Using a crowd-sourced approach, we were able to reduce the hit-finding stage of (direct anti-viral) drug discovery to 3-4 months. As usual in drug discovery projects, wet-lab experiments took most of the time. Many participating teams chose docking-or machine learning-based computational methods, for which little data was available at the start of the project (May 2020). The communication between different fields, e.g. protein crystallization, computational methods, and wet-lab experiments, should be improved by direct communication and collaboration (vs. 'communication via the scientific literature'). This ensures that critical know-how that is easily overlooked (or not explicitly written down) in papers is efficiently transferred. The pandemic has accelerated the breaking down of silos 106 between research fields, but more is needed. We believe that the risk of future pandemics exists and should be taken seriously. Relying on a few pharmaceutical manufacturers to battle a pandemic, and through their lobby to not waive IP restrictions (e.g., through the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights -TRIPS agreement 108 ), consolidates inequality in available COVID-19 treatments in low-and middle-income countries. Academia, once better self-organized along the entire drug development pipeline has the potential to innovate in an open and collaborative way to the benefit of all.