Entrepreneurship
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Reflecting on the end of paternity leave — and the deep hunger to claim control of time in pursuit of building ventures that lift Black communities globally.
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Tristan Walker Wants Black Businessmen to Taste Financial Freedom – This is a great interview with Walker and Company Brands’ CEO. His statement about the power of defaults sat me down. In my house right now, there are no other products other than Bevel and Form Beauty, which is also one of our brands. I…
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Over the past several weeks, Robert Smith, the founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, has been making the media rounds. He’s been talking about his work ensuring that black small business owners get the funding they need in the next round of stimulus Congress passes. In the first wave of PPP loan funding that…
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I was so excited to see the announcement last week that 54gene had raised $15M in additional funding for their work sequencing the genome of African folks. That type of work – building technology, research, and infrastructure is what Africa’s going to need as soon as possible. The wave of nationalism that has continued to…
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The past couple weeks, I’ve noticed more voices out of Silicon Valley calling out the need for the U.S. to bring manufacturing back to its shores. I’ve also seen some voices call out concept Silicon Valley getting hooked on globalization and Building Technology that is dependent on a globalized world where everyone has access you…
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The Verzuz battles Timbaland and Swizz Beatz have been organizing on Instagram have been a fresh breath of musical air the past several weeks. They’ve really done something special for the culture. While so many music greats are getting their flowers, I can’t help but remember that these battles are adding to Zuckerberg’s net worth.…
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The Long Game (A VC) You don’t hear about venture-backed companies founded in 1999 that are still private or operating at all. Companies like Netscape and Amazon went public in short order. Others like Pets.com crashed out of the race. Return Path took the path less traveled, surviving as a private company and 20 years…
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Kenya wants to replace Bob Collymore with a local at Safaricom (Daily Nation) Young Designers Dismantle Cultural Stereotypes At Nigeria’s Arise Fashion Week (British Vogue) Fei-Fei Li & Yuval Noah Harari in Conversation – The Coming AI Upheaval (YouTube)
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I spotted a 2019 Aston Martin DB11 this afternoon. That thing was gorgeous and the sighting brought to mind one of my favorite hobbies as a child. I was obsessed with cars and knowing as many details as possible about every car on the road. I would spend hours online studying their specifications. Then, I…
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From Managing Decline to Building the Future What would it look like for there to be a visa program that matched skilled immigrants with communities that are especially hard-hit by population decline in the U.S.? The Economic Innovation Group, a think tank founded by Sean Parker of Facebook fame, just published a report outlining this…
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In his acceptance speech at the NAACP Image Awards this weekend, Jay-Z recited a quote that struck me: “It’s not the number of years in your life that count. It’s the amount of life in your years.” The quote echoed a question I had been pondering a couple days before I saw his acceptance speech…
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In a world where advertising rules everything around me, how do I keep CultureBanx’s subscribers front and center while growing this business? Financial news streaming startup, Cheddar, announced yesterday that they raised $22 million. As part of the announcement, they declared that they are doing away with paid subscriptions. My mind went back to their…
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As I’ve spent the past year studying whatever I can get my hands on to get insights on the business of media the past year, I’ve come across some fantastic podcasts. The Adlandia podcast is one of them. Their latest episode with Ross Martin, CEO of Blackbird, had a lot of gems. The one that…
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Several weeks ago, Chamath Palihapitiya did an interview with Kara Swisher on Recode/Decode that really got my attention. He was talking about how the venture capital industry was overdue for a shakeup to meet the needs of technology startups. He talked about using data science to identify investment opportunities and scale companies, similar to what…
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Bloomberg: Traders Snap Up Assets of Nation Where Default Is New Normal I’m not really sure what to make of this article. I wrote a several weeks ago about how I was nervous about hedge funds investing in countries like Mozambique. While the independent audit of the country’s finances seems to have given investors increased confidence…
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Apologies for missing yesterday’s post. My body is making it clear I need to sleep more. The big market news yesterday was Ford CEO Mark Fields retiring, making room for Jim Hackett to take over at the home of America’s best selling vehicle. The news was surprising because Fields had done a pretty good job…
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CcHub Pushes to Keep Yaba’s Startups Clustered Together I struggled to parse out whether there’s really cause for concern for Yaba’s future as Lagos’ tech hub, or whether this piece was a veiled branding for CcHub. Perhaps, it was some of both. All the same, it’s cool to see CcHub making plans for the long-term…
