Speaker 1: Enjoying Black Tech Green Money. It would mean a lot
Speaker 1: if you rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: Google Play. The way the algorithm works, the more you
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Speaker 1: Money to more people and more of us need this content.
Speaker 1: So thank you for rating this podcast five stars today.
Speaker 1: You know, essentially what we've done is developed a platform
Speaker 1: technology that transforms your city into a smartphone, so that
Speaker 1: deploying and managing infrastructure solutions like ev charging, like smart
Speaker 1: water systems, like all the things that you would need
Speaker 1: to avoid a lot of the death that we saw
Speaker 1: from the from this storm. So doing that is as
Speaker 1: convenient as downloading and running an app on your phone.
Speaker 1: I'm with Lucas and this is Black Tech Green Money.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you to you to some of the
Speaker 1: biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas.
Speaker 1: If you're black, in building or simply using tech to
Speaker 1: secure You're back this podcast this for you special edition
Speaker 1: to Black Tech Green Money. Some Unstable Conversation with my
Speaker 1: friend Jessica Old Matthews, founder and CEO of Uncharted Power
Speaker 1: and a War winning renewable power and sustainability company. This
Speaker 1: conversation was held during the Back to Black Innovators Digital Summit.
Speaker 1: We had afro chech through a bit ago and I'm
Speaker 1: excited for you guys to hear this conversation. That's so,
Speaker 1: I'm pleased to introduce my friend here, who I lovingly
Speaker 1: called like the dopest scientist you're ever gonna meet. And um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give her a bio and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask her, like, give her what her version of her
Speaker 1: own bio is. So. Jessica Old Matthews is founder and
Speaker 1: CEO of Uncharted Power and a war winning renewable power
Speaker 1: and sustainability company now on the bleeding of creating UH
Speaker 1: smart cities around the world. And the company was founded
Speaker 1: by Jessica when she was only twenty two years old.
Speaker 1: Big move, big queen, move right there. Dual citizen of
Speaker 1: Nigeria and the US still still do a citizen? Yeah,
Speaker 1: still do a citizen? Mean I don't know about the
Speaker 1: US part. For there was a time there was a
Speaker 1: moment where if there was one of them, I was
Speaker 1: gonna give it up. It was that one. But you know,
Speaker 1: we were looking good so far. Yeah, these are these
Speaker 1: are facts. These are facts um. She has a degree
Speaker 1: in psychology and economics from Harvard University, NBA from a
Speaker 1: HBS as well UM and it's listed over on a
Speaker 1: hundred patents and patents pending just twelve twelve, twelve twelve.
Speaker 1: I'll tend I'm sorry, I'm okay, it's ten. The one
Speaker 1: I had was ten. Be prolific and ethic, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: or you on your way, because if anybody can do it,
Speaker 1: it's Jessica Matthew so um, including her first invention with socket,
Speaker 1: which is an energy generating soccer ball. She did that
Speaker 1: nineteen years old. I mean, what were you doing that nineteen?
Speaker 1: I know what I was doing, and it was not
Speaker 1: inventing energy producing soccer generating soccer balls. But list of
Speaker 1: accolades includes which is most Promising Women Entrepreneurs for Start
Speaker 1: Getting thirty eight, Magazine thirty, The thirty and Harvard University
Speaker 1: Scientists of the Year. Jessica Matthew, How do how do
Speaker 1: you introduce yourself? Oh? Man, say hey, I'm jess uh gosh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do like to tell people that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to be like the love child of Beyonce and
Speaker 1: Bill n the science guy. I do like to say
Speaker 1: that because I feel like it's still whole, like if
Speaker 1: you just kind of pulled together. When I was younger,
Speaker 1: I was way more bill n I like Beyonce takes Beyonce.
Speaker 1: It is the hard party, the hard work, that's the
Speaker 1: hard part. Um. But yeah, kind of that vibe of
Speaker 1: how I moved through and I approached things. So that's
Speaker 1: proba be the quick one. I love I love that
Speaker 1: love that. So when I met you, it was just
Speaker 1: uncharted play. Um, and now it's uncharted power and you've
Speaker 1: gone from harnessing energy to creating power. So and nonsustainability. Um,
Speaker 1: what what drove like the expansion of your skulle? That's
Speaker 1: a good question. Um. I like to tell people that
Speaker 1: the first step in innovation is the articulation of the problem.
Speaker 1: The way that you've you articulate that problem will then
Speaker 1: drive what you determined to be the solution. And so
Speaker 1: when I was nineteen years old, you know, when I'm
Speaker 1: over here just knowing that stuff doesn't make sense. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't understand how my own family, cousins and Nigeria
Speaker 1: who are engineers themselves, they can't imagine a better world
Speaker 1: than the world that we're living. In where we're losing
Speaker 1: power several times a day. Um, you know, and there
Speaker 1: are quite a few other infrastructural problems. Uh. And yet
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the flip side is they always
Speaker 1: had a better cell phone than I did. Right, So
Speaker 1: clearly it's an issue that masqueraded as social economic but
Speaker 1: was really infrastructural. For me, I thought the issue was inspiration.
Speaker 1: I was like, they need to believe that they can
Speaker 1: change the world that they're in. They need to believe
Speaker 1: that they have agency. And so how do I design
Speaker 1: a solution that inspires them to try to play the game,
Speaker 1: to get in the game, literally inspire them to get
Speaker 1: in the game. And so that's where the first products
Speaker 1: came from. Energy generating play products like taking the most
Speaker 1: popular sport in the world, soccer, and saying, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bridge the gap between this passionate excitement that
Speaker 1: I know my cousins, I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the world are gonna have and bring them across
Speaker 1: that bridge over to engaging in energy and infrastructure. And
Speaker 1: my assumption was that if I inspire them, they'll do
Speaker 1: the work, because you know, oh, I'm sure they're smart enough,
Speaker 1: and there are better people in the world, who are
Speaker 1: better suited to be building infrastructure solutions. So let me
Speaker 1: just inspire get to the point where we're you know,
Speaker 1: producing tens of thousands of these, partnering with different UM companies,
Speaker 1: you know, governments to distribute them more on an education side.
