Speaker 1: Afro Tech San Francisco, California. The Shana Mirror is the
Speaker 1: founder and CEO at Maven, a distribution technology company focused
Speaker 1: on the hair extension market, partnering with stylists who served
Speaker 1: as the salesforce. He's on the main stage being interviewed
Speaker 1: by Jeff Johnson discussing the wealth opportunity black puticians were
Speaker 1: missing out on by not taking advantage of their supply chain.
Speaker 1: But I saw specifically in the in the hair extension world,
Speaker 1: and which came to me via family member who is
Speaker 1: a hair stylist, asked me if I could get her
Speaker 1: some hair extensions from China, and I did. Um, And
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, just because I wanted to make
Speaker 1: some money, I'm selling hair out the trunk of the
Speaker 1: car to all these hair salons. Um. And what struck
Speaker 1: me was that we're buying like nine billion dollars of
Speaker 1: hair products, um, but we don't sell any of it
Speaker 1: right literally. Uh. The customers that go across the street
Speaker 1: to the Korean in beauty supply store by the products
Speaker 1: and then come across the street bring it to the salon.
Speaker 1: So you have all this throughput of all of this
Speaker 1: you know, uh. Um, this commerce going through these salons
Speaker 1: but not capturing any of that revenue UM. And that
Speaker 1: is fundamentally what I wanted to change. I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about hair extensions before I got into this business.
Speaker 1: To me, it was about the distribution of these products
Speaker 1: and who is getting what proportion of the margin. And
Speaker 1: let's talk about that a little bit, because because part
Speaker 1: of your business model wasn't just about you making money,
Speaker 1: you one had a value proposition for hairstyle is and
Speaker 1: two had a model for creating wealth not just for you,
Speaker 1: but for a nation of people who were being left
Speaker 1: out of the equation. Why was that important for you?
Speaker 1: And then what was the process of ensuring that? Not
Speaker 1: on the business model was tight, but you literally were
Speaker 1: ensuring a shift in wealth creation for people who performed
Speaker 1: had no access. I mean fundamentally, what I saw and
Speaker 1: what I see in hair stylus and I see in
Speaker 1: hair salons UM is power and influence. I see power
Speaker 1: and influence in hair stylus. They are UM. They're influencing
Speaker 1: on a daily basis billions of dollars of purchasing decisions
Speaker 1: for what people are gonna buy UM and and their
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial I'm an entrepreneur um. I always want to support that,
Speaker 1: and so you know, when I saw that I could
Speaker 1: both create a business that both empowered other entrepreneurs in
Speaker 1: my community and be a big gas business, that's what
Speaker 1: drew me into it. I'm with Lucas Mrs Black Tech,
Speaker 1: Green Money. I'm gonna introduce 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 your back, this podcast is for you. Charelle Dorsey
Speaker 1: is the founder and CEO of The Plug and subscription
Speaker 1: based digital news and insights platform covering the black innovation economy.
Speaker 1: Prior to launching The Plug, she was a marketing manager
Speaker 1: for companies like Uber and Google Fiber. I should read
Speaker 1: about how to monetize content and starting your entrepreneurial journey
Speaker 1: with a bit of tinkering and experimentation. A lot of
Speaker 1: times we all have this really great idea for what
Speaker 1: we know is going to be like a million to
Speaker 1: billion dollar business, and I think as well, culture really
Speaker 1: pushes you to say, go out in the world and
Speaker 1: create something significant, raise a ton of money to do it,
Speaker 1: and like that kind of seems you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a very romantic ideal. Um for me, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be solid in what it was that I was creating
Speaker 1: first and kind of working through you kind of mature
Speaker 1: your idea as well as you as a as a
Speaker 1: leader and as a practitioner. You're maturing as well and
Speaker 1: kind of responding to the initial hypotheses that you have
Speaker 1: about is are are people interested in this? And so
Speaker 1: by kind of creating the plug under the guys of Hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I've already kind of been freelancing and writing
Speaker 1: and sharing about what's taking shape them what we call
Speaker 1: the black tech ecosystem. Do people even want like a
Speaker 1: daily edition of my findings and learnings and folks that
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to as well as um sort of a
Speaker 1: one stop shop for their day of figuring out among
Speaker 1: all the other things that they're reading that are gonna
Speaker 1: center white guys and hoodies, do they actually want to
Speaker 1: see black and brown faces and voices as part of
Speaker 1: this entire narrative? And it turned out that yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of people were really interested, and so so that
Speaker 1: kind of like as you we talk a lot about aislestones,
Speaker 1: particularly in tech or particularly in the space of building
Speaker 1: a company. UM. But that kind of initial testing, you know,
Speaker 1: phase is really what you're kind of prototyping. And Eric
Speaker 1: Reece says this a lot around the kind of lean
Speaker 1: startup methodology, like you're you're prototyping, you're testing. I think
Speaker 1: also it's a psychological trick, so that if you fail
Speaker 1: at it, you don't feel so correcting after her right now,
Speaker 1: I was just playing anyway, you know, And so it
Speaker 1: kind of it kind of deescalates some of the stress
Speaker 1: of feeling like you have to succeed versus this is
Speaker 1: an experiment. If it works, great, If it doesn't, all
Speaker 1: pivot and try something else. And so there's definitely been
Speaker 1: several different pivots around the way that we've delivered content,
Speaker 1: the way in which we've made assumptions about our audiences.
