Lunchtable Talks: Smart Cities and Black Power w/ Jessica O. Matthews

You know, essentially what we've done is developed a platform technology that transforms your city into a smartphone, so that deploying and managing infrastructure solutions like ev charging, like smart water systems, like all the things that you would need to avoid a lot of the death that we saw from the from this storm. So doing that is as convenient as downloading and running an app on your phone. I'm with Lucas and this is Black Tech Green Money.

I'm gonna ask you to you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black, in building or simply using tech to secure You're back this podcast this for you special edition to Black Tech Green Money. Some Unstable Conversation with my friend Jessica Old Matthews, founder and CEO of Uncharted Power and a War winning renewable power and sustainability company. This conversation was held during the Back to Black Innovators Digital Summit.

We had afro chech through a bit ago and I'm excited for you guys to hear this conversation. That's so, I'm pleased to introduce my friend here, who I lovingly called like the dopest scientist you're ever gonna meet. And um, I'm gonna give her a bio and then I'm gonna ask her, like, give her what her version of her own bio is. So. Jessica Old Matthews is founder and CEO of Uncharted Power and a war winning renewable power and sustainability company now on the bleeding of creating UH

smart cities around the world. And the company was founded by Jessica when she was only twenty two years old. Big move, big queen, move right there. Dual citizen of Nigeria and the US still still do a citizen? Yeah, still do a citizen? Mean I don't know about the US part. For there was a time there was a moment where if there was one of them, I was gonna give it up. It was that one. But you know, we were looking good so far. Yeah, these are these

are facts. These are facts um. She has a degree in psychology and economics from Harvard University, NBA from a HBS as well UM and it's listed over on a hundred patents and patents pending just twelve twelve, twelve twelve. I'll tend I'm sorry, I'm okay, it's ten. The one I had was ten. Be prolific and ethic, Yes, yes, or you on your way, because if anybody can do it, it's Jessica Matthew so um, including her first invention with socket, which is an energy generating soccer ball. She did that

nineteen years old. I mean, what were you doing that nineteen? I know what I was doing, and it was not inventing energy producing soccer generating soccer balls. But list of accolades includes which is most Promising Women Entrepreneurs for Start Getting thirty eight, Magazine thirty, The thirty and Harvard University Scientists of the Year. Jessica Matthew, How do how do you introduce yourself? Oh? Man, say hey, I'm jess uh gosh.

I mean, I do like to tell people that I'm trying to be like the love child of Beyonce and Bill n the science guy. I do like to say that because I feel like it's still whole, like if you just kind of pulled together. When I was younger, I was way more bill n I like Beyonce takes Beyonce. It is the hard party, the hard work, that's the hard part. Um. But yeah, kind of that vibe of how I moved through and I approached things. So that's proba be the quick one. I love I love that

love that. So when I met you, it was just uncharted play. Um, and now it's uncharted power and you've gone from harnessing energy to creating power. So and nonsustainability. Um, what what drove like the expansion of your skulle? That's a good question. Um. I like to tell people that the first step in innovation is the articulation of the problem. The way that you've you articulate that problem will then

drive what you determined to be the solution. And so when I was nineteen years old, you know, when I'm over here just knowing that stuff doesn't make sense. You know, I don't understand how my own family, cousins and Nigeria who are engineers themselves, they can't imagine a better world than the world that we're living. In where we're losing power several times a day. Um, you know, and there

are quite a few other infrastructural problems. Uh. And yet you know, kind of the flip side is they always had a better cell phone than I did. Right, So clearly it's an issue that masqueraded as social economic but was really infrastructural. For me, I thought the issue was inspiration. I was like, they need to believe that they can change the world that they're in. They need to believe

that they have agency. And so how do I design a solution that inspires them to try to play the game, to get in the game, literally inspire them to get in the game. And so that's where the first products came from. Energy generating play products like taking the most popular sport in the world, soccer, and saying, all right, I'm gonna bridge the gap between this passionate excitement that I know my cousins, I know a lot of people in the world are gonna have and bring them across

that bridge over to engaging in energy and infrastructure. And my assumption was that if I inspire them, they'll do the work, because you know, oh, I'm sure they're smart enough, and there are better people in the world, who are better suited to be building infrastructure solutions. So let me just inspire get to the point where we're you know, producing tens of thousands of these, partnering with different UM companies, you know, governments to distribute them more on an education side.

