We were pushing hard to get more people tested and quarantined. I want to see that plan. I have retained a group of medical advisors who are really helping us march through the benchmarks we need to reach if we want to reopen safely. We need to remember, the reason we are here is because we missed it. We missed the rise of the virus. As a result, the only tool we had to stop it was to shut things down. We cannot afford to do that again in america. When we reopen, we have to have the testing and tracing capacity, or we could end up in a much worse place. Emily i know it is not about us versus them, but in seattle, you are looking at 750 deaths. In new york, you are looking at upwards of 22,000. Seattle didhat right then new york did wrong . There is a sense that on the west coast, people listened more to the Public Health officials whereas on the east coast, they listen to politicians. Mayor durkan i have many friends in new york and i feel for them, so a to say that anyone did anything wrong. New york is such a dense urban area. Weo think i will say what did right and what i think they also did right once they got down to it. We listened to our Public Health officials and Public Health researchers. Health officials were as blind as we were because we did not have testing. Seattle started taking tests to restrict. Our researchers were able to tell us how much it had spread in our community and how much we were missing, then they told us how it would grow. Our estimate at the beginning on march 1, they believed if we did not take significant measures, we would have over 70,000 positive viruses by mid april. We knew that, with that and the number of deaths, that would overrun our hospital for sure. We decided we had to take significant action. I give a lot of credit to the researchers here in seattle that are fantastic, working with our public officials, and to governor inslee, the county executive and other mayors. They listened to the science, listened to Health Care Workers, then made the right decisions, which are largely policy decisions but they have to be grounded in science and health. Emily you have been frank in saying that you dont believe the economy is close to being able to reopen safely. We have heard in the bay that they may not allow people to go back to work until september 1. Will it be that long . Mayor durkan people have to think of it not as a light switch, but as a dial. I think it will be a long time before america is back at full strength, and seattle is back at full strength. We will be reopening boards of our economy, reopening businesses, and measuring it to make sure that we do not see the rise in the virus that could overcome our health care system. I think, right now, what i am saying to every business leader, get ready, really be thinking through, how is your operational rules and protocols going to change in our new normal. How do you keep people in the workplace socially distanced . Of do you do a whole range operational activities in a different way so that the virus is not transmitted in the workplaces and then the businesses . I think everyone is going through that sector by sector. How it plays out in any workplace is a little bit different. A meatpacking business is a little different operation than a hightech company. Each sector will have to look at, what is the best approach going forward. And we have to try to facilitate that return and do our part through the testing and Contact Tracing. That is where we will really getting what we need nationally. As you know, commerce flows interstate, globally. Washington cannot go it alone. We have to do this cohesively, together. Emily lets speak about one of the hightech businesses, and that is amazon. A huge employer in seattle. What have your conversations been like with amazon over the last six weeks . Have they given you any indication of when they plan to return employees to headquarters . What is it that the city might be needing from amazon or amazon might be needing from the city . Right now, you are seeing a whole bunch of companies evaluate what a return to work looks like. Another company headquartered here is zillow. They announced that they will allow their employees to commute through the end of 2020. That will have implications for other workforces in and around zillow. How people reconfigure their workplaces is not going to be just through this year. I think you will see a lot of businesses reassessing how they do their operations. We have been having conversations with amazon, small businesses, whole range of businesses including a small group here, to be thinking through, how do we do it for big businesses and across sectors. We need for them to be ready to move. When we give the Public Health guidelines, those will come from the department of health at the state level, probably augmented at the county level. How do they play out at a business to keep people safe . A retail sales establishment will have a whole range of considerations that an Online Platform does not have. We really have to be thinking not just for today, but togterm, what does this do change in all of our businesses . We will have to move as many of our business line online as we can in the coming months so we reduce the amount of contacts we have. This virus is still very dangerous. It