I'm Will Lucas and this is Black Tech. Dreen Money.
Morgan Debonne is a serial entrepreneur, executive, and corporate advisor.
She's foundering CEO at Blavity, Inc.
The leading digital media company for black culture and millennials. It's on the Afro Tech, Glavity News twenty one to ninety, Travel, Noir, Shadow.
And Act, and Blavity TV.
She's an advisor in influential global brands and companies including Pepsi, Co, American Airlines, Cees, and other businesses.
She's also an Angel investor.
A lot of people, including myself, have been advocating in recent years that things like coding and engineering should be required for students in the elementary and high school level, right alongside foreign languages, as they might provide for long term stability and employment. But shocking to many major tech companies are laying people off, even their engineering departments. How should we be looking at this?
We're certainly going through a shift in how companies were built in the last ten years would be very different than how the next ten years of companies will be built, and we're seeing companies recalibrate towards that future. What we also know is that people who are getting laid off, particularly those with technical roles, are typically finding a job within thirty days. So it's a bit of a shift.
What we're hearing from companies is that, look like building a product takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of team and manpower and woman power people power, right, and what it takes to maintain something is oftentimes less or requires different skills. And so when we were in a high growth period of time in the economy, and for a lot of these big tech companies, they needed as many people as possible, they needed bodies so that
they could actually scale their businesses. And then as things slowed down, they said, look, we actually can be more efficient and just operate as opposed to being in this high growth phase. At the same time, there's other companies like AI companies, where they need to grow as fast as possible right now. So we're just seeing a shift
in the labor market get particularly for technical talent. Now, I think non technical talent is having a bit of a tougher time because there's all these other roles that support big tech companies. Right You've got recruiters, you've got marketing folks, you've got people in people, operations, all of the complementary roles that help build an incredible company, and that's where we're seeing people be slower to hire, slower to find new jobs, and see a bit of a
recalibration there. So you know, I think tech companies are still always going to be one of the fastest ways for professionals to grow wealth because you don't just get paid your salary. You also get paid typically stop stock options, and the salary bands are typically higher than a non tech company, but it doesn't come without some risk.
So one of the things I love talking to you about is this balance between big business and small business because you're one of the few people I know who can talk just as educated and smartly about small all businesses and lifestyle companies. And I know a lot of small business owners who are rethinking how they hire, you know, outsource their social media, you know, management and etc. Because you can now.
Use tools like chat GPT to write.
Five, ten, twenty versions of a caption for you and you just need the image now to go alongside of it. So what do you think for those people who may not be engineers, but they were the tech person in the room who knew.
How to use the tech.
What what are some of the things that you think they should be thinking about, and how to continue to provide value and continue to support themselves when there's so many other things. Now I got content for the whole week.
You know, I think that there's always evolutions and technology. I mean, think about it. Back when we grew up, you had to go to the library, and what did you have to do. You had to go to the library. You got to go get these little cars, all the car that you need, but you got to get it to the librarian. You know, you got to do all these things. Now you're going to the library. You go to a computer and you say this is what I need, right, and it tells you where it's at. And I haven't
been to the library for a couple of years. It may even be easier than that these days. So I don't view artificial intelligence, and most specifically generative artificial intelligence right. AI has been around for a very long time. Machine learning has been around for a very long time. What's new is the generative AI. And I don't view that as a risk to people's ability to get work done.
I view it as an enabler for more efficiency. Right, the same twenty minutes that it would take you to go to the card catalog, now it takes you a minute and a half on the computer. That gives you more time to find out what books you want read the books, et cetera. So how can you leverage your brain to use these tools to help make your life easier. I read a number that said that only fourteen percent
of the country has actually ever used chat GPT. So if you're listening to this right now and you have used chat GPT, if you're using it as a part of your daily life already, you're like light years ahead of everybody else. So really, you can't lose. You just need to continue to learn how you can incorporate it into the work that you're doing every single day, in the task that you're doing, so you have more time to spend with your family, more time to get high
value work done, more time to rest. Right, there's so many benefits to it.