Started to even work with different Fortune one hundreds on their energy generating UM strategy is right, like energy generating strollers, all that stuff. That's when we met. I think, remember afro Tech. I'm like, okay, remb to do the stroller suitcase UM. And it was two things happened. First, you know, I started to realize that it was still gonna take a couple of years. It takes two years to make any product for that's gonna a baby is gonna be in.

You can't just come up with some stuff like it takes years to go through that partner in R and D. And I was like, all right, this is kind of coming off a little kitchy, Like it's fun, it's cool, but I don't necessarily see people being inspired and fixing the infrastructural problems. I just kind of see them, you know, getting excited, but then sitting there. And then the second thing that happened was that Donald Trump won the election.

Dead ass. The most inspirational thing that ever happened to me was Donald Trump winning the election, because prior to that, you know, people would say, oh, um, well, you know, were you inspired When Barack Obama was president? I was like, Barack Obama was a constitutional scholar, He's supposed to be president. Just because his black ass is president does not mean that I should be president. No. But when Trump won, I was like, Okay, so now anybody can do it.

And that was the first moment when I realized I first of all, yes I could be president. If this is what we're working with right now, I believe i'd be a good president. Let's go. And then I turned to my team and I said, why are we waiting for other people to build infrastructure when fools like this

are building infrastructure or running for president. Uh. And so at the end of IS when we said, all right, what if we take this investment and instead of putting two to three years into kind of consumer products, we start looking at infrastructure. And in seventeen is Only formally changed their name from Uncharted Play to Uncharted Power based on the success we had in building UM an energy

generating speed bump. What then happened again would not have expected. Um. We kept on working and built something that was pretty dope UM compared and ran analyzes. You know, we were beating out numbers of you know, major uh kinetic academics and Virginia Tech beating out the numbers of competing companies. And Boston, Singapore brought our solution. We can actually you degenerate a kill a lot of power when you when you drove over the speed bump. It was a precursor

to energy generating. Roads started to bring our solutions to different governments and the governments were excited about it, but they didn't really know how to scale it. At best, they were interested in maybe like a one off pilot here or there. And that's when we realized that the issue was much broader than just a new way to have decentralized energy generation for infrastructure. The issue was the lack of a platform to actually to actually deploy and

manage this infrastructure. So the cities were like, this is cool, but how do I make this work in this silo? When I got to work with the grid in this way, I gotta work a solar here and there, was nobody who was saying, how do you bring it together? It was it was almost like it was almost like we were all trying to be chefs making a meal at a buffet. But then when someone comes and says, yeah, this is dope. Okay, Yeah, I want to eat it. Where's the tray? Oh we don't have those here. Where's

the play Oh we don't have those here? All right, so how do you want me to sustainably gather all these things together and bring it back to my table to eat it? That's not my problem? Or do it in a really expensive way. And so we realized that that's that's how we were being viewed. So we really said, okay, kind of like how Stacy Abram's all right, voting doesn't work in Georgia for me, I'm aa fix the voting system so I can run for governor. That's basically how

that's that's a classic black women vibe. I was like, all right, I want to get my application out, so I'm gonna go ahead and fix the way that all applications get deployed and managed sustainably like and then that way I can deploy my stuff. And so that's what brought us to building these sustainable smart city platforms where we're consistently dry looking at how do we drive down the cost the upfront costs reduced of time to deploy.

We choose the time to repair and take away all the stress that the city has and deploying and managing things like our energy generating speed bumps. But by g AI smart lighting, lighting everything, and so into a smart take a city like infrastructure solutions like even for us, like smart water systems, like all the things that you would need to avoid a lot of the death that we saw from the from this storm. So doing that is as convenient as downloading and running an app on

your phone. Um So, now when we think about the past apps we've made, we're excited because once this platform is out there and people have the smartphone, which which we're going to be putting out this year, um in a couple of our Betat cities, then we get Now you get that kind of unprecedented, unpredictable thing that happened with smartphones, right no one, no one knew the value years ago, but now we can't live without it. We're excited for people to start playing around with that. So

that's that's the arc. That's how I got from soccer balls to part any platforms. Now. I love it and I want to spend some time in a few minutes talking about more than mentality. It takes to do the