Speaker 1: And so for the most part, you know, going from
Speaker 1: the daily newsletter from for my part, it was just
Speaker 1: how do we stay consistent? Is there enough news and
Speaker 1: conversation happening to even do something Monday through Friday? Um?
Speaker 1: And that was kind of the first question, And the
Speaker 1: second question was are people ready for rigorous, data driven
Speaker 1: sort of journalism and news? Um? And I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those spaces where you can kind
Speaker 1: of have kind of more of just a very information
Speaker 1: purposes sort of environment, which I think is very significant
Speaker 1: to the ecosystem. I think that, um, a lot of
Speaker 1: folks do that well. Afrotech does that well. UM. And
Speaker 1: and then like, how do we differentiate ourselves as a
Speaker 1: media publication? And so for me, it was really leaning
Speaker 1: into the analytics of some of the reporting um, and
Speaker 1: then also wanting to tell a story that really responds
Speaker 1: to a question or a series of questions about what
Speaker 1: folks are building from a context of how does this,
Speaker 1: how does this fit in scope not just this one
Speaker 1: entrepreneur or this one opportunity to raise capital, but how
Speaker 1: does this fit into the larger picture about what's going
Speaker 1: on in the country, in the world in this particular frame.
Speaker 1: Even when we got into the paid membership component again,
Speaker 1: another opportunity to test for those who've been rocking with
Speaker 1: us for two three years, are they willing now to
Speaker 1: make an investment in having access to premium content? And
Speaker 1: and kind of so listening those folks early on so
Speaker 1: that when we were ready to launch, and even when
Speaker 1: I say ready, ready, wasn't complete tied up with the bow.
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, day one out the gate,
Speaker 1: people's accounts like weren't registering. You know, you're kind of
Speaker 1: just like all right, you know, but because they've been
Speaker 1: following the work for so long, it was like a
Speaker 1: quick nice email, hey chrel like something when all my
Speaker 1: password you know, like you know, get to what you
Speaker 1: can understand. There's a ton of grace there. And so
Speaker 1: I think through that entire process, will I also try
Speaker 1: to bring people along for the journey and the ride
Speaker 1: and trying to describe and demonstrate like here's what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: here's what's working, here's what's not really working, um, and
Speaker 1: just try to give myself grace in the process because
Speaker 1: it's just a process at the end of the day. Um.
Speaker 1: And and so yeah, that's that's kind of how I've
Speaker 1: thought about this the whole time. And that does not
Speaker 1: remove any stress, because you still want to have this
Speaker 1: tendency to want to deliver well and as best as possible.
Speaker 1: And they're just some things that are gonna be out
Speaker 1: of your control. There's some things you're just not going
Speaker 1: to know. And when you're first building your business sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just you and your WiFi, so you don't have
Speaker 1: a team to help create additional checks and balances or
Speaker 1: that you can lean on to do the work until
Speaker 1: you start to build up you know, those particular you
Speaker 1: know capacity opportunities. So you know, it's it's a journey.
Speaker 1: It's a journey. One of the things we talk about
Speaker 1: often is, and we mean black people, it's like we
Speaker 1: don't pigeon ourselves into like the diversity conversation of the
Speaker 1: minority types of conversations, and for instance, like at the conference,
Speaker 1: you won't see like panels on diversity per se, but
Speaker 1: there is a meaningful activity from black people in business
Speaker 1: at large and from startup creation, venture funding, innovation and
Speaker 1: more so we're out here. Talk to me about your
Speaker 1: take on the need for a broader narrative other than
Speaker 1: just you know, here's the diversity metrics, etcetera. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's great and very commendable
Speaker 1: that that's not the focus, because I think everyone could
Speaker 1: has to be exhausted with the diversity conversation. And that's
Speaker 1: not to negate the work and the practitioners that are
Speaker 1: in the space. It's very much needed. But I think
Speaker 1: in terms of when we're getting together and we're talking
Speaker 1: about next generation technology, next generation leadership, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about the kinds of challenges that we have to solve,
Speaker 1: particularly for our communities. We can't stay stuck on the
Speaker 1: trauma because it is traumatic. It's hard to keep telling
Speaker 1: people I'm human and I exist, and I'm smart and
Speaker 1: I have I come from a family that that has
Speaker 1: love in it, or I come from you know, a
Speaker 1: community that you know has invested everything they couldn't into
Speaker 1: getting me to this point, Like it's it's it's frustrating
Speaker 1: to write, like it's really frustrating to continue to have
Speaker 1: to define your humanity for people who clearly if you
Speaker 1: don't get it by now in it's kind of like
Speaker 1: you're not that interested. And we shouldn't have to continue
Speaker 1: to do that emotional labor, especially not with each other. Right,
Speaker 1: I think that there are definitely some critical conversations that
Speaker 1: we need to have and not just like the value
Speaker 1: of diversity, but how from a tactical perspective we can
Speaker 1: do better, Like, Hey, black men, if you see that
Speaker 1: everyone on this tech panel is just black men, and
Speaker 1: you haven't invited any women, or you haven't invited any
Speaker 1: trans women into the conversation like, that's kind of a
Speaker 1: check and balance you should probably think about. And I
Speaker 1: think we don't need to have a whole host of
Speaker 1: conversations about it. I think we need to be able
Speaker 1: to say it, iterate and move on um and some
Speaker 1: people need to process, and I think they're gonna be
Speaker 1: spaces for that. But any time that we get together,
Speaker 1: I feel like we should be thinking progressively. So alongside
Speaker 1: these personality driven store retelling thing that obviously has its place.
