We wanted to do something a little different today.

We'll play an episode of last month's special series on America's Business Comeback,

because we know there were platform problems that prevented some of you from hearing it the first time around.

It's a forward-looking episode, focus on companies launched during the pandemic and where they go from here.

Stories will continue to watch.

Hi, I'm Dan Pramak, and welcome to part five of Axios Recaps' special series on America's

business comeback.

Today's Friday, May 28th.

U.S. consumer spending is up.

Bitcoin prices are down, and we're focused on the small businesses that were created during

the pandemic.

The first four episodes of this series concentrated on challenges facing American small businesses

due to the pandemic, and how so many of them were forced to either pivot or perish.

But today we want to dig into a different group, small businesses that didn't exist before the pandemic.

Now, some of these were created by people who got laid off last year, like a woman in Kayla Castaneda, who started a beverage company and who will speak with later in this program.

Lots of other ones were tech startups.

Remember, at the beginning of the pandemic, it looked like tech startups were in the

same sort of trouble as the corner store, but within just a matter of weeks, it turned into an

unexpected boom time. David Cohen is founder of tech stars, a global tech startup accelerator

program that's accepted over 1,500 companies since 2006, including notable names like Class Pass and Pillback.

If anyone has his finger on the pulse of tech startups, it's David Cohen.

So I spoke with him from his home in Boulder, Colorado.

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