scale of things that you're doing. But I'm gonna start here. Um, there was a quote I found from you that said, after nearly a decade of work, we realize that the problem isn't just a lack of smart power infrastructure, and so I kind of see like, Um, what you're doing now is like it's not micro pivots, but it's like

the problem reveals itself right when you get started. Can you talk about how you you just gave us the arc, but how when you get started on the road as an innovator, you may think the problem is X, but it's actually why. Well, you're becoming my favorite person to talk to because that's thank you for these questions. Um, I will say this one thing that hasn't changed has been my true north from the jump. The mission has always been, how do we get to a world where

there's universal access to smart, sustainable infrastructure? Right? How do we get to a world where the things that some people take for granted and other people are dying literally without UM. It just doesn't make sense, right. And I think for me the year after the wedding that a lot of people kind of know about, right, that led to my first invention that it wasn't like I went to my aunt's wedding, you lost power. And then there

was an invention of an energy generating soccer ball. That year. Uh, there were three people in my family, my grandfather, my uncle, and my aunt. All of them died and they all passed away from things that either could have been at least delayed, if not totally avoided UM if they had

access to this infrastructure that we take for granted. And so that was the thing that in me kind of a line and say, all right, you know, I like I often tell people like intersectionality is a compass, and when you think about all the things that make you who you are and all of your experiences, that's something like if you look at the intersection of that, the next point of that is what you should be doing

with your life period point like that's it. And so what I found at that next point for me was like trying to address this problem. Like I literally remember thinking I was in my ap psychology class, high school year, eighteen years old, right before all this thinking, I know I can't cure death, but can I cure life? Because what's messing with me more than anything, honestly, like is it's not just the fact that they passed in a

way that could have been avoided. It's that most likely when they took their last breath, they thought the same thing that my cousins you know in Nigeria thought, which was, we have no agency, We can't change this. The best way to deal with your problems is just to get you to die. And so like that broke my heart. That seemed ridiculous, like I refuse to accept it, like it is truly the thing that made me say, all right, So how do I then start to think how I

could bridge the gap in YadA, YadA, YadA. So then once I had that true north, everything just becomes kind of like a meditation on intention and impact. So first listen, I'm young, thinking the issue is inspiration approaching it. I had opportunities to be in the business of just making millions of soccer balls. Yeah, I had, like I had

that in fact that people wanted that. But so if I'm seeing that it's not actually resulting in what I want, And in fact, it's just more plastic, more this, more that, And it's not Leslie fixing the bigger issue because you then what's what's up? Um, Like, I didn't get into this just because oh, look, I can say I made you know this. It's like this was step one. But my intention, what's my intention? My intention is to fix

this infrastructure issue. And if it's not happening just through inspiration, then what's happening? So then I'm thinking, oh, maybe there needs to be an infrastructure model for decentralized energy. I thought that that was the issue that people can conceptualize a world where we didn't have centralized infrastructure systems. Built a system there you go, then you get them. You realize, No, it's bigger than that. It's not just about decentralized energy.

This is about the lack of a platform to actually pull it all together, to get all these disparate decentralized infrastructure solutions interoperating together. And again like like for me, I was like, of course, like, inasmuch as this speed bump is still sexy and fun, I have a goal. I have a goal because this is a life or death situation for me personally. Um, and now even bigger. I you know, I got engaged last year and so I'm gonna I'm gonna be getting married in Nigeria, big

Nigerian wedding in March. And if you think they go, I'm gonna let these people bring a diesel generator out after everything I've done said for the last decade thirteen years. Will listen, So I'm out here, like, listen, y'all, I get it together all right, So so so so this is the like I'm real big on drink your own medicine, like the first parts of our system we installed, you know at a facility where my own mom and brother

would like, you know, be driving over at etcetera. Like I am a percent bringing this platform to Nigeria and the first place y'all gonna see it as at my wedding, and I'm gonna be like, you smell that air, You smell that fresh air, you like that look. Now I'm about to be like, I'm like, oh, y'all this, I

don't care what's up. So it's it's personal, right And I think I think if you know why you're doing it, and you are, I think fully understanding that just because it's not your plan doesn't mean it's it's not gonna be your destiny. Is something I say a lot um you you you just gotta be really uncompromising with your mission, but then flexible with everything that takes you there. And yeah, it's it's a it's a it's a it's a balance. But I think that the rubric is know why you're

doing it. That's the thing that that's the know why you're doing this, know what you intend for this to be, and and find ways to continuously bring yourself back to that. That why So I'm so glad you said you ended on that, because so many people I want to start a business, um, may not know what idea to pursue, what idea they can you know, create value with for others and up shows that ideas are literally all around you.