You just said something that sparked my interest because we're still super early, and I don't think people who are not living this every day realize that there's so much of the world who still hasn't even ever tried chat GPT.
Yeah, completely. I think it's around thirty percent of Americans have heard of it, right, maybe thirty to forty percent. The Pew Research Center just put out a report on it, but actually try it, use it, create an account, put in a prompt. You know. That's that's less than half of that.
And so when I look back at that's all went back to the first episode of Black Tech, Green Money, and you were the first us on this three years ago, and we had conversations about afro tech. And when you look back at what you intended afro tech to be when you first got the idea for it, at the time, there was no place we really saw ourselves. There was no room that we could gather in.
And you know, have this convening of the annual delegation.
Right of black tech talent in the country. Help, how do you see afro tech continuing to evolve as we do grow in numbers in this industry, in an industry that use technology.
You know, afro tech has definitely become a festival all on its own. I'm really proud of how far we've come from the days when we were like four hundred and fifty people in the Westfield mall and downtown San Francisco, people are always like no, like, no legit. Like we were in the mall, you know, trying to get everybody in and people were trying to sneak in, and it was,
you know, a beautiful moment of community. And now we'll be back and often this year with anywhere between twenty thousand people plus, all techies, innovators, people who have an interest in figuring out how they can leverage the digital revolution to their own benefit, for their communities, for their families, for their own knowledge, for their own contribution to society.
So I'm proud that we've been able to create this mass community, not just for the event that happens every year, but also our regional events now that we have we have happy hours all over the country, New Orleans, New York, Seattle. We've got hundreds of thousands of people reading our website every single day learning about new technologies and new executives
who are doing incredible work. So I'm proud that the young version of me, the black girl in Saint Louis that was twenty years old trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, would be able to go to a site like afrotech now and have one hundred thousand different options of what it could look like to be a part of this tech ecosystem, as opposed to what I saw, which was one article every to nine months about somebody black doing something interesting in tech.
So I'm really hopeful for the future of our Black community at large. And I mean it's getting so big well, I can barely even keep trapping stuff. Like I see new apps, new founders raising money every day, and I'm like, oh man, you better go. I'm so proud of everybody.
You know, across the country, there's this movement against the EI work, you know, Affirmative Action just being struck down recently. A lot of states are you know, put putting up board, putting up walls that don't allow the e I work to thrive in et cetera. And with the work afrotech is done to create to help us see ourselves number one in these spaces, I want to get your thoughts on how effective that work of creating spaces for us has been with getting us hired.
In places that we were already qualified for.
But we're getting the opportunities to work in versus in the large part this is the view I come from.
But I realized the value of both perspectives is.
Creating our own tables, you know. So it's I'm not of the mind to just beat down the walls to create opportunities at a table that doesn't.
Want me there.
I want to create my own tables, and I want to get your thoughts on how do we think about these things?
You know, I believe that people of color in this country are the new majority. So there of course is going to be a backlash from people who are about to be the new minority at trying to keep us slow our growth as much as possible. And currently they have the systems and the tools and the infrastructure to be able to do that because they're the people in power, and they have, you know, hundreds of years centuries ahead
of us to be able to maintain that power. But we're catching up faster than they can slow us down. You know. I believe that I'm a hopeful pragmatist in a lot of ways, and I believe that our communities, people of color, you know, even the LGBT community, I mean, anyone who is deemed a minority in this country is gaining power, which is one of theations for the backlash.
It's one of the reasons why they're trying to tighten controls on people's uteruses and trying to say that no, you guys are equal now, you don't need these special treatments, right, And it's just it's not true. They're wrong, But I believe it's a result of the fact that we're gaining traction here. So I think that all progress doesn't come
without tension. And the key is, to your point, stay focused and keep fighting the problem, not the people, because that's going to be ultimately what continues to allow us to push forward. And I agree with you. I mean, we're seeing now We've always had ideas about what we want to do in the future, how we want black folks to have our own channels of distribution, our own networks, have our own financial systems, you know, have our own
venture capitalists, and you're seeing it. Black vcs, even though they're having a tough time, still have never raised more money than what we've raised. Black founders, even though we're having a tough time, collectively, we have never had as much assets as we we have had in the last couple of years. You know, even startups business owners. The twenty twenty huge influx of cash that went into black
folks hands. Uh, you know that stuff was put to good use and a lot of organizations that I know, so, you know, even the NAACP like their budget three x and since George Floyd's murder, but that's going to go a long way for us as a people, as a community. I want to talk about social media. I'm curious, well, your perspective on Spill and Threads and all the things going out. What do you think do you think's going to make it?