Speaker 1: Traditionally people will go to like the Census Bureau or
Speaker 1: Nielsen defined data on like black consumer habits or population makeups.
Speaker 1: What is the unique value that information coming from us,
Speaker 1: that that information comes from a source that is a
Speaker 1: member of these communities. That is the deepest question. Will
Speaker 1: um one that one that I'm sure has just a
Speaker 1: ton of different kind of responses. I think Number one,
Speaker 1: it speaks to the history of funding discrimination. Right. You
Speaker 1: can't go to any institution and not find a black
Speaker 1: PhD that has not tried to make the research and
Speaker 1: discovery of what's happening in terms of black innovation a
Speaker 1: core part of their research and their work. But they
Speaker 1: did not get access to the funding that they needed
Speaker 1: because you have to prove to too many people that
Speaker 1: it matters, and a lot of people are like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you can get it, you know in the aggregate. You
Speaker 1: don't need it on a granular level. And so there
Speaker 1: are so many folks that I've had the privilege of
Speaker 1: talking to who were all centered around this idea of
Speaker 1: better and stronger data collection. And when it does come
Speaker 1: from your community, it makes a core difference in the
Speaker 1: way that you look at it, because numbers can just
Speaker 1: look like numbers to anyone, right, we we quote numbers
Speaker 1: all the time. We don't really know how the methodology
Speaker 1: was was extracted, you know. I think it's it's the
Speaker 1: challenge with the p p P program too. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that on the onset it looked like, oh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: save small businesses, but we didn't dive into well, which
Speaker 1: zip codes are we serving, you know, which particular communities
Speaker 1: are in a rule, who actually listen those communities? And
Speaker 1: so then you see that what ent of most p
Speaker 1: p P lending went to majority white businesses or something
Speaker 1: like that, right, and a lot of those being affluent
Speaker 1: businesses that were not small businesses. So when it comes
Speaker 1: from us, UM, ideally right for for folks who who
Speaker 1: have some kind of understanding of doing UM sociology rooted
Speaker 1: work around black communities. When it comes from us, we're
Speaker 1: leading with that in mind, even in the way in
Speaker 1: which we interview people, even in the way in which
Speaker 1: we build relationships with communities. UM. And so I I think,
Speaker 1: of course that again that the response really warnants a
Speaker 1: look at we traditionally haven't had the resources to do
Speaker 1: our own research, and we traditionally haven't had the backing
Speaker 1: of institutions that trust us to do our own research
Speaker 1: in our own work. So yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a challenge, UM, when you are deep into the
Speaker 1: numbers on a lot of these things. And I remember
Speaker 1: UM hearing an interview I don't remember who gave the interview,
Speaker 1: but they asked a black woman who raised over a
Speaker 1: million dollars, you know, you're one of the you know,
Speaker 1: less than ten black women who have raised over my knowledge,
Speaker 1: and she was like, no, there's dozens of black women
Speaker 1: who have raised over a million hours. But one of
Speaker 1: the issues with that is we don't always get that
Speaker 1: kind of data in mainstream news. So talk to me
Speaker 1: about what are like the trends that you see regards
Speaker 1: to black people in their ability to be successful in technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, Um, I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of quiet work. And I can
Speaker 1: understand because to really be great at what you do
Speaker 1: and to really be invested in what you do, you
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily I mean, like all of the incredible technologies
Speaker 1: that I know that are building really dope ship. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, they they don't have social media profiles, you know,
Speaker 1: like they're not trying to get famous. They're too busy
Speaker 1: being nerds, you know what I'm saying. Like they're like
Speaker 1: building three D models on the weekends and like teaching
Speaker 1: themselves machine learning and creating deep fakes just for fun.
Speaker 1: Um and and you you'll see that lot with a
Speaker 1: lot of computer scientists. Like they just don't have those profiles.
Speaker 1: I mean, they may have what they need for work purposes,
Speaker 1: but there's not a ton of investment in these things
Speaker 1: because they're invested in the actual learning of the technology.