Um how problems are literally all around you that you can solve even how do you, by more than just your representation, get us to look around us for the problems that we can solve. That's a really good question. Um. So we do have that. That's we do have a program at the company because this is something we actually want to operationalize um. You know, in the early days, I truly believe that almost anyone could be an inventor, they just had to be given the kind of right

psychological tools. I still very much believe that the problems of this world are entirely too complex, complicated for any one person or organization to solve. And so our best chance in hell, especially with the damn near you know, end of days that it seems like in the world right now, with everything going on with the locus and that, you know, like it's scary, it's it's a scary time.

We need as many people as possible believing that they can make a difference, because even if it's just one out of every one thousand people doing something that really changes where we're at, that's better than what we have right now, which is, you know, a small group of people who basically all think the same thing, who think that they're the only one that are worth getting their big idea funded right and pushing forward. And so for for us, that meant developing a program that we call Uplift.

And what we did is we created a curriculum, and especially curriculum now that's gone through it's like fourth version we digitized it during COVID and we still reach like lots of kids through through digital means. Um. And basically, we have a curriculum called Think Out of Bounds that

teaches kids how to become social inventors. How and literally it goes through the process of teaching them what it means to be an inventor because some examples of inventors that look like them, uh, and teaches them how to look at their surroundings not as obstacles but as opportunities. So let's make a list of all the problems you have and now let's come how would you think about

inventing something to solve that? Uh? And so that's that's a program we like to do wherever we're about to work, um, you know, Poughkeepsie where we're where we're working on some exciting things to to demonstrate how a normal city, you're not even one of the big you know, quote unquote sexy ones, like a normal city most cities are like mckepsie, how they could use our smartphone to choose the apps that I go to transform their city into a smart,

sustainable city in record time and under budget. Um, you know, before we we do all that we want to make sure that the people in that city feel prepared for that opportunity, right like they need to they need to understand the power in their hands when you when we give them this this platform. And so we've done already almost two hundred kids. UM in partnership with the city school district. We're getting ready to do like a little um like invention the thon with some of the kids.

And it's it's it's dope, right, It's it's focused, you know, it's authentic. It's not like the broadest scale stuff. But it's something that we've done in Swaziland, Bronx Harlem like you name it, um if we've worked there, we we've added that component and um, you know, we've seen an actual statistical improvement in creative confidence, like like you ask

the kids beforehand, do my ideas matter? And you asked them after and it's it's a it's a maybe to an increase and that that's one of the things that we do structurally. Uh. I think as an organization. So I hear you when you because and I love that example, because I want to push you a little further down that line. Because the SBA put out a study. I think it was the last time that they did it, but it said eighty percent of black owned businesses are

in the bottom for a revenue. Like, so we over index on creating service worker you know, so we long care and beauties shops and you know, diners, and but we pent of our businesses are created in those the bottom of industries for a revenue. Um. But the work you're doing is industry reimagining. Like blow, it's a trillion dollar market, you know. And what you do with sustainability? Um, are we thinking big enough? Just i' mean black people,

are we thinking big enough? You know? It's a two sided street, right, So on one hand, you know you you you innovate on what you know, right, And it took me a decade to get to the point of knowing enough where I could be in anyone with anybody, I don't care who they think. They are obviously down right there with Bill Gates and be like, listen, Bill, what you just said is super cute. But this is what I know because I just mean the last decade

doing this, um and so. And it took digging, like I said, like I had to get to layers of understanding the problem. Um, and so I think a lot of it's like we you your approach was right in front of you, and then you run, you run on that. UM. I do also think that we it's it's a nuanced thing. So I'll give you an example of what's happening right now. UM, we have you know, we have have brilliant CTO started his year black man, which it took me so long

to find. I didn't hire because he was black, hired brilliant. I hired him because he's brilliant. Just you know, listen,