Speaker 1: Started to even work with different Fortune one hundreds on
Speaker 1: their energy generating UM strategy is right, like energy generating strollers,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. That's when we met. I think, remember
Speaker 1: afro Tech. I'm like, okay, remb to do the stroller
Speaker 1: suitcase UM. And it was two things happened. First, you know,
Speaker 1: I started to realize that it was still gonna take
Speaker 1: a couple of years. It takes two years to make
Speaker 1: any product for that's gonna a baby is gonna be in.
Speaker 1: You can't just come up with some stuff like it
Speaker 1: takes years to go through that partner in R and D.
Speaker 1: And I was like, all right, this is kind of
Speaker 1: coming off a little kitchy, Like it's fun, it's cool,
Speaker 1: but I don't necessarily see people being inspired and fixing
Speaker 1: the infrastructural problems. I just kind of see them, you know,
Speaker 1: getting excited, but then sitting there. And then the second
Speaker 1: thing that happened was that Donald Trump won the election.
Speaker 1: Dead ass. The most inspirational thing that ever happened to
Speaker 1: me was Donald Trump winning the election, because prior to that,
Speaker 1: you know, people would say, oh, um, well, you know,
Speaker 1: were you inspired When Barack Obama was president? I was like,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was a constitutional scholar, He's supposed to be president.
Speaker 1: Just because his black ass is president does not mean
Speaker 1: that I should be president. No. But when Trump won,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, so now anybody can do it.
Speaker 1: And that was the first moment when I realized I
Speaker 1: first of all, yes I could be president. If this
Speaker 1: is what we're working with right now, I believe i'd
Speaker 1: be a good president. Let's go. And then I turned
Speaker 1: to my team and I said, why are we waiting
Speaker 1: for other people to build infrastructure when fools like this
Speaker 1: are building infrastructure or running for president. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: at the end of IS when we said, all right,
Speaker 1: what if we take this investment and instead of putting
Speaker 1: two to three years into kind of consumer products, we
Speaker 1: start looking at infrastructure. And in seventeen is Only formally
Speaker 1: changed their name from Uncharted Play to Uncharted Power based
Speaker 1: on the success we had in building UM an energy
Speaker 1: generating speed bump. What then happened again would not have expected. Um.
Speaker 1: We kept on working and built something that was pretty
Speaker 1: dope UM compared and ran analyzes. You know, we were
Speaker 1: beating out numbers of you know, major uh kinetic academics
Speaker 1: and Virginia Tech beating out the numbers of competing companies.
Speaker 1: And Boston, Singapore brought our solution. We can actually you
Speaker 1: degenerate a kill a lot of power when you when
Speaker 1: you drove over the speed bump. It was a precursor
Speaker 1: to energy generating. Roads started to bring our solutions to
Speaker 1: different governments and the governments were excited about it, but
Speaker 1: they didn't really know how to scale it. At best,
Speaker 1: they were interested in maybe like a one off pilot
Speaker 1: here or there. And that's when we realized that the
Speaker 1: issue was much broader than just a new way to
Speaker 1: have decentralized energy generation for infrastructure. The issue was the
Speaker 1: lack of a platform to actually to actually deploy and
Speaker 1: manage this infrastructure. So the cities were like, this is cool,
Speaker 1: but how do I make this work in this silo?
Speaker 1: When I got to work with the grid in this way,
Speaker 1: I gotta work a solar here and there, was nobody
Speaker 1: who was saying, how do you bring it together? It
Speaker 1: was it was almost like it was almost like we
Speaker 1: were all trying to be chefs making a meal at
Speaker 1: a buffet. But then when someone comes and says, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is dope. Okay, Yeah, I want to eat it.
Speaker 1: Where's the tray? Oh we don't have those here. Where's
Speaker 1: the play Oh we don't have those here? All right,
Speaker 1: so how do you want me to sustainably gather all
Speaker 1: these things together and bring it back to my table
Speaker 1: to eat it? That's not my problem? Or do it
Speaker 1: in a really expensive way. And so we realized that
Speaker 1: that's that's how we were being viewed. So we really said, okay,
Speaker 1: kind of like how Stacy Abram's all right, voting doesn't
Speaker 1: work in Georgia for me, I'm aa fix the voting
Speaker 1: system so I can run for governor. That's basically how
Speaker 1: that's that's a classic black women vibe. I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I want to get my application out, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and fix the way that all
Speaker 1: applications get deployed and managed sustainably like and then that
Speaker 1: way I can deploy my stuff. And so that's what
Speaker 1: brought us to building these sustainable smart city platforms where
Speaker 1: we're consistently dry looking at how do we drive down
Speaker 1: the cost the upfront costs reduced of time to deploy.
Speaker 1: We choose the time to repair and take away all
Speaker 1: the stress that the city has and deploying and managing
Speaker 1: things like our energy generating speed bumps. But by g
Speaker 1: AI smart lighting, lighting everything, and so into a smart
Speaker 1: take a city like infrastructure solutions like even for us,
Speaker 1: like smart water systems, like all the things that you
Speaker 1: would need to avoid a lot of the death that
Speaker 1: we saw from the from this storm. So doing that
Speaker 1: is as convenient as downloading and running an app on
Speaker 1: your phone. Um So, now when we think about the
Speaker 1: past apps we've made, we're excited because once this platform
Speaker 1: is out there and people have the smartphone, which which
Speaker 1: we're going to be putting out this year, um in
Speaker 1: a couple of our Betat cities, then we get Now
Speaker 1: you get that kind of unprecedented, unpredictable thing that happened
Speaker 1: with smartphones, right no one, no one knew the value
Speaker 1: years ago, but now we can't live without it. We're
Speaker 1: excited for people to start playing around with that. So
Speaker 1: that's that's the arc. That's how I got from soccer
Speaker 1: balls to part any platforms. Now. I love it and
Speaker 1: I want to spend some time in a few minutes
Speaker 1: talking about more than mentality. It takes to do the
Speaker 1: scale of things that you're doing. But I'm gonna start here. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a quote I found from you that said,
Speaker 1: after nearly a decade of work, we realize that the
Speaker 1: problem isn't just a lack of smart power infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: so I kind of see like, Um, what you're doing
Speaker 1: now is like it's not micro pivots, but it's like
