COVID-19 upset the status quo at many companies — with mixed results — over the past year.

The pandemic was a dice roll, delivering widely varying outcomes to different companies. Its ending will return things to normal, but the new normal won’t be the normal they recall from 2019. Yet another dice roll is coming, potentially unseating winners, resuscitating dead fish and setting up new rules for all. 

With countries around the globe having kicked off vaccinations, it’s time to ask, what’s next? Will the boomers keep booming as things gradually return to normal? Are losers poised for a comeback? And will startups be able to defend ground they broke from a takeover by bigger copycats? 

Here’s a quick look back at some big players before and during COVID-19 and a peek at what the future may bring. 

UiPath

Valued at $7 billion, UiPath Inc. abruptly laid off 11% of its workforce in late 2019, a startling move that threatened to sink the hype around the company and robotic process automation in general. Company spokespeople insisted the company was just pruning after its massive growth and continued to promote RPA as a workplace revolution to a skeptical public. 

Over 2020, the company’s automation bots found their way into industries trying to respond to increased demand.

“One of our customers, a hygienic company, had a 10x influx of orders of hand sanitizer. Their team in China usually processes the orders in SAP but couldn’t keep up with the spike in demand – especially with some of that team unavailable to work due to quarantines,” Guy Kirkwood, UiPath’s chief evangelist, told theCUBE. The customer opted to add 20 unattended bots to handle the volume, Kirkwood added. 

UiPath’s revenue grew 81% last year, according to documents filed with the SEC. This, among other things, apparently helped the company convince investors that 2019’s layoffs were just a bump in the road. In February, it raised $750 million for a $35 billion private valuation. However, on Monday, an update to its IPO prospectus stated that it planned to trade for $43 to $50 per share. At the top end, that would give the company a $25.8 billion valuation. With treasury yields putting a drag on big tech stocks, UiPath and others may find the post-pandemic Wall Street more volatile than expected.  

Zoom

Zoom Video Communications Inc. had been growing even before COVID-19, but no one could have predicted the wild growth that would come in 2020. In one week last March, downloads of the videoconferencing app grew 14 times. Within weeks, its stock price hit an all-time high of $169 a share; its high over the pandemic hit $588 a share. Today, Zoom is a verb, synonymous with remote work and a pandemic survival essential to many. 

So what happens as some people return to offices this year? Plenty of analysts say Zoom use will inevitably drop off as the pandemic winds down, and some warned as early as last winter that its stock was overvalued. On the other hand, Zoom Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg told The Associated Press last month: “As we progress to the world reopening, people have now integrated it into their lives in the way they work, in the way they learn, the way that they socialize. … That is not just going to change.” 

Zoom says it is currently looking for areas to expand into, and the company recently introduced voice-only internet calling. Zoom will have to contend with plenty of competitors in the post-pandemic video/voice market, such as Google Meet, which offers a low meeting tax (it’s embedded in Gmail) and AI-enhanced sound quality.

GitLab

By late 2019, GitLab Inc. was aiming for a 2020 IPO, which it shelved as COVID-19 created market uncertainty. The 1,300-person all-remote company provides a DevOps collaboration and visibility platform for software teams. It received much press in 2020 as remote newbies searched for guidance. It condensed its 40+ open-source guides on working remotely into “The Remote Playbook,” which has been downloaded over 100,000 times to date. 

The company has embraced its role as a thought leader in remote work and has conducted its own survey on workers and remote work in the wake of COVID-19.

“Only 1% indicated they would like to go back to the office,” Darren Murph, GitLab’s head of remote told theCUBE. “Remote work is more about the future of living than work. Workers appreciate the flexibility to fit work into their life schedule as opposed to vice-versa.” 

Between providing how-to advice to the rest of the working world and conducting business as usual, the company also managed to reach a $6B valuation late in 2020, more than double its $2.7B valuation from September 2019. It is reportedly planning an IPO but has not set a date. 

AfterPay 

The buy-now-pay-later payment platform AfterPay Ltd. had been growing by 300% YOY in the U.S. even before COVID-19. Still, when the pandemic hit, its future suddenly looked uncertain. Its stock fell 90% in three days, and it faced significant headwinds. However, it soon became clear that COVID-19’s shutdown orders would not slow its growth and would in fact drive more consumers to online shopping, and in turn to AfterPay. The company’s U.S. sales grew 330% last year, and its stock price is trading at $114 a share, up roughly 300% from its pre-pandemic price. 

AfterPay does not predict a slowdown after COVID-19 because it is available in physical stores, for one. Also, “COVID has accelerated two key trends that were already happening in the market which have helped our business grow exponentially — a massive shift to eCommerce and a shift away from credit cards,” said Amanda Pires, Afterpay’s vice president of communications. Millennials and Gen Z-ers, in particular, are eschewing credit cards with their high interest rates and fees in favor of financial tools that promote “responsible spending and financial wellness,” Pires told theCUBE.

However, PayPal Holdings Inc. has entered the BNPL race with an offer that mimics AfterPay’s in many ways and charges PayPay’s usual 2.9% merchant fee, which is lower than AfterPay’s typical 4% to 5% fee. Consumers will continue to watch as AfterPay and its older, bigger competitor battle for this now-booming market. 

WeWork

The business model of WeWork Companies Inc. — acquiring office space, then leasing portions of it to customers — doesn’t seem terribly controversial. But a $47B valuation, failed IPO and resignation of its co-founder and chief executive officer in close succession made WeWork the biggest startup scandal of 2019 and even inspired a recent Netflix documentary. Then COVID-19’s mass work-from-home mandates hit in 2020, delivering a blow to the company’s hopes for recovery. 

Yet now, in 2021, questions about reopening offices are on people’s minds. And one of those questions is: Do we have to?

Leased workspace providers offer a low-commitment Petri dish for companies weighing staying remote vs. reopening offices. They can try a hybrid model, continuing to work remotely some of the time and reporting to a workspace once or twice a week. Or they can keep part of their staff remote while moving others into a small office. The benefit is they can pay for just what they need as they experiment before committing to a multi-year lease. 

As early as last September, WeWork told Fortune it had sold 13 times more All Access passes in the last month than the month before. In fact, the number of coworking and flexible workspaces in the U.S. is expected to double or triple over the next five years, according to a report from Colliers International. Can WeWork fill the growing demand, or will a competitor with a less battered reputation, such as IWG’s Spaces, dominate?

Just before the shutdown, in January 2020, Spaces had already overtaken WeWork as the market leader with 284,916 square feet of leased space versus WeWork’s 184,022 square feet. And last June it even bought WeWork out of a 30,000-square-foot space in Hong Kong. But it doesn’t appear that WeWork will go down without a fight. It is now planning an IPO through a merger with special-purpose acquisition company BowX Acquisition Corp. 

For some, what COVID gave, it will take away. For others, what it took is gone for good. And in some cases, what it took, it might just return in spades. Affected companies used to talking about disruption and agile transformation learned to walk the talk over the last year. They will get a chance to put those lessons to use as the world takes another sharp turn into the new normal.

Photo: twenty20photos