Also, I was going to ask you about this because I you know, I wasn't gonna name any the Bible. I'm like, I was gonna let you name them if you wanted to, because you know, I'm on Threads.
We're on a podcast.
Listen, this is what it is.
And so it's so interesting to me because I was super excited, and I to say, I'm not excited anymore about Spill because I think it has an interesting lane. I think the lane one of one of the things I've value and businesses is like valuing niche and I think that that's okay. And this is actually something I learned from you It's like you don't have to be
striving to be this humongous unicorn in the CE. You can have a very thriving, good company, growing company, and still be in the realm of Silicon Valley a small lifestyle theme, and lifestyle doesn't necessarily mean you're doing two million. It can mean you're doing twenty it can mean you're doing thirty million.
Dollars a year.
And you were actually somebody on this podcast who helped reframe.
My thinking on that.
And so I feel like Spill even fan base in a way, like they have this lane that if they can stay authentic to that, there could be opportunity there. I think it's harder now when you have an app that can come out like Threads, that automatically has your population and automatically you come into the gate with followers, it's really hard to compete with that, and you don't have to go build an audience.
Yeah. Yeah. My recommendation to the Spill founders is that they don't try to compete with Twitter, and they don't try to compete with Threads. You know, you build for your target demographic of the black community, the talkative, conversational black community, and figure out how you can uniquely solve
our problems. Because thread to your point, is going to be the size of Twitter on this trajectory in the next less than a year, right, and so there's going to be just a lot of noise, just like there is on Twitter already, just like there is on Instagram. And Meta is one of the biggest companies in the world. They're going to continue to be incentivized to build for the majority and the people who are going to be advertisers at the end of the day, and so at
some point we will be secondary to their priority. I mean, I think they did a great job seeding it. I know a lot of people who worked on the threads app that are internal at Meta, and they have black employees who are involved in building this so that they had an inclusive team. But you can already see it's
just going to be Instagram. But with words, yeah, you know, it's not gonna be It's not even like actually gonna be how Twitter was, where you've got to meet new people and get in different interest groups and kind of dig deep into different conversations. I don't think that's what's going to happen. I think it's just going to be
the same people you've all on Instagram. We've our follow up threads, and people are gonna be pontificating and using chat GPT like they do on LinkedIn right now, and it's just going to be this like weird LinkedIn hybrid with Instagram.
So what do you say to founders who are out raising money? And like, if the Spill guys were raising money today, I'm imagine it'd be a lot harder to do.
That versus months ago when they did it.
It's but we always get caught up in this trap of well, how do you compete with the thing that's out there? How do you create your mote, how do you create your authentic lean to where you can grow, especially if you're taking outside capital. How do you prove to people that you can survive in a water that Twitter exists in, that thread now exists in If I'm spilled, Yeah.
I mean my perspective is that Spill has an opportunity to build a community, and they can do something that Clubhouse messed up on, right, which is to build a community that is self sustaining, right, And I recommend that they building a revenue stream immediately. Don't go the role of trying to get one hundred million user names and then be AD supported, because that's one of the reasons why Twitter is having a tough time, and that's one of the reasons the Reddit's having a tough time. It's
because they're all ads supported. Now fan Base, I mean, I do feel bad for fan Base a little bit right at wrong time. You know, if fan Base came out this year or last month and was able to get wrapped up in the PR campaigns of Twitter and Threads, they could be just as successful. It's a very different build,
Like it's a different solution to the same problem. But my recommendation, at least fan Base is not AD supported, I guess, is my point, right, Like, I think it's smart to have a different type of business model behind the app, because if you're going to be ad supported, then you have to go for scale, which is going to put you up against the.