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Nigeria’s Bank of Industry Provides Interest-Free Loans to National Youth Service Members Nigeria’s Bank of Industry has developed a Graduate Entrepreneurship Fund in partnership with the country’s National Youth Service Corps. The program provides NYSC members with loans they can use to further establish their businesses, and it seems like a nice program. Nigeria requires…
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Author Calls For African Entrepreneurs to Talk About Failure Idril Abshir penned this interesting piece arguing that African entrepreneurs should talk about failure more, indicating that they will find resilience in discussing failure. She cites the culture among Western entrepreneurs of acknowledging failure. While the stories in the piece were compelling, I don’t know that…
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The Case for Private Equity to Play a Bigger Role in Supporting Africa’s Entrepreneurs Yemi Laludi, TPG Growth Africa’s Managing Director argues that private equity can tailor its approach to various markets in Africa in efforts to fill the financing vacuum that has stymied Africa’s entrepreneurs in their efforts to take their ideas to the…
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A Case for More Hedge Funds Investing in Africa Kurt Davis makes an interesting case for why it makes sense for hedge funds to be more active in core sectors across African markets – financial services, metals and mining, oil and gas, and agriculture and land. I admit that I bristled a bit at the…
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The retail industry is so different from just a few years ago. I remember buying a shirt from Everlane when all the startup made were t-shirts. The kicker that got me to spend my money was that I could get better quality for cheaper because there were no retailers like Macy’s selling the product and…
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Jacqueline Musiitwa shares personal anecdotes on the struggle of working in Lusaka when the power is out. Lights off is a situation Africans across the continent experience, and it impacts education, bottom lines, and general quality of life – for women, especially. Jacqueline points to initiatives like the Power Africa initiative as important in alleviating…
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Francophone Africa and Europe can expect access to more African and African-American content through Afrostream. The two-year old startup led by Tonjé Bakang has been on a tear this year, finishing up at Y Combinator and landing funding from Troy Carter’s Cross Culture Ventures (have they finished raising their $50M fund?), Orange Digital Ventures, Ace…
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I was embarrassed when Kweku Adoboli’s name went across the screen for losing $2.3B while trading ETFs at UBS. A Ghanaian brother had done something really bad. What impact would this have on the perception of Ghanaians? Here’s a fascinating piece on him now that he’s out of jail, but still not in the clear.…
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There’s nothing like being around a bunch of really sharp students. This summer, I got to hang out with the participants in Reach, Inc’s summer program and share lessons I have learned building Afara Global. Reach, Incorporated is a DC-based organization that trains teenagers to teach younger students. As a result of this training, the…
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I was glad to see the news about the launch of Valor Ventures, a VC firm led by women and focused on finding women founders. Another firm that excites me is the Impact America Fund. Here’s a good interview it’s founder, Kesha Cash, did with the Andreesen Horowitz team. Some time ago, I posted First…
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No. 87: Build Something From Nothing
Angelina Darrisaw, bobby pittman, C-Suite Coach, cherae robinson, entrepreneurship, Eric Guichard, Eric Osiakwan, fast company, hello tractor, jehiel oliver, Josh Moore, Kwadwo Som-Pimpong, Maame Boakye, MRket, Nana Ama Afari Dwamena, Nina Oduro, odini nwakuche, paul judge, SapidMedia Productions, soylent, Whitney White
Paul Judge has a mantra – build something from nothing. It’s amazing to watch folks I have met along the way live this out. Jehiel Oliver’s startup Hello Tractor was profiled in Fast Company today. It wasn’t too long ago when we sat down at Chinatown Coffee and he told me about this idea he was working…
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Several years ago, my friend Odini told me that he was going to make ties. As an aspiring dandy, I was super excited about the idea, but could not have imagined where Odini and his partner Josh Moore have taken Res Ipsa. Some time after Odini told me that they were going to try and…
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Every time I see announcements of foreign companies locating operations in the US, I dream about more African companies doing the same. Companies like United Bank for Africa have US operations, but I am talking about big announcements at the scale of Porsche’s $100 million investment in its North American headquarters near Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in…
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Never have I been so excited about chickens! Earlier this year in Uganda, I and Sydney Musonda developed a business model for a chicken farm he would run in Zambia. He spent the next five months pursuing financing for his venture and secured funding in November. To date, he has purchased 205 day-old chicks and…
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Entrepreneurs across the African continent are developing highly innovative technologies that are meeting real needs and improving the ease of life for people from all walks of life. At this year’s MIT Venture Capital (VC) Conference, I sat in on a panel that covered Brazil’s VC space. Two things struck me as very different from…
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While receiving an award for Excellence in Commercial Diplomacy at Howard University’s Africa Business Conference, Florizelle Liser, Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa expressed her desire to see entrepreneurs in the African-American community and in African countries seek out partnerships with each other. The city of Atlanta, Georgia has a mix of key ingredients to…
Kwame Som-Pimpong 