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and his wife, , launched in 2016. Its main goal has been to explore how the private sector and innovation community can take a different approach to preventing pandemics, instead of relying only on the government.

Little did they know how timely and useful their efforts would be as the spread of COVID-19 has officially reached pandemic levels.

Nerlinger is also a venture partner with Bill Wood Ventures, which was founded by prominent venture capitalist . Wood was a founding partner at the now defunct and also founded . McDonald is also director of health care at (ATI), the startup incubator of the .

Wood got involved with PandemicTech in April 2018, and is now one of its primary funders along with the Houston-based Laura and John Arnold’s family office, Centaurus Advisors.

“When Andrew told me about PandemicTech, it just looked really interesting as a way for me to apply some of my background in technology and entrepreneurship to help solve some really big global problems such as infectious diseases,” Wood told Crunchbase News.

WHO partnership

Since its inception, PandemicTech has issued grants and made investments in projects in Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Australia and Mexico. It recently launched “The PandemicTech ” – a $100,000 innovation challenge focused on global health security. It’s also formed a partnership with the (WHO).

, regional adviser on innovation for WHO’s , said he engaged PandemicTech and the Austin community to support the inaugural WHO Innovation Challenge that was launched in October 2018.

PandemicTech offered the WHO “amazing support” on the evaluation of more than 2,400 applications, Chibi wrote via email.

“We continue to work with PandemicTech on supporting the selected innovators to further develop their innovations for transition to scale,” he said. “This has been one of the most productive and fulfilling partnerships WHO AFRO had in complementing its effort towards scaling appropriate innovations fit for the African context.”

Lack of investment and innovation

Wood believes organizations that traditionally attack infectious disease threats are not really “built for innovation, and the use of technology.”

“When you get plugged into global health, you realize the profound needs that are not being met,” Wood added. “You start to realize how dramatically unprepared we are. And now, when something like this [COVID-19] happens, the evidence is really clear that there has been an enormous lack of investment and innovation in this space.”

McDonald agrees.

The fundamental push behind PandemicTech was about preparing in advance for situations such as the Coraonavirus pandemic.

“It’s very interesting to see that sort of reaction in the moment or retrospectively,” she told Crunchbase News. “And that supports the fundamental thesis behind what we’ve done.”

Current efforts

From a humanitarian perspective, the WHO has launched its , according to Nerlinger.

But he said it will also be critical for the private sector to support local economies, particularly those left without a source of income, while still following public health guidelines.

“The private sector can also drive the uptake of technologies like telemedicine that can both improve access to medical care and support the call for social distancing,” Nerlinger said.

PandemicTech is also observing that many companies, even early-stage startups, are working on technologies that could be used to support our response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We encourage these companies to seek partnerships that help adapt technologies to fighting COVID-19, particularly with promising technologies like telemedicine, and for investors to support these innovative efforts,” Nerlinger said.

Beyond its goal of identifying promising applicants for its fellowship program, PandemicTech is looking for experienced mentors across sectors to join its advisory network. It’s also interested in partnering with investors or other funding organizations to support early-stage innovation in the fight against pandemics.

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For those who don’t know, a bidet is an attachment used for cleaning oneself with water after using the restroom. While they’re popular in other countries, they’re not standard in the United States, a country with an affinity for toilet paper.

But with the outbreak of coronavirus–the declared COVID-19 a “pandemic” on Wednesday–people have been hoarding toilet paper. Some stores are , while others, , are limiting how many packs consumers can buy.

Meanwhile, toilet paper startup has sold out of its inventory in Australia and the U.S., and is expecting to sell out in the United Kingdom by the end of the week.

And as some people panic shop, others have pointed out that they can avoid running out of toilet paper altogether with a bidet.

Enter Tushy

, a direct-to-consumer bidet startup, has seen an uptick in sales since toilet paper has been flying off store shelves. The company sells $79 bidets that can be attached to toilets.

In fact the company’s revenue from bidets has tripled this past week, and “shows no signs of slowing,” Tushy CEO Jason Ojalvo said.

“I think it’s definitely the toilet paper hoarding, no question,” Ojalvo said in an interview with Crunchbase News. He added that he thought it’d be the “hygiene angle” that would sway people to buy bidets.

“We’re noticing a lot of articles about the toilet paper shortage and it’s not until the comments that people say ‘get a bidet’,” Ojalvo said.

Sales for the company’s bamboo toilet paper has also doubled, but it hasn’t seen the surge in popularity like Tushy’s bidets have. The company isn’t as known for its toilet paper and doesn’t advertise it as much, Ojalvo said.

Tushy, which is based in New York, has $2.9 million in funding, from investors including and , according to Crunchbase.

The company hasn’t experienced a surge in sales because of a crisis before, but it did experience it when the pulled Tushy’s ads from subways, and the wrote about it. “Saturday Night Live” mentioned the incident in a news segment, and Tushy saw a spike in sales.

Toilet paper startups seeing a surge, too

Just as toilet paper from large brands like Charmin and Cottonelle are flying off shelves, toilet paper startups are seeing demand skyrocket, too.

Toilet paper maker Who Gives A Crap, which makes environmentally-friendly toilet paper, saw its sales grow 12x in Australia last Tuesday, and then saw a 20x increase in sales the next day, co-founder Danny Alexander said in an interview with Crunchbase News. It sold out of inventory in the country last week.

“We had virtually no time to react,” Alexander said. “By the time we caught up to the number of sales we had to turn off sales.” The company has paused sales to individuals who didn’t already have a subscription, but is still selling and distributing to subscribers.

Who Gives A Crap has had a few brief times where it’s been out of stock, but never from panic buying. In fact, the company has never seen anything like this, Alexander said.

“As a company that makes something that everybody needs and nobody wants to run out of, we try to never run out of stock,” he said.

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