Speaker 1: the problem reveals itself right when you get started. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about how you you just gave us the arc,
Speaker 1: but how when you get started on the road as
Speaker 1: an innovator, you may think the problem is X, but
Speaker 1: it's actually why. Well, you're becoming my favorite person to
Speaker 1: talk to because that's thank you for these questions. Um,
Speaker 1: I will say this one thing that hasn't changed has
Speaker 1: been my true north from the jump. The mission has
Speaker 1: always been, how do we get to a world where
Speaker 1: there's universal access to smart, sustainable infrastructure? Right? How do
Speaker 1: we get to a world where the things that some
Speaker 1: people take for granted and other people are dying literally
Speaker 1: without UM. It just doesn't make sense, right. And I
Speaker 1: think for me the year after the wedding that a
Speaker 1: lot of people kind of know about, right, that led
Speaker 1: to my first invention that it wasn't like I went
Speaker 1: to my aunt's wedding, you lost power. And then there
Speaker 1: was an invention of an energy generating soccer ball. That year. Uh,
Speaker 1: there were three people in my family, my grandfather, my uncle,
Speaker 1: and my aunt. All of them died and they all
Speaker 1: passed away from things that either could have been at
Speaker 1: least delayed, if not totally avoided UM if they had
Speaker 1: access to this infrastructure that we take for granted. And
Speaker 1: so that was the thing that in me kind of
Speaker 1: a line and say, all right, you know, I like
Speaker 1: I often tell people like intersectionality is a compass, and
Speaker 1: when you think about all the things that make you
Speaker 1: who you are and all of your experiences, that's something
Speaker 1: like if you look at the intersection of that, the
Speaker 1: next point of that is what you should be doing
Speaker 1: with your life period point like that's it. And so
Speaker 1: what I found at that next point for me was
Speaker 1: like trying to address this problem. Like I literally remember
Speaker 1: thinking I was in my ap psychology class, high school year,
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, right before all this thinking, I know
Speaker 1: I can't cure death, but can I cure life? Because
Speaker 1: what's messing with me more than anything, honestly, like is
Speaker 1: it's not just the fact that they passed in a
Speaker 1: way that could have been avoided. It's that most likely
Speaker 1: when they took their last breath, they thought the same
Speaker 1: thing that my cousins you know in Nigeria thought, which was,
Speaker 1: we have no agency, We can't change this. The best
Speaker 1: way to deal with your problems is just to get
Speaker 1: you to die. And so like that broke my heart.
Speaker 1: That seemed ridiculous, like I refuse to accept it, like
Speaker 1: it is truly the thing that made me say, all right,
Speaker 1: So how do I then start to think how I
Speaker 1: could bridge the gap in YadA, YadA, YadA. So then
Speaker 1: once I had that true north, everything just becomes kind
Speaker 1: of like a meditation on intention and impact. So first listen,
Speaker 1: I'm young, thinking the issue is inspiration approaching it. I
Speaker 1: had opportunities to be in the business of just making
Speaker 1: millions of soccer balls. Yeah, I had, like I had
Speaker 1: that in fact that people wanted that. But so if
Speaker 1: I'm seeing that it's not actually resulting in what I want,
Speaker 1: And in fact, it's just more plastic, more this, more that,
Speaker 1: And it's not Leslie fixing the bigger issue because you
Speaker 1: then what's what's up? Um, Like, I didn't get into
Speaker 1: this just because oh, look, I can say I made
Speaker 1: you know this. It's like this was step one. But
Speaker 1: my intention, what's my intention? My intention is to fix
Speaker 1: this infrastructure issue. And if it's not happening just through inspiration,
Speaker 1: then what's happening? So then I'm thinking, oh, maybe there
Speaker 1: needs to be an infrastructure model for decentralized energy. I
Speaker 1: thought that that was the issue that people can conceptualize
Speaker 1: a world where we didn't have centralized infrastructure systems. Built
Speaker 1: a system there you go, then you get them. You realize, No,
Speaker 1: it's bigger than that. It's not just about decentralized energy.
Speaker 1: This is about the lack of a platform to actually
Speaker 1: pull it all together, to get all these disparate decentralized
Speaker 1: infrastructure solutions interoperating together. And again like like for me,
Speaker 1: I was like, of course, like, inasmuch as this speed
Speaker 1: bump is still sexy and fun, I have a goal.
Speaker 1: I have a goal because this is a life or
Speaker 1: death situation for me personally. Um, and now even bigger.
Speaker 1: I you know, I got engaged last year and so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna be getting married in Nigeria, big
Speaker 1: Nigerian wedding in March. And if you think they go,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let these people bring a diesel generator out
Speaker 1: after everything I've done said for the last decade thirteen years.
Speaker 1: Will listen, So I'm out here, like, listen, y'all, I
Speaker 1: get it together all right, So so so so this
Speaker 1: is the like I'm real big on drink your own medicine,
Speaker 1: like the first parts of our system we installed, you
Speaker 1: know at a facility where my own mom and brother
Speaker 1: would like, you know, be driving over at etcetera. Like
Speaker 1: I am a percent bringing this platform to Nigeria and
Speaker 1: the first place y'all gonna see it as at my wedding,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be like, you smell that air, You
Speaker 1: smell that fresh air, you like that look. Now I'm
Speaker 1: about to be like, I'm like, oh, y'all this, I
Speaker 1: don't care what's up. So it's it's personal, right And
Speaker 1: I think I think if you know why you're doing it,
Speaker 1: and you are, I think fully understanding that just because
Speaker 1: it's not your plan doesn't mean it's it's not gonna
Speaker 1: be your destiny. Is something I say a lot um
Speaker 1: you you you just gotta be really uncompromising with your mission,
Speaker 1: but then flexible with everything that takes you there. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a it's a it's a balance.
Speaker 1: But I think that the rubric is know why you're
Speaker 1: doing it. That's the thing that that's the know why
Speaker 1: you're doing this, know what you intend for this to be,
Speaker 1: and and find ways to continuously bring yourself back to that.
Speaker 1: That why So I'm so glad you said you ended
Speaker 1: on that, because so many people I want to start
Speaker 1: a business, um, may not know what idea to pursue,
Speaker 1: what idea they can you know, create value with for
Speaker 1: others and up shows that ideas are literally all around you.
Speaker 1: Um how problems are literally all around you that you
Speaker 1: can solve even how do you, by more than just
Speaker 1: your representation, get us to look around us for the
Speaker 1: problems that we can solve. That's a really good question. Um.