communicates by people coming together. Every time it comes together, you have a chance of the virus growing again. We have to think about ways that we keep people apart as we reopen this economy. Emily give us a sense of what Contact Tracing looks like. How many tracers do you plan to hire . Do you plan to tap into some of the software that apple and google are developing on obama mobile phones . Mayor durkan the Contact Tracing and Washington State, the guidelines will be developed mostly at the state level but will have county and city specifics. I can give you an example. The first known case at the time of someone with coronavirus within in a city just north of seattle. Our Public Health people did Contact Tracing. It is very laborintensive. Many people tracing through all the contacts that person had. You need hundreds and thousands of people in states and cities to be able to do this correctly. Ideally, we want the virus to have been reduced enough so it is safe for people to come together again. We know that the virus will transmit again because we are still seeing positive cases even in this environment. When people come together, you want to have enough testing to find out when people are sick. Then you have the contact tracers sit down with that person and figure out everywhere they have been for the previous two weeks. Quicklysee that explodes to a lot of work. So i think it has to be a hybrid of technology that helps people keep track of that in a smart way, and human beings doing that hard work of interviewing people. I dont think we will be at a place where we can roll out the apps like they have in south korea, china, or other Asian Countries where the privacy protections have issues for us. I think there is too much around that that we wont be able to resolve to get it done, and we need to get it done rather complete. I think there will be rather quickly. Be someonere will will have a tablet in their hand, they can sit down, upload it automatically. It could go to a database to look at whether there are hotspots or connections, and we can have the right Public Health response without invading privacy. I think we have to get moving on it rather quickly because if we dont do that and we miss it , remember, researchers believe that a majority of cases in Washington State came from a single transmission in january. That is just mind blowing, if you think about it. One, two, then we will suddenly be in the same place that new york found itself in, or italy. Then, if we shut down, there is more damage again. So we really have to be careful on reopening. Emily we certainly hope that does not happen. It has been admirable the job that seattle has done. Jenny durkan, the mayor of seattle, we will look to see how the tracing plans come together. Indeed. P thank you for sharing your time with us. Lightspeed Venture Partners just raised 4 billion to invest in the tech economy. Where will they put that money to work as the world is changing . We will take you to the Daily White House briefing scheduled to start at 5 30 p. M. Eastern time, in about 15 minutes. This is bloomberg. Emily investing in a crisis, lightspeed Venture Partners just closed 4 billion to fund early and Seed Stage Companies. Joining us, nicole quinn. The world looks very different than what i believe you must have imagined it would look like as you were investing this money. How is that changing your strategy . How do you see now putting this money to work in the midst of a pandemic . Nicole you are right, we raised three funds, 4 billion. We will be investing across earlystage growth and also global growth. Something we want to be thinking about from a global perspective. With regards to these times, lightspeed has been around for 20 years. Insights to be able to share with our founders around when we went through this crisis,1, the financial and also going through this now. Lpsave a stable group of and we are making sure to continue to invest in generational change companies. Emily talk to us about your thoughts on how much worse this gets before it gets better. We are seeing Tech Companies laying off employees, struggling with furloughs, struggling with justifying some of the high valuations they initially raised money at. How bad does it get for the tech economy and how many more layoffs do we see . Nicole first and foremost, this is a health pandemic. Secondly, we are looking at this from the Venture Capital tech perspective, working closely with our companies around that. Most importantly, we are helping those companies ensure that they can get through this period. That means having the cash to get through it. I think companies are thinking about whether it is important to play the offensive game or defensive game. Companies have to be there for their customers. Constantly thinking about the fact that we are in these times of anxiety. Gamesive and defensive specifically around crosscutting. Encouraging our companies to make sure they have at least two years of runway. They have to make tough decisions at this time. When it comes to layoffs, for example, do you think companies will cut more than they need to cut . Or do you think they should double down and try to win . Nicole i think there is a that the layoffs are necessary. Furloughs so they can keep health benefits. Doing