Speaker 1: And even though we see less representation in comparison to
Speaker 1: white populations, at the end of the day, like there
Speaker 1: are people there that exist in these spaces that are
Speaker 1: doing well, of course there has to be some infrastructure
Speaker 1: changes around when do these folks get promoted? Right? You
Speaker 1: have the CEO of of Zoos who just you know,
Speaker 1: was kind of the face of this initiative around Amazon
Speaker 1: purchasing the company for over one billion dollars, And like,
Speaker 1: my question is, like, when's the next black woman of
Speaker 1: a tech company who is going to be leading a
Speaker 1: billion dollar sale? Right? I mean, we know Stacy Brown,
Speaker 1: Philip hop from task Rabbit has recently stepped down after
Speaker 1: selling the company to Ikea, And so like, are we
Speaker 1: growing in that pipeline the next whomever? Right? Um? And
Speaker 1: so I think I think when it comes to that
Speaker 1: data conversation, because we traditionally haven't had the funding to
Speaker 1: do the extraction of that information, or we haven't even
Speaker 1: just in the newsroom, have put the resources forward to
Speaker 1: make that happen, we're gonna get a lot of like
Speaker 1: misused dirty data, you know, because if only we know
Speaker 1: of twenty seven black women that raise over a million dollars,
Speaker 1: that's all that we could count. But that doesn't that
Speaker 1: doesn't look historically, you know, beyond you know, beyond even
Speaker 1: just venture capital. Um, we're gonna get these faulty numbers
Speaker 1: that we quote and then we turn into like policy. Now,
Speaker 1: there's some great things that come out of it, right
Speaker 1: as this rush to urgency of like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: only tend black women have raised X y Z. Well,
Speaker 1: let's put some more money so that we can get
Speaker 1: more and like, okay, Like that's probably one of the
Speaker 1: positive outcomes. But at the same time, I think the
Speaker 1: greater question is how do we start to dock You meant,
Speaker 1: these successes wildly, widely and frequently, how do we make
Speaker 1: this a part of the work. And I mean that's
Speaker 1: honestly what we do at the plug is like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make this a part of our practice and
Speaker 1: our work in a substantive way. And this is also
Speaker 1: it has to be the work in the in the
Speaker 1: the mission as well. For all of these think tanks
Speaker 1: and all of these like Institute for Black Research, what
Speaker 1: have you, Like you have poverty institutes, which is interesting
Speaker 1: to me, but like who has like progress? I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there's an Institute of Progressive Policy, but but like
Speaker 1: when it comes to research on black and brown communities,
Speaker 1: there aren't as many people represented. Um, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if you listen to the NPR episode with economist Lisa D.
Speaker 1: Cook Like she's one of like I think less than
Speaker 1: ten black economists pH ds that are at institution. Oh,
Speaker 1: this has come out a couple of days ago. About
Speaker 1: the yes, I did see that. It was a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. And it's just like, you know, I
Speaker 1: follow a lot of Lisa's work, and it's like even
Speaker 1: before she could even complete what she was trying to accomplish,
Speaker 1: she had to kind of go back and redocument and
Speaker 1: understand in terms of history why patents fell off and
Speaker 1: sort of that kind of Jim Crow read all of
Speaker 1: these kind of narratives and historical domestic people didn't trust
Speaker 1: the government to protect them, regardless of why. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think that, like, imagine, imagine if there
Speaker 1: are fifty times more you know, Lisa D. Cooks working
Speaker 1: in institutions and bringing this research forward. And one of
Speaker 1: the most distinctive parts of that particular episode was Lisa's
Speaker 1: publishing of this particular research should have been completed within
Speaker 1: about a year or two, and because of how systemic
Speaker 1: racism works, literally it took her I think it's said
Speaker 1: like five, six or seven years because she was dealing
Speaker 1: with all the bus around, like folks didn't want to
Speaker 1: see this stuff come to light. So even just getting
Speaker 1: basic research with the data, like sometimes the data it
Speaker 1: doesn't even matter if you've collected it well or not.
Speaker 1: The reality is like there's still are kind of these roadblocks,
Speaker 1: especially because and and why it's so significant is because
Speaker 1: you know, once this stuff is published, it's transformative, right,
Speaker 1: and like then people have to really like pay attention.
Speaker 1: How how do we get almost anything done in the
Speaker 1: last five years, particularly it pertains to black tech ecosystem
Speaker 1: is because of having to publish research to prove to
Speaker 1: the powers that be that we have been disenfranchised, we
Speaker 1: have been underfunded, we've been discriminated against. We constantly have
Speaker 1: to prove our our humanity try but you know, but
Speaker 1: like but like that's the name of the game. And
Speaker 1: it goes back to to Tony Morrison's whole thing on
Speaker 1: like the very nature of racism is distraction, Like it's
Speaker 1: if it takes you seven years to get this work
Speaker 1: done to start changing patent policies for the us UM
Speaker 1: House of Business and Business and their last their last
Speaker 1: hearing on why we need to collect data and provide
Speaker 1: more resources to black owned businesses seven years. Imagine if two,
Speaker 1: if if five years ago that was done, we could
Speaker 1: have been had this conversation, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So so I think about UM. Last year at the conference,
Speaker 1: I talked to Charles Hudson, who was a venture capitalist.
Speaker 1: I think you said, uh, precursors, And I asked Morgan
Speaker 1: the same question you know about. It was about when
Speaker 1: you're at the only one in the room. So when
Speaker 1: you go through a conference that's not like afro tech,
Speaker 1: but when you are a VC like in Charles's position,
Speaker 1: and you go to any other conference and you're like
Speaker 1: the only black VC in the room, anybody who's black
Speaker 1: that's there wants to come see you because you're the
Speaker 1: only one, and they like they're gonna get their plight right.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder, what did you see that's encouraging
Speaker 1: about the numbers of black venture capitalists who have more
Speaker 1: ability who are number one getting the jobs, but number
Speaker 1: two have more ability to fund companies from communities that
Speaker 1: look like ours. So what's encouraging about our trajectory? If
Speaker 1: there's anything encouraging about it to you? Honestly, that's what
Speaker 1: attracts me. To this space because it gives me hope.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like an amid all the tragedy, and
Speaker 1: you alluded to this earlier to Will, just like there's
Speaker 1: so much happening, there's so much friction intention there's so
Speaker 1: much tragedy and death, and you know, it's like you
Speaker 1: grow up with the stories of my grandfather's from Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 1: He left when he was thirteen. He didn't go back
Speaker 1: to visit until maybe his eighties, and that was at
Speaker 1: the behest of like my dying um great aunt. And
Speaker 1: he doesn't talk about it. He doesn't talk about what
Speaker 1: it was like to grow up in an environment that
Speaker 1: was violent and that you know, bombed a church be
Speaker 1: four little black girls. You know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: like when you grow up with that kind of tragedy
Speaker 1: and those kind of stories and in the struggle and
Speaker 1: the books and the Baldwins and the Angelus, you know
Speaker 1: on your bookshelf, you you know what kind of a
Speaker 1: resilient space and and um foundation you have, but you're
Speaker 1: always hyper aware that struggle is imminent right especially in
Speaker 1: this country. And so for me, I mean, like I
Speaker 1: learned coding and things like that in high school in
Speaker 1: Seattle from black women engineers and my cousins who went
Speaker 1: to more House and and Clark and Spellman and you know,
Speaker 1: will come home and you know, they bought their first
Speaker 1: properties at nineteen and we're talking about wealth building and
Speaker 1: and they were black as hell, you know, and they
Speaker 1: were fly and you know. And I'd go to Microsoft
Speaker 1: during the summers and work in high school as an intern.
