I congratulate Jaylen Brown, and Jrue and Lauren Holiday for receiving over 1,000 applications to the Boston XChange (BXC) program. Brown is well on his way to creating $5 billion in generational wealth in Boston’s Black community.
Five billion dollars is a large number, but recently, we learned that Ron Shaich, founder of Cookie Jar bakery landed on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $1.6 billion! Perhaps CommonWealth Kitchen’s Teresa Thompson Maynard, founder of Sweet Teez Bakery could be next. With all of the barbershops and beauty salons in Boston, perhaps one is the next John Paul DeJoria, the billionaire co-founder of the Paul Mitchell line of hair products.
Those applicants lucky enough to get selected will receive up to $100,000 in grant funding, work and maker spaces, and business services valued at over $150,000. BXC needs to build a customer database and newsletter or maintain a listserv. Organizations providing services to small businesses are always trying to reach this target market to fill their classes or pipelines. A list would enable things such as regular meet-ups from groups already doing such things as Venture Café.
It would be great if BXC could triage the 1,000-plus applicants and help them get connected to the right group(s) in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. It would be great if every applicant not selected for the program could at least get advice on how to move forward and/or a list of relevant resources if they didn’t already have it. Perhaps from Small Business Strong or Coalition for an Equitable Economy.
There are over 300 Business Service Organizations around Boston. It would be great to connect those applicants to programs at the Roxbury Innovation Center such as E for All, and programs such as LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation) and ICIC (Initiative for a Competitive Inner City).
Every aspiring entrepreneur should be connected to resources to move forward. With my colleagues Malia Lazu, an MIT Sloan professor who formerly ran a successful incubator, and Glynn Lloyd, successful entrepreneur and investor, I am confident in the BXC program.
BXC should find a way to partner with the members of The New England Venture Capital Association to increase the amount of available grants BXC can make and to create a fund similar to Andreessen Horowitz’s Talent X Opportunity (TXO) fund and or their Cultural Leadership Fund. They have created a great business model. The Greater Boston area has over a third of the nation’s venture capital, this is an ideal place to set up a fund.
BXC should be a central repository of all Black businesses looking for venture funding. One thing most VCs say is they would love to get more deals from Black founders, but just don’t receive that many pitches from Black founders and/or Black founders don’t have the social capital to get to VCs to make a pitch. Having a central database means any VC could find companies by investment sector, funding round or any other criteria
In terms of Social Impact or ESG investing, I would hope BXC promotes concepts such those in Michael Porter and Mark Kramer’s Harvard Business Review article “Creating Shared Value” or the Economics of Mutuality as explained in “Completing Capitalism: Heal Business to Heal the World,” where Bruno Roche and Jay Jakub argue that you need to think of the return to stakeholders not just shareholders. They will be setting up a fund soon, based on that philosophy. They would be a great partner and potential co-investor.
For three years before COVID-19, Greater Grove Hall Main Streets and Mass Innovation Nights (MIN) showcased Black founders of technology companies. These events were a big success and they helped overcome the segregation that exists in the venture world. Black founders were able to make key connections and sometimes get funding. We made the events family-friendly and encouraged parents to bring their kids and we had organizations that offered technology and or entrepreneurship programs for kids there. It was a great experience for kids and adults to see Black tech founders. The experience helped kids answer the question, “why STEM?” For kids whose experience of Black business owners is limited to what they see in their community, this is helpful. Perhaps BXC can help bring the AfroTech conference to Boston in combination with their own signature conference.
It would be great for BXC to use its partnership with MIT to build a Large Language Model (AI) to help with the creation and distribution of business plans from Black founders. In full disclosure, I am an MIT Sloan, Martin Trust Fellow. We can use AI to review, and improve business plans to ensure they are their best and then get them to the right investors.
Based on my research, the greater Boston area is underperforming smaller metros with fewer critical assets such as Nashville, Memphis, Huntsville Alabama, and Raleigh-Durham among others, when it comes to the number of Black Tech founders. We need to understand if that is true and if so why. Based on research, my hypothesis is that Boston has such a large and diverse economy that already includes high-tech, that if there were never another Black founder in Boston, it would make no difference to the economy. Since it doesn’t and won’t, it is not considered a problem.
Where cities see the number of Black and or brown tech founders as important, they have worked together to create a plan and they have a group of civic leaders who champion that plan. BXC can not achieve its goal of $5 billion in generational wealth without Black founders in the various technology sectors, e.g. AI, environmental, robotics, blockchain, etc., and life sciences. Success in these areas would not only create generational wealth for the founders, but their employees as well. Perhaps BXC can be among a group of civic leaders from the Urban League, Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, ICIC, Boston Impact Initiative, E for All, LISC, Coalition for an Equitable Economy and Mass Growth Capital among others. It will take civic leaders from all segments such as the non-profit, including philanthropic, public sector, as well as the private sector to succeed. Perhaps BXC will play a leadership role in such a group.
Ed Gaskin is Executive Director of Greater Grove Hall Main Streets and founder of Sunday Celebrations.