Speaker 1: So we do have that. That's we do have a
Speaker 1: program at the company because this is something we actually
Speaker 1: want to operationalize um. You know, in the early days,
Speaker 1: I truly believe that almost anyone could be an inventor,
Speaker 1: they just had to be given the kind of right
Speaker 1: psychological tools. I still very much believe that the problems
Speaker 1: of this world are entirely too complex, complicated for any
Speaker 1: one person or organization to solve. And so our best
Speaker 1: chance in hell, especially with the damn near you know,
Speaker 1: end of days that it seems like in the world
Speaker 1: right now, with everything going on with the locus and that,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's scary, it's it's a scary time.
Speaker 1: We need as many people as possible believing that they
Speaker 1: can make a difference, because even if it's just one
Speaker 1: out of every one thousand people doing something that really
Speaker 1: changes where we're at, that's better than what we have
Speaker 1: right now, which is, you know, a small group of
Speaker 1: people who basically all think the same thing, who think
Speaker 1: that they're the only one that are worth getting their
Speaker 1: big idea funded right and pushing forward. And so for
Speaker 1: for us, that meant developing a program that we call Uplift.
Speaker 1: And what we did is we created a curriculum, and
Speaker 1: especially curriculum now that's gone through it's like fourth version
Speaker 1: we digitized it during COVID and we still reach like
Speaker 1: lots of kids through through digital means. Um. And basically,
Speaker 1: we have a curriculum called Think Out of Bounds that
Speaker 1: teaches kids how to become social inventors. How and literally
Speaker 1: it goes through the process of teaching them what it
Speaker 1: means to be an inventor because some examples of inventors
Speaker 1: that look like them, uh, and teaches them how to
Speaker 1: look at their surroundings not as obstacles but as opportunities.
Speaker 1: So let's make a list of all the problems you
Speaker 1: have and now let's come how would you think about
Speaker 1: inventing something to solve that? Uh? And so that's that's
Speaker 1: a program we like to do wherever we're about to work, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Poughkeepsie where we're where we're working on some
Speaker 1: exciting things to to demonstrate how a normal city, you're
Speaker 1: not even one of the big you know, quote unquote
Speaker 1: sexy ones, like a normal city most cities are like mckepsie,
Speaker 1: how they could use our smartphone to choose the apps
Speaker 1: that I go to transform their city into a smart,
Speaker 1: sustainable city in record time and under budget. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: before we we do all that we want to make
Speaker 1: sure that the people in that city feel prepared for
Speaker 1: that opportunity, right like they need to they need to
Speaker 1: understand the power in their hands when you when we
Speaker 1: give them this this platform. And so we've done already
Speaker 1: almost two hundred kids. UM in partnership with the city
Speaker 1: school district. We're getting ready to do like a little
Speaker 1: um like invention the thon with some of the kids.
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's dope, right, It's it's focused, you know,
Speaker 1: it's authentic. It's not like the broadest scale stuff. But
Speaker 1: it's something that we've done in Swaziland, Bronx Harlem like
Speaker 1: you name it, um if we've worked there, we we've
Speaker 1: added that component and um, you know, we've seen an
Speaker 1: actual statistical improvement in creative confidence, like like you ask
Speaker 1: the kids beforehand, do my ideas matter? And you asked
Speaker 1: them after and it's it's a it's a maybe to
Speaker 1: an increase and that that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: we do structurally. Uh. I think as an organization. So
Speaker 1: I hear you when you because and I love that example,
Speaker 1: because I want to push you a little further down
Speaker 1: that line. Because the SBA put out a study. I
Speaker 1: think it was the last time that they did it,
Speaker 1: but it said eighty percent of black owned businesses are
Speaker 1: in the bottom for a revenue. Like, so we over
Speaker 1: index on creating service worker you know, so we long
Speaker 1: care and beauties shops and you know, diners, and but
Speaker 1: we pent of our businesses are created in those the
Speaker 1: bottom of industries for a revenue. Um. But the work
Speaker 1: you're doing is industry reimagining. Like blow, it's a trillion
Speaker 1: dollar market, you know. And what you do with sustainability? Um,
Speaker 1: are we thinking big enough? Just i' mean black people,
Speaker 1: are we thinking big enough? You know? It's a two
Speaker 1: sided street, right, So on one hand, you know you
Speaker 1: you you innovate on what you know, right, And it
Speaker 1: took me a decade to get to the point of
Speaker 1: knowing enough where I could be in anyone with anybody,
Speaker 1: I don't care who they think. They are obviously down
Speaker 1: right there with Bill Gates and be like, listen, Bill,
Speaker 1: what you just said is super cute. But this is
Speaker 1: what I know because I just mean the last decade
Speaker 1: doing this, um and so. And it took digging, like
Speaker 1: I said, like I had to get to layers of
Speaker 1: understanding the problem. Um, and so I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it's like we you your approach was right in
Speaker 1: front of you, and then you run, you run on that. UM.
Speaker 1: I do also think that we it's it's a nuanced thing.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you an example of what's happening right now. UM,
Speaker 1: we have you know, we have have brilliant CTO started
Speaker 1: his year black man, which it took me so long
Speaker 1: to find. I didn't hire because he was black, hired brilliant.
Speaker 1: I hired him because he's brilliant. Just you know, listen,
Speaker 1: but this happens to be a black man. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: started his career a year after I was born, Like
Speaker 1: you know Compton raised army, but like his literally like
Speaker 1: part of the teams when people think about their smart
Speaker 1: meters that are on their homes, part of the team
Speaker 1: that led that, like helped one company built up a
Speaker 1: product line and the smart grid space that uh like
Speaker 1: already brought the fifteen million in revenue you know before
Speaker 1: without a sales team three million in revenue. Was that
Speaker 1: got the sales team the I p O. They still
Speaker 1: bring him for consulting. Went to another company that he
Speaker 1: built their initial system and they sold the Verizon you
Speaker 1: know his he's advised on how forty five different smart
Speaker 1: cities in the country have how they build their smart
Speaker 1: cities low key do that like gets this stuff done.
Speaker 1: The person who's doing our edge cloud was Cloud was
Speaker 1: literally Oracles chief cloud architect. Now he's mine, that's a
Speaker 1: white he's legit, super legit. You know. We have really
Speaker 1: really like yeah, we pulled the cather like the people
Speaker 1: who built the underlying technology that we have gotten comfortable
Speaker 1: with that we take for granted. As soon as COVID
Speaker 1: had I was able to pull them for wherever they
Speaker 1: are because I'm like, now you don't have to be
Speaker 1: in Harlem, just come here find on and it's dope,
Speaker 1: but still, well, here's what I face, right, So now
Speaker 1: we walk into a virtual room and I'm like telling someone,
Speaker 1: this is what we do, this is how much we need,
Speaker 1: this is how we're gonna this is where we're demonstrating it.