Speaker 1: And it was just like I wanted to be in
Speaker 1: those environments, but I also wanted to fully be myself
Speaker 1: like I saw my cousins being. And so when I
Speaker 1: when I see the progression of even if you're the
Speaker 1: only person in the room like that, visibility matters, and
Speaker 1: you still have to keep opening more doors and training
Speaker 1: up folks as well to exist in those rooms. So
Speaker 1: it gives me a sense of hope, honestly, Um, every
Speaker 1: little inch that we move forward and gives me a
Speaker 1: greater sense of hope. And I'll tell you what matters
Speaker 1: more to me, Will, is that we are starting our
Speaker 1: own things and that we are not necessarily asking for
Speaker 1: permission in the ways that we used to. Um. I know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fodder around Black Wall Street and
Speaker 1: all these kinds of things, and I think it's great.
Speaker 1: I think that the vast majority of us will have
Speaker 1: to work for some of these companies that traditionally have
Speaker 1: not been kind to to group underrepresented group. That's just
Speaker 1: the reality that everyone's gonna be a full time entrepreneur
Speaker 1: building a multimillion dollar company. But if we can also
Speaker 1: build strong CEOs and practitioners that can build multimillion dollar companies,
Speaker 1: then I don't have to tell my little cousin to
Speaker 1: go once he finishes his education, that you have to
Speaker 1: go to one of these tech companies, and here's all
Speaker 1: the ways you can finesse getting a job there. I
Speaker 1: can say, you know what, there's this venture firm that
Speaker 1: was started by a black or brown person, you know,
Speaker 1: Or here was this company that was started by a
Speaker 1: black or brown person, and you can go work for
Speaker 1: them and you don't have to go through all the
Speaker 1: hoops in order to get that dollar. Right Like, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I'm not asking for y'all
Speaker 1: to save me, right like I'm gonna save myself. Your
Speaker 1: brother's proof. You don't have to wait till you get
Speaker 1: a million daily page views, have a hundred thousand, nine
Speaker 1: g followers or celebrity endorsement before you can start charging
Speaker 1: for the value you provide. The plug is premium content
Speaker 1: behind the paywall, data insights and studies on the black
Speaker 1: innovation economy that you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
Speaker 1: A lot of companies you might admire make no real money.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be this way. Real Doors speaks
Speaker 1: on it. Number one, I think folks are on information overload.
Speaker 1: Um I felt like we even went from daily to weekly,
Speaker 1: you know, and just doing a deeper dive on a Monday, Like,
Speaker 1: here's how you can be smart for the week about
Speaker 1: what's going on. But I don't want to keep flooding
Speaker 1: your inbox and you're paying attention to the metrics to
Speaker 1: you're looking at your open open rates decline, You're looking
Speaker 1: at like, okay, every single day, do I want to
Speaker 1: read this? Like maybe I have acts, I can have
Speaker 1: access maybe through social media, to see what's taking place.
Speaker 1: But you know, going deeper and less frequent allows you
Speaker 1: to build somewhat of an intimate relate relationship with your audience.
Speaker 1: At least that's the way that I I kind of
Speaker 1: think about that. I think about what slow journalism looks
Speaker 1: like I look about I look at what does long
Speaker 1: form journalism, you know, and sort of what I subscribe to.
Speaker 1: I definitely have my dailies and just my quick rundown
Speaker 1: because you know, when you're when you're looking at it,
Speaker 1: you're just looking at the headlines, right, But if you're
Speaker 1: trying to have an intimate relationship, and why these newsletters
Speaker 1: are kicking off on things like sub stack, you're getting
Speaker 1: to know the person behind it, You're getting to know
Speaker 1: the work, You get to be deeply invested in the topic.
Speaker 1: You get to slow your brain down a bit and contemplate.