but this happens to be a black man. Uh, you know, started his career a year after I was born, Like you know Compton raised army, but like his literally like part of the teams when people think about their smart meters that are on their homes, part of the team that led that, like helped one company built up a product line and the smart grid space that uh like already brought the fifteen million in revenue you know before

without a sales team three million in revenue. Was that got the sales team the I p O. They still bring him for consulting. Went to another company that he built their initial system and they sold the Verizon you know his he's advised on how forty five different smart cities in the country have how they build their smart cities low key do that like gets this stuff done. The person who's doing our edge cloud was Cloud was literally Oracles chief cloud architect. Now he's mine, that's a

white he's legit, super legit. You know. We have really really like yeah, we pulled the cather like the people who built the underlying technology that we have gotten comfortable

with that we take for granted. As soon as COVID had I was able to pull them for wherever they are because I'm like, now you don't have to be in Harlem, just come here find on and it's dope, but still, well, here's what I face, right, So now we walk into a virtual room and I'm like telling someone, this is what we do, this is how much we need, this is how we're gonna this is where we're demonstrating it.

What I face that's really interesting is in other situations, if I was a white male founder, people would be comfortable with the fact that they will never understand the tech. Who knows how the internet works, who knows how your phone knows? You don't No one can break down how the phone works, but you know the value it brings you. But when I'm there saying it, they have to find they now have to find a place in their head where they have to sit and say this black girl

understands something technologically that I don't. She is so clearly obviously above me in this, and that's something that they've been getting. I've been seeing people get uncomfortable with, like they refused to say, you know what, I'm never gonna understand this, but I understand value. They're like there's a game where they're like, how like and it's multiple things happening, is the race and the gender. And they're sitting here like,

all right, well explain this. Then Bill starts talking and I'm saying and I'm like, why are you asking Bill? Bill is about to say ship even more technical to me, I barely understand the academs, Bill saying. Bill is talking about all these I p X thing seven seven seven standards, all this different ship, talk about all this stuff. I don't get it. I just learned what the fiber pop was like. And I'm sitting there like, don't ask him this,

But they're still trying because they're seeing him. They seeing the brother. Oh, and I'm like, if your due diligence instead of it to understand like the map the thirty to forty trillion dollar industry that we're a first mover in, specifically with smart city platforms. If you're due diligence is not to go ahead and talk to the people who were delivering value do but your due diligence is to

try to be on our level with the technology. I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have the way for you to go to the ride before you before you can give me money. And so on one hand, we're now thinking so big, like playing this out right. If I tell you dead ass my solution. I have a smart paper that's like that has the ubiquity of a phone. Anywhere that there's ground, I can install it the same way a smart phone delivers power, communications and data processing

to applications. That's what my paper does. I have an edge cloud that uses AI and machine learning the same way your operating system uses EDGE uses AI machine learning to run your apps. Every app that you can imagine, and the unprecedented, unimaginable value of your phone is what my platform enables. They also now have to sit here and say it's beyond thinking big. We have to then ask ourselves, are the people who are hearing this ready to have black people, yeah, have that kind of power?

T B D T t B D on that and like and the way the way I've seen it, I think is like we as a community can only do so much though we only have so many dollars for these really big ideas we've we've got to figure out how we tap into the non black dollars to to finance the ideas that are going to disrupt everything in the entire world. Um and it's it's listen, it's it's not that it's not possible. So I do think we

need to think big. But it is a harder sell because even if you have all the proof points, now, their issue is there, there's there's sometimes there's some discomfort, not always to some of the people we've been playing with.

So I think it's a two sided street. Yeah, So I want to talk about like more of your mentality because some people will look at you as I could never do, and but they forget that you wake up every day just like they did, and you know there was a day where you weren't doing this and you got on the journey to doing it and now today you are who you are and the next year you'll

be even bigger. Talk to me about one of those early leaps of faith that you took as an innovator that could have been really humbling, Um, but it puts you on the path like an early just completely for faith that I don't know if it's gonna work, but I'm taking a shot on me. Yeah. Um, I mean there's so there. I feel like a big part of the job is constantly doing risk analyses on like you know, in real time and making decisions that are all incredibly risky in some way. Um, I think, I mean just