Speaker 1: What I face that's really interesting is in other situations,
Speaker 1: if I was a white male founder, people would be
Speaker 1: comfortable with the fact that they will never understand the tech.
Speaker 1: Who knows how the internet works, who knows how your
Speaker 1: phone knows? You don't No one can break down how
Speaker 1: the phone works, but you know the value it brings you.
Speaker 1: But when I'm there saying it, they have to find
Speaker 1: they now have to find a place in their head
Speaker 1: where they have to sit and say this black girl
Speaker 1: understands something technologically that I don't. She is so clearly
Speaker 1: obviously above me in this, and that's something that they've
Speaker 1: been getting. I've been seeing people get uncomfortable with, like
Speaker 1: they refused to say, you know what, I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: understand this, but I understand value. They're like there's a
Speaker 1: game where they're like, how like and it's multiple things happening,
Speaker 1: is the race and the gender. And they're sitting here like,
Speaker 1: all right, well explain this. Then Bill starts talking and
Speaker 1: I'm saying and I'm like, why are you asking Bill?
Speaker 1: Bill is about to say ship even more technical to me,
Speaker 1: I barely understand the academs, Bill saying. Bill is talking
Speaker 1: about all these I p X thing seven seven seven standards,
Speaker 1: all this different ship, talk about all this stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't get it. I just learned what the fiber pop
Speaker 1: was like. And I'm sitting there like, don't ask him this,
Speaker 1: But they're still trying because they're seeing him. They seeing
Speaker 1: the brother. Oh, and I'm like, if your due diligence
Speaker 1: instead of it to understand like the map the thirty
Speaker 1: to forty trillion dollar industry that we're a first mover in,
Speaker 1: specifically with smart city platforms. If you're due diligence is
Speaker 1: not to go ahead and talk to the people who
Speaker 1: were delivering value do but your due diligence is to
Speaker 1: try to be on our level with the technology. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to I'm gonna have the way for you
Speaker 1: to go to the ride before you before you can
Speaker 1: give me money. And so on one hand, we're now
Speaker 1: thinking so big, like playing this out right. If I
Speaker 1: tell you dead ass my solution. I have a smart
Speaker 1: paper that's like that has the ubiquity of a phone.
Speaker 1: Anywhere that there's ground, I can install it the same
Speaker 1: way a smart phone delivers power, communications and data processing
Speaker 1: to applications. That's what my paper does. I have an
Speaker 1: edge cloud that uses AI and machine learning the same
Speaker 1: way your operating system uses EDGE uses AI machine learning
Speaker 1: to run your apps. Every app that you can imagine,
Speaker 1: and the unprecedented, unimaginable value of your phone is what
Speaker 1: my platform enables. They also now have to sit here
Speaker 1: and say it's beyond thinking big. We have to then
Speaker 1: ask ourselves, are the people who are hearing this ready
Speaker 1: to have black people, yeah, have that kind of power?
Speaker 1: T B D T t B D on that and
Speaker 1: like and the way the way I've seen it, I
Speaker 1: think is like we as a community can only do
Speaker 1: so much though we only have so many dollars for
Speaker 1: these really big ideas we've we've got to figure out
Speaker 1: how we tap into the non black dollars to to
Speaker 1: finance the ideas that are going to disrupt everything in
Speaker 1: the entire world. Um and it's it's listen, it's it's
Speaker 1: not that it's not possible. So I do think we
Speaker 1: need to think big. But it is a harder sell
Speaker 1: because even if you have all the proof points, now,
Speaker 1: their issue is there, there's there's sometimes there's some discomfort,
Speaker 1: not always to some of the people we've been playing with.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a two sided street. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I want to talk about like more of your mentality
Speaker 1: because some people will look at you as I could
Speaker 1: never do, and but they forget that you wake up
Speaker 1: every day just like they did, and you know there
Speaker 1: was a day where you weren't doing this and you
Speaker 1: got on the journey to doing it and now today
Speaker 1: you are who you are and the next year you'll
Speaker 1: be even bigger. Talk to me about one of those
Speaker 1: early leaps of faith that you took as an innovator
Speaker 1: that could have been really humbling, Um, but it puts
Speaker 1: you on the path like an early just completely for
Speaker 1: faith that I don't know if it's gonna work, but
Speaker 1: I'm taking a shot on me. Yeah. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: there's so there. I feel like a big part of
Speaker 1: the job is constantly doing risk analyses on like you know,
Speaker 1: in real time and making decisions that are all incredibly
Speaker 1: risky in some way. Um, I think, I mean just
Speaker 1: within the because it's coming up in the anniversary. I
Speaker 1: remember making the decision to shut down the office and
Speaker 1: become a remote working team despite the fact that part
Speaker 1: of our solution is hardware and people couldn't go in
Speaker 1: and do hardware. But when when COVID was kind of
Speaker 1: coming in, Um, it was I think March nine, I've
Speaker 1: gone my last business trip and I was actually going
Speaker 1: to Toronto to uh to go and take a look
Speaker 1: at Sidewalk Labs, and that's when I was just like,
Speaker 1: no shade, but I was like, oh, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Jankie. I was like yeah, I said at Google,
Speaker 1: come find me like whatever, like, but I looked and
Speaker 1: I was like all right, Like I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is cool. Um, we should work together like you
Speaker 1: have better stuff. But anyway, we don't wherever that is.
Speaker 1: So on the way back and notice that no one
Speaker 1: was on any planes, March tenth comes and uh, the mayor,
Speaker 1: the Blasio says, if you can, you should, you know,
Speaker 1: work from home. And I immediately had to think, okay,
Speaker 1: what to do, and I had to I had to
Speaker 1: act quickly, and I felt really you know, ultimately in
Speaker 1: that moment, I made the decision sent an email, Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: gather what you need to gather today because March eleventh
Speaker 1: is the last day. I'm not no one's in March.