Speaker 1: You see these folks who are building communities off of
Speaker 1: like big ideas and tactical advice around like how do
Speaker 1: you essentially develop yourself better be it like better productivity tools,
Speaker 1: to how to run a team, to you know, how
Speaker 1: to manage your money better admit a pandemic um. And
Speaker 1: so when I kind of I started to see that,
Speaker 1: and then secondarily I wanted to put the value add
Speaker 1: back into what it means to be a journalist, particularly
Speaker 1: a black journalist trying to cover black community. And for me,
Speaker 1: while I believe that journalism in and of itself is
Speaker 1: a public service. I'm not here to entertain people. I'm
Speaker 1: here to educate. I'm here to inform. I'm also here
Speaker 1: to uplift. I'm also here to be critical of some
Speaker 1: of the work because just because it's black and it happened,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that it's great. And we have to
Speaker 1: have these nuanced conversations and so you know, being part
Speaker 1: of that philosophy also of watching the venture capital industry
Speaker 1: not necessarily fund media companies, watching a lot of the
Speaker 1: way traditional business model for journalism has taken place. It
Speaker 1: also seems like, hey, like there has to be a
Speaker 1: new method because advertising is all being eaten up by
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google and you know, all of all of
Speaker 1: all of the folks who are getting all the ad dollars.
Speaker 1: So I can't come out of the gate trying to
Speaker 1: compete with those mofos with just lilo me right, So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to figure out a way to immediately
Speaker 1: ask people to make the investment, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: like the plug is a hundred dollars a year or
Speaker 1: you know, thirty dollars a quarter. Of course, I still
Speaker 1: have advertising and sponsorships, you know, of course, like we
Speaker 1: leverage grants where it makes most sense, um, But it
Speaker 1: really is about playing a different kind of game because
Speaker 1: obviously the nature of the business has changed drastically. And
Speaker 1: you know, of course not everybody is gonna say like
Speaker 1: I can't either afford it or I actually wanted, But
Speaker 1: you quickly start to find your tribe, and you quickly
Speaker 1: start to find what people value. Um. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, if you're producing a great and
Speaker 1: a formidable product, people want to be a part of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. Because what is sales like in
Speaker 1: this sense, because it's one thing to have a product,
Speaker 1: and it's another to communicate the value of that product
Speaker 1: to a potential customer, right and or or do you
Speaker 1: think of it more as you're not trying to convince
Speaker 1: a new subscribe, but perhaps you're looking for the people
Speaker 1: who are already convinced but may not know that, they
Speaker 1: may not be aware of your offering. So what does
Speaker 1: sales look like in the respect of what you're doing? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think, um, you know, in the beginning, and going
Speaker 1: back to that kind of experimental phase, of course, you
Speaker 1: think everyone are subscriber list is like, yeah, of course
Speaker 1: they read my stuff already. Again, you know, you start
Speaker 1: to segment out, you know, who's who finds the information
Speaker 1: you know valuable to their work UM, And so you
Speaker 1: start to kind of see, okay, well, these are the
Speaker 1: kind of folks who are starting to subscribe. UM, these
Speaker 1: are the kind of folks who are using and leveraging
Speaker 1: these tools within their their company or within their business.
Speaker 1: And so I find that just more business people that
Speaker 1: are making investment decisions, that are making policy decisions, that
Speaker 1: are even making reporting decisions, they're the ones who are like,
Speaker 1: I don't have to convince them to subscribe as soon
Speaker 1: as they learn about us, especially over the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, where I'm sure like we've all seen an
Speaker 1: uptick in traffic as soon as they learn about us,
Speaker 1: Like they're clicking that button, they're putting their credit card
Speaker 1: in and they're like, yep, you know. And I think too,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of UM, in terms of that
Speaker 1: sales process, I think I've had to get as clear
Speaker 1: as possible on the value, right I've I've had too. Again,
Speaker 1: that's also talking about the work. It's demonstrating the work.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of idea or philosophy around doing your
Speaker 1: work in public. And so you know, demonstrating like, hey,
Speaker 1: like my team and I are researching X, Y and Z,
Speaker 1: or hey like we're you know, we're looking to do
Speaker 1: an interview series on X, Y and Z, you know,
Speaker 1: and and not being afraid of like, look, if there
Speaker 1: are folks that want to try to replicate what we've done,
Speaker 1: like by all means, go with God, Like, I know
Speaker 1: who I am, I know what my background is, I
Speaker 1: know I know how I've built this. And like the
Speaker 1: folks that like like, like you can't, you can't do
Speaker 1: a story like me, You're just not going to because
Speaker 1: I'm too good at this and I have I have
Speaker 1: a clear angle in editorial judgment on how on how
Speaker 1: I do the work. Not everything is going to hit
Speaker 1: with everyone, but you're gonna walk away with the story
Speaker 1: under the story, right Like you're gonna we're gonna ask
Speaker 1: the questions that no one else has asked. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do the extra layer because we don't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: compete for just driving page views and things like that,
Speaker 1: like that's not our metric. And so once you kind
Speaker 1: of get clear on that, your sales process looks vastly different. Right,
Speaker 1: you have universities that want students to get access. So
Speaker 1: you know, again like I'm not for everybody, and that's okay,
Speaker 1: And I think niche is so significant and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know, these are the kind of the conversations that
Speaker 1: you may be having to well around um you know,
Speaker 1: having these discussions with folks who felt like initially like
Speaker 1: is black news, black tech news and black businesses is
Speaker 1: not actually a business? You know, Like how many times
Speaker 1: have I you know, been in environments or space is