Yeah, this brings up an interesting conversation I've been I've had on this podcast several over the last episodes. Is this idea of being mission driven versus opportunistic. And even with the guys from the Slim and Huskies I talked about this with and so like they didn't grow up loving pizza, you know, right, But they found an opportunity to do something, and not often do we get an
opportunity just to be opportunistic. But we were told you have to have a mission and you have to have a like you know, you're trying to make a change in the world. And I think both things are valuable. Like when I shop at Target, I'm not shopping at Target because I believe in Target's mission. They happen to
have what I need. But as black exactly but too but so often we are put in the position of like, you have to believe in something and talk about your mission and your values and is that always fair or can we just be opportunistic?
Ooh, I mean you're talking to somebody who I believe in both for sure. I mean I think that if you only build things for money, it won't work. Like you have to be motivated by more than just money. You know, there's cheaper, faster ways to make money in this world than to build an app, or to try to build a huge social network or black community, or
try to build a media company for black millennials. Right like, so so no, I think you've got to be you've got to have some sort of purpose driven reason to be successful at scale. I'm sure there's outliers. I'm sure there's people who don't give a shit and build companies, huge companies. But I think that most people who are successful have some other motivator other than money.
So let's put Blavity in this conversation, because Blavity is, you know, the biggest black platform on the internet. You know, kudos to the entire team for achieving what we've achieved. And I was, I was just reading Debora Le's book, I Am Debora Lee Is she was describing how bet grew and and because of the growth that they had in their or mid nineties, you know, late nineties, a
whole bunch of other opportunities presented themselves. They were chasing a clothing line at once, they wanted to do magazines and all these different things and original content even and so as Blavity continues to grow and be bigger and more successful and bring on more talented people, how do those how do you think about those opportunities for Blavity to dip its toe into other verticals that allow it to be more than just a publisher in that way.
Yeah, I mean, we have a three year vision for the company that I socialized and collaborated on with our executive leadership team. Because to your point, there's always more. When you are serving an underserved community that has such a huge impact, like black culture, then you could do anything. I could do a clothing line, we could have a book club, we could have a we could buy a little town and make a little Black adobia. But we can do whatever we want, right, So the question is
how do you evaluate that stuff? And to me, you got to have a really clear mission envision. Currently we're on a pathway to get to one hundred million in revenue, you know, that's our business target and pretty soon, right And the reason why we're picking that number is partially
because we believe that's a number for freedom. I want to make sure that this company is lives beyond me, that it's an institution that is an advocate and a distribution channel for people who are doing interesting things and helpful things for underserved voices in this country, whether that's talent acquisition and building out our new product, talent Infusion, which helps companies hire and recruit black talent and have really awesome talent pools, or it's Home and Texture, our
new brand that focuses on inter your design and helping millennials explore if home buying is the right experience for them, or how they want to decorate, or what they're going to do with their pets and their kids rooms and all these types of things. You know, I want to make sure that we're there at every life cycle at the same time. To your point, like, it's really critical to not get distracted, and that getting distracted is not
mean we don't test stuff. I can give you one hundred things if we have tested that that worked out. Do you remember lunch table I do Black TV lunch table sum at twenty one. I mean I could name off the whole thing, and those things don't embarrass me. To me, I'm like, yeah, this is our this is our job is to test and see what is important and sticky to our customer, our target demographic, and if they like it, we'll keep building it.
So we're talking about focus in a way right now. And we just talked about these new social media apps, and I wonder how you decide what you will share because I think about this with the opportunity thread provides and what you just discussed with Lavity's sense of focus on what it wants to be. How do you decide, because there's an opportunity for people to grow a new audience on things like Threads because it's it's blue ocean right now. Maybe in a week it won't be such,
but right now there's an opportunity. How do you decide what's on brand for you? Or do you have a you know filter of all this is not on brand? I want to talk about these things well.