within the because it's coming up in the anniversary. I remember making the decision to shut down the office and become a remote working team despite the fact that part of our solution is hardware and people couldn't go in

and do hardware. But when when COVID was kind of coming in, Um, it was I think March nine, I've gone my last business trip and I was actually going to Toronto to uh to go and take a look at Sidewalk Labs, and that's when I was just like, no shade, but I was like, oh, I was like, oh, yeah, it's Jankie. I was like yeah, I said at Google, come find me like whatever, like, but I looked and I was like all right, Like I was like, okay, this is cool. Um, we should work together like you

have better stuff. But anyway, we don't wherever that is. So on the way back and notice that no one was on any planes, March tenth comes and uh, the mayor, the Blasio says, if you can, you should, you know, work from home. And I immediately had to think, okay, what to do, and I had to I had to act quickly, and I felt really you know, ultimately in that moment, I made the decision sent an email, Hey, everyone, gather what you need to gather today because March eleventh

is the last day. I'm not no one's in March. No one's in UM. And it ended up be the last time that most people ended up going to our Harlem hq UM. And so that that was a risk for a lot of reasons, because we didn't know a lot about the pandemic. We didn't know a lot about

the virus UM. You know, we had just launched into some new KPI s that we were just doing okay on if I'm being honest, Um, you know, I don't know if these people, as my dad would say, are just traded on you know, on e trade or whatever when no one's there, like you don't know. Like I used to think that you had to be in the office in Harlem to get the vibe and get things done.

And yet I had to immediately say I'm still go and pay you, but but go ahead and do whatever and all these different things, um, and like that was a risk that and I had to be very clear. And there are a lot of people who were slow to make the move for the health of their their people. Um. But I mean I think in those moments. I think back to track. So I was really big in track in high school, one to four hundred long jump in the in the races that were kind of more like

local regional. I was the ones and twos. I could kill it as soon as we started racing against like the serious Jamaicans. I was mostly just a four runner, like four hundred meter you know what I'm saying. I'm Nigerian, Like that's where we at, Like that's where we could kill it. I was, I'm fast, I'm just not Jamaican fast. They're just yeah, I know where I'm at, listen, local level. I'm about to kill it. As soon as I see some bombs let's stuff, I'm like, all right, I cool,

I let me go to a four hundre meter. So uh And but so much of so much of how I think about these things kind of applies to different times when I played different sports. And you know, the thing about track was the reason why you practice was not so that you would have your perfect race the day of the race. It's so that your worst day still beat everybody else. Like it wasn't like okay, okay, I'm gonna make sure I get this start so that

I hope that I get it. It's like even if I started ship, like I'm just even if this is my worst time, my worst time is still gonna smoke y'll. And I feel so much of the moments like even the last year I had been training for them. I have been training for innovation and progress during times of uncertainty for the last like eight or nine years, so that when it came to the moment within the layer and kind of of COVID, I was just like, all right,

uncertainty what's new. I'm a black female founder. Let's I gotta move. I gotta do this, well, I gotta do that. Oh, how many deals fell through? We had like seven, like three or four million dollars pilot deals. Resorts fell through all right, like what's new? Like? And so you know, I think a lot of it again from the perspective of being a founder of color Um and seeing, yes,

lots of obstacles, but the opportunity. I felt it as if for most of my career I had been training with fifty pound weights, whereas like a lot of my white mountain white male peers especially, I've been training with ten pound weights. So yeah, they could run fast like it. It It all looked easier. But when COVID hit and a hundred pounds got thrown into our hands, who do you think is gonna do better? Who do you think's gonna like handle this? And so you know, those those

little moments happened quite a bit. Um and I had to make a lot of quick decisions to keep my team paid to be in a position we're gonna have to furlew anyone to make a decision how we could grow. And um, I'm not going to say that I had some master strategy around it other than to lead with honesty, lead with authenticity, and be very contextual, so creating space for humanity and aligning everyone's personal experience of what we

were doing. But um, I feel like very fortunately a lot of the risks paid off because we're in a really good position right now and still still a hard, uphill battle, but very very exciting. There's some really good lessons in there. So, I mean, you talked about COVID and UM and to be supersensitive to what people are going through personally, but how how much has COVID created opportunity for black people in industries like sustainability? Like has