Speaker 1: where folks have been like that's great, but like, oh
Speaker 1: you know that's like not a big thing. And but
Speaker 1: they said that to us about our hair care. You know,
Speaker 1: they said that to us about our sunscreen. Now you've
Speaker 1: got black Girl sunscreen like killing it right now. Um
Speaker 1: So again like being underestimated, you know, as Arlen Hamilton says,
Speaker 1: like it's such a great opportunity to be like, all right,
Speaker 1: I know my audience, and I know that for every
Speaker 1: person that's like me that has a very similar life
Speaker 1: experience or comes from a very similar experience, like I
Speaker 1: know that they're out there, right, but I also know
Speaker 1: too that there are crops of individuals who are trying
Speaker 1: to get it and the way that they speak the
Speaker 1: way that they talk, the kind of schools they come from,
Speaker 1: the kind of communities they come from. There's a certain
Speaker 1: language in which they identify with UM as they read
Speaker 1: and digest information, and like, if you can develop your
Speaker 1: content in a way that is that has journalistic integrity
Speaker 1: but also meets the needs of today's business mind, You're like,
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't really lose UM. So you know again,
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, like all
Speaker 1: of that said, and all the great words said, it's
Speaker 1: all an experiment. I mean, you know, we're either between
Speaker 1: being wildly successful or completely failing. Like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just keep going. But talk to me about the
Speaker 1: early on. You know, how you build that credibility to
Speaker 1: monetize early or where people don't question or at least
Speaker 1: are more receptive to paying for your work. Like, how
Speaker 1: do you build that credibility? You know, I think there's
Speaker 1: a variety of ways. UM. I think number one, UM,
Speaker 1: and I'll and I don't know if if these are
Speaker 1: conversations you've had yet with other folks on this podcast,
Speaker 1: But you know, as a black woman, my credibility has
Speaker 1: been doubted in every room that I've been in. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about that, Yes, yeah, until it's not right,
Speaker 1: Like I've been talked over. I've had, you know, my
Speaker 1: can't pains where I have completely won and um still
Speaker 1: my male counterparts, you know, are either a trying to
Speaker 1: take crowded or they did something mildly okay and they
Speaker 1: were praised. And so for me, I didn't go into
Speaker 1: building this out um with without knowing that it's gonna
Speaker 1: take me a little while to be recognized because we
Speaker 1: don't call black women geniuses, not outside of our own communities.
Speaker 1: We don't. We don't we talk about being the next whatever.
Speaker 1: We talk about Mark Zuckerberg, and we talk about Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: and we talk about Bill Gates. Right, we don't talk
Speaker 1: about the next Jewel Burks. We don't talk about the
Speaker 1: next Utra Wilson. Like, don't tell me you know you
Speaker 1: want to be the next Zuckerberg? Like why Like there's
Speaker 1: so many other individuals that like I want my nieces
Speaker 1: to look up to, right, And so for me knowing
Speaker 1: that and being hyper aware and hyper clear, um, for me,
Speaker 1: it was like, I like, you're not going to outwork
Speaker 1: my work and the quality of my work, because it's
Speaker 1: always going to get better. And so for me, it
Speaker 1: was as long as I put the work in, it's
Speaker 1: going to come together. Right for me, it wasn't about
Speaker 1: the hyper visibility or the accolades or the attention even
Speaker 1: on social media, but it was leveraging the tools and
Speaker 1: resources that I had access to. Because I didn't have
Speaker 1: the dollars right, so I couldn't invest in a pr person.
Speaker 1: I couldn't invest in like crazy ads or what have you.
Speaker 1: My work in and of itself had to stand on
Speaker 1: its own, and then being strategic about my network and
Speaker 1: sharing and constantly talking about my work and saying like hey,
Speaker 1: you know, actually you know I run X, Y and Z.
Speaker 1: This is the work that we're doing making it useful
Speaker 1: for people UM. And as it kind of crept along,
Speaker 1: you know it, it was helpful. I mean, obviously the
Speaker 1: biggest boon for us was, you know, our text statements
Speaker 1: database that we put together UM a few days after
Speaker 1: George Floyd was killed and we started to see all
Speaker 1: these text ceo s start to speak out about UM
Speaker 1: racism in police brutality, and and as I started to
Speaker 1: track and again, like I started this project with with
Speaker 1: the idea of I want to create a story and
Speaker 1: craft a story of of of you know, who these
Speaker 1: companies are, who these leaders are, and what their actual
Speaker 1: like racial representation looks like at their companies. Because they're
Speaker 1: talking a good game, does that actually mean that they're
Speaker 1: practicing what they preach? And again that whole philosophy, I'm
Speaker 1: doing your work in public. Once I got to like
Speaker 1: companies and I started working with one of our data
Speaker 1: fellows to like complete some of the the different attributes
Speaker 1: and tables and columns, it was like, okay, like let's
Speaker 1: kind of push us out and kind of see if
Speaker 1: other people have things to add to it. And it
Speaker 1: went viral, you know, and it's like, this is not
Speaker 1: the first you know, sheet or database that like we've
Speaker 1: we've allowed to kind of go into the wild. It's
Speaker 1: not the first time we've created an infographic to explain
Speaker 1: what this actually looks like. It's just the first one
Speaker 1: to go viral. UM and so that again added another layer,
Speaker 1: you know. I went to Columbia Journalism School and I
Speaker 1: did a data concentration. It was very strategic and going
Speaker 1: to this specific program was the only one that I
Speaker 1: I applied to. UM. Part of it was definitely for
Speaker 1: clout because the name Columbia carries weight, especially within media
Speaker 1: where majority of folks did go to the j School UM. Secondarily,
Speaker 1: they were the only ones that had a ten month
Speaker 1: masters program with the data concentration. And I was like, look,
Speaker 1: I love being a journalist, I love being a storyteller,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to spend six figures on just
Speaker 1: getting a degree to learn how to write. I know
Speaker 1: how to write. Um, I want to go with this
Speaker 1: computational side because that's the space that I come from.