On spell I didn't put my government name because I wasn't sure if it was just going to be a bunch of gossip. I was like, I don't know, I'm a little like my profile picture is not on there. I am just observing because any that calls itself was like find the tea for black folks, you know, So let me not make myself the target on here and let me just be a passive viewer. So yes, I am very cautious just to make sure that things are
going on on Threads. I think it's interesting because you have all of your instrum followings, but then you actually have to say something interesting. You can't just like post a cute picture, you know. I started a podcast, the Journey Podcast, because I wanted to talk and share my thoughts and my ideas and really be in dialogue with really interesting people. And that has been a really fun space for me because I don't feel like, you know, it's a ten second clip or it's a just a
photo moment. It's really a genuine conversation where there can be nuance and people can actually understand my perspective and I can learn their perspective as well. Threads is going to be interesting. I believe that it's going to either revert straight to how people were on Twitter, because I don't think people change. I don't think humans change Twitter. The platform inherently is not bad. It's the people and it's the rules. So do we believe that Zuck is
going to create better rules and empower nicer people. I'm not sure. Will Yeah, I'm not sure. What do you think?
Well, I think there's already people who would complain about their filtering and banning of people that Twitter has obviously let in. You know, Alex Jones can can have a voice, Tristan Tate, Andrew t can have a voice. And Andrew if you are ever seeing like a Tristan Tate or Andrew Tape. They talk about it. They only show cars on Instagram and we're banned because of the other global narrative around who they are. And so I think we're already seeing it because of Facebook's policies.
We're already seeing that, right, So, I mean, we'll see it. And I think it's such a fun generation for us to be a part of. I mean, we're getting to see these things, the rise of empires that we thought would never fail. We never thought clubhouses failed. We were all pissed about Clubhouse and how black people built it and how they raise all this money and like all this stuff. You know, nobody was Clubhouse do it right now?
You know. So I'm old of my breath. I'm not going to have our team built out a whole content strategy for Threads and do all this stuff against it, because I think that everything is up for grabs right now. It's a beautiful, wild wild west of the Internet.
Do you think we were too excited about crypto.
Ooh that's a tough question. You know. I was a I wasn't a crypto advocate. I was a blockchain Web three advocate and just making sure people understood I believe blockchain is still a fantastic innovation and solution to many many things, like the idea of having a centralized point of information that is not able to be disrupted or frauded or anything is something we still need. In fact, we may need it more because of generative AI. I need to know if this photo has been touched by
AI or what is the original source. I need to know if this book is actually just an aggregation of seventeen different books, what is the original source. So I believe blockchain still has a world in for us, Like there's a world in which blockchain is still a lot.
I believe that NFTs, which was basically a photo that granted you membership with benefits, was bullshit and like you're talking to somebody who had like a couple of n f G right, I mean, I'm always gonna play the game, But like, yeah, I think NFTs gave Web three a bad rap. But I believe in the fundamentals of a disabrogated source of.
Truth that because we have these shifting conversations in tech, you know, it was the metaverse and then we start talking about the metaverse, and it was AI before the AI was ar and VR all these different things, and you know the metaverse, which Facebook tem changed its name to it, and people say, you probably shouldn't have done that because because the conversation changed. But then you have Apple who puts out or will will release next year an entire probably a game changer for.
The that that sector immediately.
Oh you got to have it.
It's a mandatory, even though price point will price a lot of people out.
But initially, all technology is expensive initially, So how do you.
Think about as an investor, because you're an investor, also, how do you think about with what I just said? I was I think it just came to my mind the Warren Buffet quote, be you know, scared when everybody's greedy, be greedy when everybody else is scared. How do you think about those things when these technology happens this fast?
Well, As an investor, I'm relatively conservative with my investments. I invest in people. I don't invest in technologies.
So I invest in.
People and founders that I think are incredible and deserve to win, you know. And you know, I'm an angel investor in gold, I'm an angel investor in a company called boxed Up. I'm an angel investor in a company called public. You know, I like companies that are created by people who care. Now from a stocks perspective, and like a General Mark Great perspective, you know, you kind of want to let the big boys play it out.