Speaker 1: No one's in UM. And it ended up be the
Speaker 1: last time that most people ended up going to our
Speaker 1: Harlem hq UM. And so that that was a risk
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons, because we didn't know a
Speaker 1: lot about the pandemic. We didn't know a lot about
Speaker 1: the virus UM. You know, we had just launched into
Speaker 1: some new KPI s that we were just doing okay
Speaker 1: on if I'm being honest, Um, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if these people, as my dad would say, are
Speaker 1: just traded on you know, on e trade or whatever
Speaker 1: when no one's there, like you don't know. Like I
Speaker 1: used to think that you had to be in the
Speaker 1: office in Harlem to get the vibe and get things done.
Speaker 1: And yet I had to immediately say I'm still go
Speaker 1: and pay you, but but go ahead and do whatever
Speaker 1: and all these different things, um, and like that was
Speaker 1: a risk that and I had to be very clear.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people who were slow
Speaker 1: to make the move for the health of their their people. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean I think in those moments. I think
Speaker 1: back to track. So I was really big in track
Speaker 1: in high school, one to four hundred long jump in
Speaker 1: the in the races that were kind of more like
Speaker 1: local regional. I was the ones and twos. I could
Speaker 1: kill it as soon as we started racing against like
Speaker 1: the serious Jamaicans. I was mostly just a four runner,
Speaker 1: like four hundred meter you know what I'm saying. I'm Nigerian,
Speaker 1: Like that's where we at, Like that's where we could
Speaker 1: kill it. I was, I'm fast, I'm just not Jamaican fast.
Speaker 1: They're just yeah, I know where I'm at, listen, local level.
Speaker 1: I'm about to kill it. As soon as I see
Speaker 1: some bombs let's stuff, I'm like, all right, I cool,
Speaker 1: I let me go to a four hundre meter. So
Speaker 1: uh And but so much of so much of how
Speaker 1: I think about these things kind of applies to different
Speaker 1: times when I played different sports. And you know, the
Speaker 1: thing about track was the reason why you practice was
Speaker 1: not so that you would have your perfect race the
Speaker 1: day of the race. It's so that your worst day
Speaker 1: still beat everybody else. Like it wasn't like okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make sure I get this start so that
Speaker 1: I hope that I get it. It's like even if
Speaker 1: I started ship, like I'm just even if this is
Speaker 1: my worst time, my worst time is still gonna smoke y'll.
Speaker 1: And I feel so much of the moments like even
Speaker 1: the last year I had been training for them. I
Speaker 1: have been training for innovation and progress during times of
Speaker 1: uncertainty for the last like eight or nine years, so
Speaker 1: that when it came to the moment within the layer
Speaker 1: and kind of of COVID, I was just like, all right,
Speaker 1: uncertainty what's new. I'm a black female founder. Let's I
Speaker 1: gotta move. I gotta do this, well, I gotta do that. Oh,
Speaker 1: how many deals fell through? We had like seven, like
Speaker 1: three or four million dollars pilot deals. Resorts fell through
Speaker 1: all right, like what's new? Like? And so you know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it again from the perspective
Speaker 1: of being a founder of color Um and seeing, yes,
Speaker 1: lots of obstacles, but the opportunity. I felt it as
Speaker 1: if for most of my career I had been training
Speaker 1: with fifty pound weights, whereas like a lot of my
Speaker 1: white mountain white male peers especially, I've been training with
Speaker 1: ten pound weights. So yeah, they could run fast like
Speaker 1: it. It It all looked easier. But when COVID hit and
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds got thrown into our hands, who do
Speaker 1: you think is gonna do better? Who do you think's
Speaker 1: gonna like handle this? And so you know, those those
Speaker 1: little moments happened quite a bit. Um and I had
Speaker 1: to make a lot of quick decisions to keep my
Speaker 1: team paid to be in a position we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to furlew anyone to make a decision how we could grow.
Speaker 1: And um, I'm not going to say that I had
Speaker 1: some master strategy around it other than to lead with honesty,
Speaker 1: lead with authenticity, and be very contextual, so creating space
Speaker 1: for humanity and aligning everyone's personal experience of what we
Speaker 1: were doing. But um, I feel like very fortunately a
Speaker 1: lot of the risks paid off because we're in a
Speaker 1: really good position right now and still still a hard,
Speaker 1: uphill battle, but very very exciting. There's some really good
Speaker 1: lessons in there. So, I mean, you talked about COVID
Speaker 1: and UM and to be supersensitive to what people are
Speaker 1: going through personally, but how how much has COVID created
Speaker 1: opportunity for black people in industries like sustainability? Like has
Speaker 1: it created more space for us? Like what are the
Speaker 1: benefits you know, I use that word very sensitively, but
Speaker 1: what are the benefits that COVID has created for us
Speaker 1: in the industries like this? Well, first of all, its
Speaker 1: might say you're very good at what you do, this
Speaker 1: is the best you are, will go ahead, man ship
Speaker 1: that's that you need to you need to show you know,
Speaker 1: you be on TV like you'd be like, oh, but
Speaker 1: like I don't know what this is, but there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of fools who are not cutting it. When you
Speaker 1: do it just pointed out that can we make that happen? Y'all, Um,
Speaker 1: thank you, that's a really uh okay. Last year for me,
Speaker 1: it felt more just like an additional layer of fire.
Speaker 1: So first there was a period I think from May
Speaker 1: to September, end of May, end of May going definitely
Speaker 1: than there was like Juneteenth and July. But I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of May through July when it was just like
Speaker 1: I think almost every black person and it was like
Speaker 1: we are tired, and just everyone gets away from us,
Speaker 1: like like leave us alone. And so it felt more
Speaker 1: just about I think self like trying to figure out
Speaker 1: self care, trying to figure out what kind of catharsisy
Speaker 1: would need, which I think was important because we were
Speaker 1: going through a lot. Our families are getting hit more,
Speaker 1: um are we It felt very real and I used
Speaker 1: it as a fire for myself because I knew, okay
Speaker 1: as a black person and look at many more people
Speaker 1: who look like me are getting this. Um. No one
Speaker 1: in my on my side of the family, but my
Speaker 1: fiance side of the family being in the South, you know,
Speaker 1: working in different jobs where they can't stay home, a
Speaker 1: lot of them got it. Um. You know that that's
Speaker 1: just straight up what it what it is. Um. So
Speaker 1: it felt like a fire for me personally to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that were cracks now became
Speaker 1: valleys right in terms of the problems like COVID, just
Speaker 1: like it exasperated everything. What can we do? Like it
Speaker 1: broke my heart that like even in Poughkeepsie a quarter
Speaker 1: of the kids could not continue to go to school
Speaker 1: because they didn't have access to internet, and all those
Speaker 1: kids were black, like it what there's like there's a
Speaker 1: north side and there's a south side, and the north
Speaker 1: side kids are the one's experienced this. So this is
Speaker 1: like these kids are dropping out like this was straight
Speaker 1: up season four of the wire Ship happening, like no exaggeration. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that was that was a push there. I
Speaker 1: think more macro now has become into and and there's
Speaker 1: like a sense of some stability. I say that very
Speaker 1: cautiously to me. The opportunity is to go back to
Speaker 1: the definition of entrepreneurship. In my opinion, entrepreneurship is um
Speaker 1: and this I did not like someone people say this,
Speaker 1: but I agree this is also my opinion. I should
Speaker 1: say that entrepreneurship is problem solving without regard for resource.
