Preparing your home and your family for crises is one thing, but what about preparing your business for something like the Berlin power cut?

Berlin is not Kyiv, but on 3rd January 2026, it felt similar: Electricity was gone in large parts of the city, with temperatures well below freezing point. Two things became clear very quickly: First, the power cut could be attributed to a coordinated attack by a violent left-wing group. And second, it became clear that it would take days until power would be fully restored.

Those who read my articles regularly know that I have a long history of preparing for power outages and other crises. My family and I also experienced a 36-hour blackout last year.

Now, preparing your home and your family for such crises is important, but what about preparing your business for a longer power cut? Here are some possibilities that help your business survive a few days without electricity.

1. Generators and Backup Internet

Although I am a big advocate of solar energy, most entrepreneurs can’t install rooftop solar because they rent their premises.

Here is a remarkably simple solution for entrepreneurs: A generator and a backup internet connection. In this way, entrepreneurs can power their computers and access the internet without grid electricity. That’s important for all those businesses that rely on electronic payments or do business globally – your customer in Singapore won’t even know that you’re suffering a widespread power cut in Berlin.

For generators, you can resort to traditional gasoline-powered generators, with the disadvantage that you have to run them outside the building. Power stations are an alternative: Put simply, they work like a big power bank, and they can also be recharged with an off-grid solar panel.

For backup internet, there is really only one affordable option: Starlink. Even if you dislike Elon Musk, Starlink gives you reliable broadband internet access when the electricity grid fails and the cellular network is down. Provided, of course, you keep a generator to power your Starlink dish.

2. No On-Premise Servers

It’s surprising how many small businesses still believe that on-premise servers or NAS systems give their files better availability and security than cloud storage. Hey, how would you access your cloud files during a power cut?

First, as described above, there are affordable options for a grid-independent backup internet connection.

Second, most cloud file storage systems allow automatic offline sync of all files. With today’s personal computers having 1GB+ storage capacity, you can configure all your cloud files to sync to your computer. If you do that before the power cut, you can continue to work offline, and all the changes will be synced back automatically once power is restored, just like when you work offline on a plane.

Third, most cloud servers use redundancy across different regions. This means that your data is mirrored in two different parts of the country, or even in two entirely different countries. The chances that both server locations are affected by a power cut at the same time are extremely low.

3. No Desktops

Recently, one of my employees who is based in Southeast Asia suffered a long power cut in her home, without having a backup internet connection. Instead of being unproductive the whole day, she packed up her laptop, traveled to a friend’s house, and dialed into the video calls from there. In this way, one hour of work was lost and one call was missed, instead of a full day’s work with several calls. All because she uses a laptop instead of a desktop.

My office is where my laptop is. I don’t have an external screen, so I have the same work setup wherever I am. In contrast, in surprisingly many work setups, we still see desktops , just because this is how we did things in the past. Replacing them with laptops with batteries adds resilience at very little cost.

4. Decentralize

In many companies, there is a huge debate about whether people should be ordered back into the office or whether remote work is here to stay.

At Yonder, the company I co-founded, we cherish a hybrid approach to work. Everyone based in Switzerland must come to the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and can work remotely for the other workdays. Everybody who isn’t based in Switzerland works remotely all the time by nature, but travels to Switzerland for a full work week twice a year.

Let’s not discuss the pros and cons of remote work here, but look at the resilience aspect of remote work. Being able to work remotely means that you can easily relocate to a different location in case of power outages or other crises. Having employees in multiple cities or even multiple countries means that in all likelihood, you’re not losing your entire workforce to a power cut at the same time.

Conclusion

Laugh at me, but power cuts are here to stay: Wars, hybrid attacks, violent groups, technical failures, or energy shortage. We’ve seen them all in the last 12 months.

The consequence for entrepreneurs is simple, yet a bit cumbersome: Better prepare than be sorry.