You're both right. I know of 10 cases in my social circle. Two were small tech companies (not startups) that pivoted to WFH services in 2020, had their best ye

You're both right. I know of 10 cases in my social circle. Two were small tech companies (not startups) that pivoted to WFH services in 2020, had their best years ever, and then returned to their normal work portfolio in 2022. Good years. Five were restaurants I frequent. Two of those went out of business, two used PPP to pay salaries then laid folks off, and one had a fantastic year because they already had eds+meds+tech clientelle, were in a fairly good pandemic-weathering of the city (lots of SFHs and huge parks), and executed extremely well on the "delivery but we'll keep the social third place vibe going with various virtual events" model. One is a auto dealership (well, a manager at an auto dealership). Basically used the PPP to pay salespeople salaries for a few months and by the time the first summer came around it was back to business as usual. The rest were various other small businesses for whom PPP was basically purely supplemental income. The only one I'm really sour about is a tradesman who did a bunch of under the table cash work (unreported so a 30% boost already) + got PPP + got enhanced unemployment. Almost two straight years of tax fraud. Bought a $300K boat and bunch of other toys this year. All were forgiven.