Speaker 1: That's all it is. At your core. The first problem
Speaker 1: that you articulate to solve most authentically is usually your problem.
Speaker 1: And so like you know, I say the joke, but
Speaker 1: it's a fact. Like Mark Zuckerber couldn't get a D
Speaker 1: so that's what's his problem, and look what he did.
Speaker 1: Like and again, it started as one way and then
Speaker 1: it evolved. I had a problem and I expanded into
Speaker 1: an infrastructure in a play a company. Um. And so
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people now, once you've found
Speaker 1: a way to stabilize and kind of work with this
Speaker 1: new normal, you gotta ask yourself are you going to
Speaker 1: take it? Are you gonna make it? Like? Are you
Speaker 1: is this? Is this the norm? Is this the world
Speaker 1: you want to accept? Or do you want to see
Speaker 1: what you can do? Because yeah, the reality situation is
Speaker 1: we can't hope for some like saving grace solution from
Speaker 1: the top down. We shouldn't. We shouldn't. There's not even
Speaker 1: there's no fun in that either. And so I do
Speaker 1: think there's an opportunity because oftentimes if you want to
Speaker 1: design something well, you need to design for the extremes.
Speaker 1: And if black people have experienced the extremes of the
Speaker 1: last twelve months, we are in the best position to
Speaker 1: design something that's gonna make the lives better, not just
Speaker 1: for us but for everybody. Um. But the resources have
Speaker 1: to get there too, Like there are a lot of
Speaker 1: things that are getting funded that are interesting since we're
Speaker 1: still all sitting in our houses waiting for vaccines. Like
Speaker 1: I know, I know black chemists. I had ideas on
Speaker 1: how to improve the testing situation, but they're in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: How they going to get any money? Um? But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so that's my perspective. I think on the opportunity
Speaker 1: that we have, so to speak. There's a quote I
Speaker 1: found from you and says, any fully banked solution needs
Speaker 1: to truly contemplate the expected response of governments and finance institutions,
Speaker 1: including so that this work. This can work for communities
Speaker 1: that don't have the capital um. And when you said that,
Speaker 1: you were talking about the industry and energy industry, But
Speaker 1: I see impacts in other industries where we try to
Speaker 1: make massive disruptions, right, and so how much should entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: be thinking about policy and how do we get legislators
Speaker 1: and bureaucrats to more fully embrace the entrepreneurial spirit. Two
Speaker 1: tough questions. Um, well second one is tough. First one
Speaker 1: not super crazy, So I'll start there. Um. The more
Speaker 1: dynamic and complicated the problem, usually the more you're going
Speaker 1: to see that it's not just some new technological or
Speaker 1: business model innovation. You are going to need to think
Speaker 1: through the role that the government, policy and the people
Speaker 1: who are financing this like play. So it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a triangle that you're not you need to be
Speaker 1: aware of. Um. Sometimes you can streamline things to straight
Speaker 1: kind of B two C and go from there. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then and and build. But you know a lot
Speaker 1: of our infrastructure is as a public service, right, so
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of like a tragedy of the
Speaker 1: commons that makes things complicated. Um. It doesn't mean it's critical,
Speaker 1: but if you're doing something that impacts the public good,
Speaker 1: you know, take Airbnb, take you know, like Uber, After
Speaker 1: a while you will be even if you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we just did what we had to do, someone's gonna
Speaker 1: catch up to you and say, well, you don't ask permission,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna start with your ship. Like so you know,
Speaker 1: there needs to be an awareness of it, but that
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with that happening that way to get
Speaker 1: in however you're gonna get in, um, you know for us,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's energy or broader infrastructure, because we're
Speaker 1: dealing with things that also have high um that can
Speaker 1: be highly dangerous. That's part of why we have to
Speaker 1: just move at a certain pace because I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: put you know, twelve kV in the ground under Grandma
Speaker 1: and just say, well, you know, okay, like like that's
Speaker 1: not what like like that's why like i gotta I
Speaker 1: gotta crawl because I'm dealing with power, uh and like
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be out here with anyone's life
Speaker 1: on my conscious because I you know, you know, move
Speaker 1: fast and break things like it's not that's not that's
Speaker 1: not it what that that's not it? Like there's life
Speaker 1: or death consequences. Which there's a whole argument we made
Speaker 1: that even the things that didn't seem as dangerous, like
Speaker 1: social media probably you know, it would have been helpful
Speaker 1: they thought about it just a little bit. Um you know,
Speaker 1: now we're seeing it exactly right now now on the
Speaker 1: other side of like how you get the governments to
Speaker 1: play and even the financiers who are often very risk averse,
Speaker 1: or like this is what works, we just want to
Speaker 1: do this. I can just share what we've been trying
Speaker 1: to do. UM, so one you know, has been aligning
Speaker 1: what we're doing not with why we think it's cool,
Speaker 1: but why it matters to them. Most governments care about
Speaker 1: two things, political optics and financial efficiency. So if you
Speaker 1: can present it in something in a way that's going
Speaker 1: to make them look good for their political goals, and
Speaker 1: do so in a way that does either doesn't cost
Speaker 1: them any money or um cost them less money than
Speaker 1: what they would have spent, and you're gonna get in there,
Speaker 1: usually for some sort of pilot or something, because why
Speaker 1: not once they've established that they care about the third
Speaker 1: big thing, which is time to deploy, because they you know,
Speaker 1: people only have so long that they're in office, and
Speaker 1: so they want to be able to brag on that
Speaker 1: for as long as they can, and you have so
Speaker 1: they want to make sure you can move quickly, and
Speaker 1: that's that's tough. But operationalizing around that UM is a
Speaker 1: big deal. It's it's part of the reason why we
Speaker 1: think time to deploy is so massive for our platform.