If something's really trendy, it doesn't really matter if you jump on it in day one versus like day five hundred, because if it's really trendy, it's going to be great for a really long time. Right. If if you could have bought Facebook stock or Metas stock, I guess whether it was year one or even year two, you still would have made an incredible return. Right. So for me, there's no really like rush to try to be the first into any sort of new technology. I think is
better to wait as an investor. Sorry, just to be clear as an investor.
Okay, got it, got it. You've got a new podcast. You just touched on it.
You have two podcasts now. I'm not sure if you're going to keep doing work smart. I think there's value for there for sure, But I want to talk about the journey for a second. This is, you know, to Fine, there's a more personal it's a more personal, intimate Morgan the bond that we than we've seen. It delves into the captivating stories of purpose driven achievers on their question for living.
Their best lives.
I want to talk about what this means for you as a brand and as a personality a successful black woman, an entrepreneur, a founder and investor, and more. People want to know you, and how do you think about creating this type of content that lets people know more about you personally and why that might be important.
Yeah, I wanted to create this podcast to your point, because I wanted to have a place to have a conversation and I felt like Instagram and Twitter and all these other platforms was too transactional and it wasn't enough about like really seeking the nuance. Because I think that the devil's in the nuance. I think that's really where the real meat of all of our lives are is in the gray area. It's not what's black and white. That stuff's easy to figure out, and that stuff is
easy to explain, you know. So I've made some different choices in my life that our contrary. I started this company when I was twenty four. I made a decision that I was going to live my twenties hard, that I was going to work my ass off and make a lot of personal sacrifices so I could live fully in my thirties and beyond, you know, And I made a decision to move. I left the coast. I left LA to move to Nashville, the middle of Tennessee, right in the peak what people would think is the peak
of my career. My perception is I left LA so that I would not peak in that moment of my career, so that I could continue to be a contributor and a builder and a leader in the space, and so that I had longevity as an entrepreneur. And I just believe that social media is a lot of really surface
level things. And my hope is that the podcast can help provide people who think differently, people who want to live an extraordinary life and want to on their own terms, whatever those terms mean for them, that I'm able to help give them the tools and the stories to be able to do that.
You know, I brought up work smart, and one of the motto, I guess you can call it a work smart, so you can work smarter, not harder, right, And I guess you can probably think about that and you can challenge this, but I think about it in the way of like the four hour work week, and you know this idea of you know, we need to chill out on grind culture and all these different things, and in a way to be the devil's advocate, like you could talk about, hey, you know, money isn't everything, but you
got the money.
But when you don't have the money, money is everything, you know.
So how does your intention of that idea of working smarter not harder, and the intention of hey, I'm trying to actually find my success, how do they not correlate to each other because you had to grind.
To get there.
I'm a capitalist stuff, right, I mean, I'm not one of those people who's going to say, you know, just live up the land, like screw capitalism and we shouldn't have to do like I'm not that person, you know me, Right, I'm like, no, you want to beat the odds, there's got to be some sort of extraordinary variable for you beating the ads, and which in my control is yeah. And I believe in I believe in privilege as well, Like I had opportunities that were afforded to me from privilege.
I was born into a two parent household, upper middle class in Missouri, you know, so I had that already. Is a privilege. We were born in America. That's a privilege. So I believe it taking advantage of the opportunities and the privileges that you have, being mindful of those. But then you also have to do the work right. And this kind of there's a lot of narratives and like work less right. So that's not what I'm trying to
say when I talk about work smart. I mean, if you listen to the theories that I have, the frameworks that I use, it's really about discipline and being your best right. And that's just got to be a reflection of whatever your baseline is, because we all start at different baselines. And that's what I try to talk about on the podcast, that's what I try to talk about in my newsletters, and that's what I coach the small businesses that I work with. I was like, Okay, what
is your baseline, what is your truth? And then what's the gap between your truth and where you want to be, and then let's start taking actions to get there. And it might mean you have to be uncomfortable temporarily, but the truth and the vision should be so freaking juicy that she's like, I'm okay being uncomfortable for two years, I'm okay being comfortable for six months, I'm okay being uncomfortable for ten years because my vision is so good that it's going to work out.
Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned Saint Louis and you mentioned Nashville, and.
I wonder could you have done? Because what I think.
About when I do every episode of this podcast is most of us do not live in La New York or Atlanta, or but most of us are in just random cities, you know, spread across the country, and so often content to help us find success is based from those locations, and it comes from those perspectives. Could you have achieved what you did? And obviously this is hypothetical having stayed or only living in the Midwest, did you have to go?
Yes, I had to believe. I do not believe that I could have achieved what I've achieved at the age and the speed that I did living in Saint Louis, Missouri. There's just not enough resources and there's not enough social capital for this level of ambition that I had and the vision of blavity being in Silicon Valley. You know, I started the company living in San Francisco now Silicon Valley.
You can't follow my model because everything has changed. You know, moving to San Francisco is today is not the same thing as moving to San Francisco ten years ago. Over ten years ago, right So, but at the time, it was an epicenter of social capitals, at the center of innovation. Your lift driver had a at you know, your apartment. Everybody who lives within your apartment building was working for a really cool startup and going to hacker houses after work,
and all types of incredible innovation was happening. Probably the same way. It feels the same way that when everyone moved to Miami, when people were working on Web three, it was like everyone in Web three is spending time in Miami. Right So, being a part of communities has been what has helped feel me to success. And I believe that whatever you're building, if you want to be a country music star and you want to be a music writer, moving to Nashville is where your community is.
If you want to be a part of black culture and hip hop, you probably should move to Atlanta, you know what I mean. Make it where the best are making it. And then when you move somewhere else, You're going to be like, I'm a big fish in a small path.
Yeah.
I want to end this talking about afrotech, but before I do, I want to just talk because if anybody follows you on social media, they get to learn a little bit about how you operate daily. You know, you love mancia and journaling is obviously a thing for you.
Yes, talk about what helps.
You manage your life as an entrepreneur, as a personality, even like some of those tactical things like I got to have, you know, my AirPods, like that if I don't have my AirPods, I can't survive, Like, like, what are some of those things that mean something to you in order to function?
Well, I think it's changed over time. The one thing that hasn't changed is I was I had a virtual assistant, like probably within the first few weeks of founding blavity, even back when I was twenty four, when it was like weird for someone to have an assistant, you know, But I've always valued my time over the cash, and so I was willing to pay to offset some of the tasks, the research, some of the things that I felt like someone else could do. Eighty percent as good
as I could. That was my threshold. If you can do it eighty percent is as good as I can, then like you should probably do it first. Right, So having a virtual assistant, a personal assistant, or now I have a chief of staff, you know, has been really critical to my ability to be able to juggle so many different types of businesses and teams and you know, have somewhat of a life, right. I think that's probably the number one contributor to my to my sustainability in
this world and not being burned out. The second thing is my iPhone. I use my iPhone like more than I use my laptop or my desktop. You know, I can spend all day on my iPhone and get a lot of work done. And I think that people underestimate this tool. Right here, I think that you really have an entire computer operating system in your hands. You can
be anywhere. You don't need to be at home. You know, you don't need to be in front of a desk to get a lot of work done, picking up the phone and just making a call, right writing out your ideas, taking notes. So having an assistant and having a phone, iPhone and Wi Fi. Yeah, unto baby.
Real quick.
How is the process, because you talk about this on Instagram, how's the process of writing a book for you?
How's that going?
Oh my gosh, writing a book is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I thought it wasn't going to be that hard. Like, you know, people are like, I went on a retreat and I wrote my whole book, and you know, I'm like, Nahvi, that's bullshit. You you definitely did more than just go on vacation and write a book like this thing takes a lot of self reflection. You know, I wanted didn't want to write a memoir. I wanted to write a really tactical book. I don't
think my life's that interesting. I think what's interesting is how we've all worked together, how my co founders and I have worked together, how my investors and I have worked together, how early employees have worked together and to build this thing. And I also have realized that I had a lot of trauma as a founder, as a black founder, as a female founder, and I've blocked a lot of it out because it didn't serve me to hold on to it, to have a chip on my shoulder.