smaller cuts is hard for the business and culture. Now or when it is needed, and assessing in a few months where it will be. Make theseht now to tough decisions but also keep morale and culture strong. Person, he has done a really good job here. He recently published last week about how tough it was to let go of 16 of the workforce. Ceo to encourage any read that. There is a new report saying that the Companies Getting funded now are more established quote unquote startups. That means that early and Seed Stage Companies may suffer through this. That is where i understand your money is directed. . Here do you see opportunities what areas of the economy dont thrive over the next several months . Nicole we are definitely continuing to invest. Instructive Technology Founders who want to build Enduring Companies with strong fundamentals. Ourre making sure to keep eyes and ears open. I think it is a good time to be a founder. There are some terrific companies to get created. Startup. To build a examples,f specific these new Collaboration Technologies such as zoom and slack. People who want healthy, nutritious foods are turning to Companies Like daily harvest. They are also using entertainment at home. Cameos are there for their customers, offering video shout outs from people like snoop dogg and mandy moore. Companies like calm are there to help with anxiety. I dont know if you are anything like me but it is certainly hard to sleep at the moment. Emily sleep is certainly an elusive thing right now. This is also a global opportunity fund. Where do you see putting the money to work regionally as some Companies Come back online faster than others . Nicole we at lightspeed have had the benefit overeat over the years, working with china, india, seeing how other countries are reacting to what is going on. Where wethink about invest. A lot of interesting trends such as the new types of work, Collaboration Technologies, are emerging. India, wherever else is most important. Also, it is super important to have that diversity of thought around the table, but also the experiences to help the decisions be made during these tough times. Money eyll flood of of money,ood there has been a debate about whether Venture Capital, that company should be applying for that money. Should vcbacked startups be applying for ppp loans . Having ae have been lot of conversations around this, and our view the companies i am on the board of have not taken ppp loans, but there are a small amount of companies that are thinking about that in our portfolio. On the whole, we have not been encouraging this. But i certainly think we have to take every one on a casebycase scenario. Much forank you so sharing your views. I want to get to some breaking news. Walmart announcing they will have 100 covid testing sites up and running by the end of may. They have since been operating about 20 across 12 states. They are trying to get that up to 100 by the end of next month which they say will enable them to test 20,000 people a week. Standing by for the White House Briefing. Today, the white house unveiling a new plan to increase testing across the country. Skepticism about whether the administration can meet that number. We will be taking you to the rose garden as soon as that begins. We are also going to bring you a story about building ventilators from scratch. New york needed ventilators. There were not enough. Well talk to a company that will one in a month. This is bloomberg. Emily welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. The ventilator has been used to treat the most critical of covid patients, but it has been the center of a supply chain storm. Not enough ventilators for the patients who need them. That led one new yorkbased company to try to hack it. They were able to build a new ventilator and under a month and now in operation across new york. Take a listen to my interview earlier with the head of the cofounder, scott cohen. Scott we actually were called earlier on by a friend in amsterdam went italy was under siege. He asked both of us independent of each other if we could help italy. It had become the community at new lab. We developed 700 engineers and entrepreneurs. Both of us independent of each other looked it up, thought it was difficult. But as things started coming towards new york, i looked it up again online. I started seeing who was doing what. I emailed marcel and told him i was thinking about working on a ventilator. My design looks interesting, what do you think . Agreed, letsly give it a go. Emily you managed to make a bridge ventilator. This is a ventilator that if you are not in critical enough condition to need a standard ventilator, this machine is like a halfway step to help you breathe. How does it actually work . Scott basically, most hospitals have a bag most people know them, they see them and ambulances if they need to pump air into a patient. They use this bag into a patient by hand. If you think about what a human would do mechanically with their brains to see our how much to treat the patient, a basically built robotic device that does that but also measures volume. We have a Circuit Board that has sensors on it that can measure airflow. So, we built a robotic device that does a lot of what a ventilator does, but if you think about the highere