Speaker 1: The faster, you know, we want to get to the
Speaker 1: point where we can get infrastructure solutions deployed in communities
Speaker 1: in three to six weeks. It normally takes nine months,
Speaker 1: all right. So that's that's a massive thing, so that
Speaker 1: people can kind of get that that rush around it. UM.
Speaker 1: And then on the financing side, Honestly, as soon as
Speaker 1: you are showing that you can make money, they'll come.
Speaker 1: They're not dying driven like they just they're there. They
Speaker 1: they just oh, you make the money, all right, let
Speaker 1: me let me, let me give you some money to
Speaker 1: make money. That's that's just what it is. UM. You
Speaker 1: talk a lot about being UM or how being a
Speaker 1: black woman doing this work, black woman in Harlem, you know, specifically,
Speaker 1: is an asset to an industry like this, even when
Speaker 1: that they may not realize is an asset to the
Speaker 1: industry like this. And UM that we can do more
Speaker 1: than people might want to. Let us let on that
Speaker 1: we can do. UM, what is it that we uniquely
Speaker 1: bring to industries that we are not overrepresented in value wise?
Speaker 1: If we were to lean into our perspective all define
Speaker 1: our magic for us, like you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: I mean, so all I can say is just my
Speaker 1: personal experience, I spent a lot of my career wondering
Speaker 1: why me, or thinking, of course not me. I assumed
Speaker 1: that there were people who are better suited to be
Speaker 1: doing I'm doing right now, and it took a long
Speaker 1: time for me to get to the point in realizing
Speaker 1: that that that couldn't have been farther from the case. Um,
Speaker 1: there are things that are coming up now, like when
Speaker 1: we go deep into competitive analysis and let me look
Speaker 1: at you know, why is it that we can deliver
Speaker 1: something that Cisco couldn't, The Nokia couldn't, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the Google couldn't. Like I say their names low because
Speaker 1: like it's kind of wild, right, Like these guys are
Speaker 1: not they know, they're not slouches. And when you look
Speaker 1: at the things that differentiate how I came to this
Speaker 1: point from how they came to the point, you realize
Speaker 1: that so many things that makes you who you are
Speaker 1: and gave you that perspective are exactly the missing piece,
Speaker 1: because let's face it, we wouldn't be living in a
Speaker 1: world where Texas could have happened that they had it
Speaker 1: and they had it covered. Um. And so for me,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's little things like our ability to
Speaker 1: kind of be this missing link between the smart in
Speaker 1: the smart city. If you, if you're upbringing was such
Speaker 1: that you took the grid and power for granted, you
Speaker 1: would start innovating from the point of assuming that that
Speaker 1: was fine, and he would start innovating on top of that.
Speaker 1: Just the fact that I was coming from the perspective
Speaker 1: of like, no, it's not because I'm thinking about my
Speaker 1: own family automatically gave us a competitive advantage because I
Speaker 1: was thinking about a system that they couldn't even fathom,
Speaker 1: didn't wouldn't exist. But I was like, no, this is
Speaker 1: JANKI because you can't scale like but that was only
Speaker 1: me thinking that now to oh and right now, everyone's
Speaker 1: funny talking about the the infrastructure around transmission lines. I
Speaker 1: was saying that to CEOs and chairmans of utilities three
Speaker 1: years ago. Why because like, we had the experience of
Speaker 1: trying to scale a speed bum and integrate into the
Speaker 1: grid and it didn't work. It didn't make any sense,
Speaker 1: and it was the fault of the grid. And off
Speaker 1: the record, not off the record for you, but like
Speaker 1: these people said, hey, Jess, off the record, yeah, we
Speaker 1: know this is always the thing that you know works,
Speaker 1: So we didn't invest any R and D in it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we know this is bad. And that was
Speaker 1: back in and I was like, okay, so now and
Speaker 1: now now I for real, No, something's up. Um. When
Speaker 1: we when we look at from a platform perspective, the
Speaker 1: things that we're doing to drive adoption, you know, it's
Speaker 1: really understanding engagement. Knowing that people would be able to
Speaker 1: understand a whole new type of energy if I packaged
Speaker 1: it in a soccer ball. It's why our platform is
Speaker 1: going to be accepted and scaled and understood in a
Speaker 1: way that all these other platforms couldn't. And so all
Speaker 1: of that, you know, it's it's not just about being like,
Speaker 1: you know, like black or whatever, as much as it's
Speaker 1: about saying, who are you and what's the life that
Speaker 1: you have lived? Um? And if everybody in the room
Speaker 1: right now has basically had the same life, just by
Speaker 1: the fact that you are leaning into who what makes
Speaker 1: you different? That's most likely if we're still sitting here one,
Speaker 1: that's probably the missing piece. That's probably the thing that
Speaker 1: that that we've been waiting for. Um. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's why this is exciting. We've been left out for
Speaker 1: so long, right, Like it's it's almost like they're trying
Speaker 1: to cook something in the kitchen. They ain't got no butter,
Speaker 1: and we out here just buttery, just buttery as hell,
Speaker 1: just like just sitting here, like all right. And then
Speaker 1: we come in there and they're like, all right, we
Speaker 1: got this vanilla, we got this, and you're like, but
Speaker 1: do you have the butter? And now something that would
Speaker 1: be as like hard of the board is delicious shortbread.
Speaker 1: That That's how I feel I feel like, I feel
Speaker 1: like we we have an often ignored experience that is
Speaker 1: the missing ingredient and what we need for the world
Speaker 1: that we all want. Jessica Matthews friend ending, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me. Thank you, this is awesome.
Speaker 1: Black Tech Green Money is a production of Black the
Speaker 1: Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Networking I Heart Media.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Morgan Dubon and me Well Lucas. Additional
Speaker 1: production support by Love Beach and Raven Nearport. Special thank
Speaker 1: you to Michael David's since the car savan Yan you
Speaker 1: know like the wine. Yes, that's his real name. Learn
Speaker 1: more about my guests and other tech dis represent innovators
Speaker 1: at afro tech dot com. Go get your money. He's
Speaker 1: in love one