It didn't serve me to keep that stuff. But when you're writing a book, you got to go back. You've got to ask different people about, well, what was your perception of that one time we miss payroll? What was your perception of that? Well we had that conference ince in the mall, what was your perception of what was your perspective of this? And so I've learned a lot about from other people's perspectives, you know, talking about this book through this process, and I'm really proud of how
far we've come and how we've defied the odds. I mean, it really is an incredible feat of really less than three hundred people coming together to decide to do something and have this kind of impact. It's a beautiful thing.
Has been being that you are a journaler someone who journals? Has that been helpful to you in writing this book?
Yes and no. Yes, because there's definitely a lot of things that I wrote out. Like I remember when I was first raising money, I wrote out, you know, who I wanted to raise money from and how much I wanted from them. So it's beautiful to see be like, oh, like low Ki, I did that right. And then there's other things where I'll like write out like you know, I want to wake up in the morning and do
this and do that. I do a lot of affirmational journey where you're kind of like projecting into the future and writing things out like visualization, and then there's all types of stuff I'm like, definitely didn't do that, Like thank god, ye that did not come to light.
All right, let's end this talking about afro Tech. What for the last couple of minutes, I have you so afro Tech November this year back in Austin.
Also have afro Tech Executive this fall.
So if I'm going to my first afro Tech this year, or let's say I'm preparing for afro Tech this fall, how can I get involved over the summer to be more intimate with the brand and people who I may meet there.
Yeah, I would say first things first, to sign up for the newsletter because you're going to get a daily be a part of the daily conversation of what's going
on and what's trending. We also write a lot about the different people who are coming to Afrotech, everyone from board executives to CEOs of major corporations, to the founders who raise the most amount of money this year, to the vcs who are funding them right, So regardless of where you sit in the ecosystem, the newsletter is going to give you a peek into what you can expect at Afrotech, and we oftentimes will kind of introduce you
to people that you'll see there. The second thing is, try to go to one of our events before you get to Afrotech. It is incredibly beautiful and overwhelming to be around twenty thousand plus very nerdy black folks having a good time, but also like we're intense, you know, Like imagine if you are a nerd and you think that this is a place for you multiply your intensity about whatever you nerd out about. But all of us, we're not quiet people, you know, We're not like laid
back people. You know. We are going in that space in the convention center at the music festivals and we are feeling so excited. So just a really rich experience that can also be draining. So go to the happy hour before. Try to meet up with people locally who are going to Afrotech. Go to an Afrotech executive in New York so that you can see some familiar faces and you're able to take full advantage of the experience
because well, child, we did not stop during Afrotech. It's like four or five days if NonStop.
Are we talking anything yet about how this might be different in years past?
Yeah, we can talk about how it's different. We've got a beautiful, beautiful lineup music and the last year we did music for the first time and I had a music festival. So this year we're taking it to another level. So by the time this comes out, you should see the announcement of who's the artists. So I'm like super
promped about that. And we have an outdoor park this year, bringing that back because we just know there's so many people in the city and some people who aren't necessarily going to the convention center but want to participate, So we're making more spaces for people. We've three exercises the executive stage as more black folks have moved up into director of VP level positions, we're having conversations that are more specific to little managers and how they can move
forward from a professional development perspective. Then, last, but not least, I will not be there as I am having a baby. This is so I will be giving birth during AFRO God willing, so I.
Sweet, I know.
I like, as soon as I found out I do did, I was like, and there's no way, there's no way to for that's it. Like Mighty Day is the first day of Afrotech, so hopefully everyone will be sending me all their black joy and uh you know, we'll call be birthing the experience.
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast network in iHeartMedia, and it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with additional production support by Sarah Er and Rose McLucas. Specially thank you to Michael Davis, Vanessa Surroundo, and Mayamuldrew. Learn more about my Guess and other tech dist's an innovators at afrotech dot com. I'm joining Black Tech Green Money. Shire is with somebody We get your money, Piece of Luck.