Speaker 1: You know. I had helped to run marketing for Uber
Speaker 1: in Charlotte, so it was like analytics was at the
Speaker 1: top of the chain of everything that we did. And
Speaker 1: so I was like, how do I create this hybrid opportunity?
Speaker 1: And then honestly like it was like a follow spells.
Speaker 1: I got a master degree, you know, a ten month
Speaker 1: program that almost died died to get and I can
Speaker 1: go teach you know in some some regards. So so
Speaker 1: for me, that layer was yes, now when I walk
Speaker 1: into the room, I have additional access to networks that
Speaker 1: can help to elevate my publication and at least make
Speaker 1: those different UM connection points for me. It's interesting you
Speaker 1: talked about we don't call enough of us geniuses, right.
Speaker 1: I had this conversation with Alex Wolfe Um in New
Speaker 1: York and who I believe is a genius like Alex Um.
Speaker 1: She she had this philosophy that in her mind, the
Speaker 1: women who were on the corners in New York selling fruit,
Speaker 1: we're more entrepreneurial than a lot of the mainstream CEOs
Speaker 1: and tech founders that we hail as entrepreneurial. Maven's right, essentially,
Speaker 1: because those women created real value and it's in just
Speaker 1: about likes and swipes. Um and I wonder your thoughts
Speaker 1: on how we as black creatives, technologists, innovators, and founders
Speaker 1: can better tap into a market opportunity and rethink our
Speaker 1: business models. I think it's so important that we read everything,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that like, there's so much great
Speaker 1: information out there. I think there's so many great things
Speaker 1: from business books to UM two blogs to obviously the podcasts,
Speaker 1: because it helps to enlargen our world in perspective beyond
Speaker 1: just what we can see. I'm concerned that we have,
Speaker 1: like in entrepreneurship, just to being cute online, and like
Speaker 1: I said before, I think it's a distraction away from
Speaker 1: some of the very real challenges we're up against as
Speaker 1: a community. And I think that even as we see
Speaker 1: kind of celeb and influence, our cultures start to battle
Speaker 1: it out right now, and in this pandemic, there's such
Speaker 1: a great opportunity to be real problem solvers, and not
Speaker 1: everyone is deeply connected to what those problems look like.
Speaker 1: That's why I say, like reading is going to be
Speaker 1: so critical to like the ideation process of what is
Speaker 1: the value that the world is looking for? And now
Speaker 1: how do I get in it? I think of the
Speaker 1: safety uh Fabodes, whose name I'm probably butchering, but over
Speaker 1: a Aruna Technologies, who's building water sensors for municipalities like
Speaker 1: our infrastructure. Our water infrastructure in the US is over
Speaker 1: half a century old. And so when we look at
Speaker 1: the flints of the world and what happened there, like
Speaker 1: he directly is like, I don't want another flint to happen,
Speaker 1: So how do I create a tool that these water
Speaker 1: engineers can use to detect early potential contamination of water?
Speaker 1: That's a billion dollar business right off right after that?
Speaker 1: And guess what, like I mean, he's raising money, He
Speaker 1: and his his partner are raising money. But he's already
Speaker 1: got government contracts in play, right, so the right the
Speaker 1: money is for working capital, but you've got you've got
Speaker 1: contracts with government that last eight years, so your money
Speaker 1: is good. Um. But you have to like really be
Speaker 1: in tune and diversify what you're reading and what you're
Speaker 1: watching so that you can start to get those ideas
Speaker 1: perculating around the problems that you can actually solve. Finding
Speaker 1: ideas and letting an idea mature is part of the game.
Speaker 1: You try certain things and if it works, it's great.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't, you've learned something and you find out
Speaker 1: you do your post mortem and you realize, like, maybe
Speaker 1: that didn't really work. Um. So anyway, I think, I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think in terms of adding value, you've got to
Speaker 1: know what value looks like. You know, you've got to
Speaker 1: know what the problems are and the pain points really are.
Speaker 1: And I you know, I really becove folks to just
Speaker 1: think about, like what are the deepest challenges based on
Speaker 1: the data that I'm reading, based on the journals Google
Speaker 1: scholar like you can look up every you know, every thing.
Speaker 1: I think all the books that have come out from
Speaker 1: black and brown folks who have been writing about systemic
Speaker 1: racism or what have you. Like, that's a great material
Speaker 1: to start with. You know about what the actual value
Speaker 1: add could potentially be, but you have to kind of
Speaker 1: make sure your content stack is is matching up to
Speaker 1: help you get those ideas. Fling Black Tech Green Money
Speaker 1: is a production of Black of the afro Tech was
Speaker 1: produced by Morgan Davon and me Will Lucas. Additional production
Speaker 1: support by Love Beach, Stephanie bog Ravener Ball Special thank
Speaker 1: you to Michael Davis. Some cars of van Yan you
Speaker 1: know like the wine and yes that's his real name
Speaker 1: and Dominique Right. Learn more about Charelle Dorsey and other
Speaker 1: tech disruptors and innovators at afro Tech. Can't You Get
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