it created more space for us? Like what are the benefits you know, I use that word very sensitively, but what are the benefits that COVID has created for us in the industries like this? Well, first of all, its might say you're very good at what you do, this is the best you are, will go ahead, man ship that's that you need to you need to show you know, you be on TV like you'd be like, oh, but like I don't know what this is, but there's a bunch of fools who are not cutting it. When you

do it just pointed out that can we make that happen? Y'all, Um, thank you, that's a really uh okay. Last year for me, it felt more just like an additional layer of fire. So first there was a period I think from May to September, end of May, end of May going definitely than there was like Juneteenth and July. But I would say, yeah, kind of May through July when it was just like I think almost every black person and it was like we are tired, and just everyone gets away from us,

like like leave us alone. And so it felt more just about I think self like trying to figure out self care, trying to figure out what kind of catharsisy would need, which I think was important because we were going through a lot. Our families are getting hit more, um are we It felt very real and I used it as a fire for myself because I knew, okay as a black person and look at many more people

who look like me are getting this. Um. No one in my on my side of the family, but my fiance side of the family being in the South, you know, working in different jobs where they can't stay home, a lot of them got it. Um. You know that that's just straight up what it what it is. Um. So it felt like a fire for me personally to say, Okay, a lot of the things that were cracks now became valleys right in terms of the problems like COVID, just

like it exasperated everything. What can we do? Like it broke my heart that like even in Poughkeepsie a quarter of the kids could not continue to go to school because they didn't have access to internet, and all those kids were black, like it what there's like there's a north side and there's a south side, and the north side kids are the one's experienced this. So this is like these kids are dropping out like this was straight up season four of the wire Ship happening, like no exaggeration. Um.

And so that was that was a push there. I think more macro now has become into and and there's like a sense of some stability. I say that very cautiously to me. The opportunity is to go back to the definition of entrepreneurship. In my opinion, entrepreneurship is um and this I did not like someone people say this, but I agree this is also my opinion. I should say that entrepreneurship is problem solving without regard for resource.

That's all it is. At your core. The first problem that you articulate to solve most authentically is usually your problem. And so like you know, I say the joke, but it's a fact. Like Mark Zuckerber couldn't get a D so that's what's his problem, and look what he did. Like and again, it started as one way and then it evolved. I had a problem and I expanded into

an infrastructure in a play a company. Um. And so I think a lot of people now, once you've found a way to stabilize and kind of work with this new normal, you gotta ask yourself are you going to take it? Are you gonna make it? Like? Are you is this? Is this the norm? Is this the world you want to accept? Or do you want to see what you can do? Because yeah, the reality situation is we can't hope for some like saving grace solution from the top down. We shouldn't. We shouldn't. There's not even

there's no fun in that either. And so I do think there's an opportunity because oftentimes if you want to design something well, you need to design for the extremes. And if black people have experienced the extremes of the last twelve months, we are in the best position to design something that's gonna make the lives better, not just for us but for everybody. Um. But the resources have to get there too, Like there are a lot of things that are getting funded that are interesting since we're

still all sitting in our houses waiting for vaccines. Like I know, I know black chemists. I had ideas on how to improve the testing situation, but they're in Mississippi. How they going to get any money? Um? But yeah, that's so that's my perspective. I think on the opportunity that we have, so to speak. There's a quote I found from you and says, any fully banked solution needs to truly contemplate the expected response of governments and finance institutions,

including so that this work. This can work for communities that don't have the capital um. And when you said that, you were talking about the industry and energy industry, But I see impacts in other industries where we try to make massive disruptions, right, and so how much should entrepreneurs be thinking about policy and how do we get legislators and bureaucrats to more fully embrace the entrepreneurial spirit. Two tough questions. Um, well second one is tough. First one

not super crazy, So I'll start there. Um. The more dynamic and complicated the problem, usually the more you're going to see that it's not just some new technological or business model innovation. You are going to need to think through the role that the government, policy and the people who are financing this like play. So it's a bit of a triangle that you're not you need to be aware of. Um. Sometimes you can streamline things to straight kind of B two C and go from there. Uh,

and then and and build. But you know a lot of our infrastructure is as a public service, right, so there's a little bit of like a tragedy of the commons that makes things complicated. Um. It doesn't mean it's critical, but if you're doing something that impacts the public good, you know, take Airbnb, take you know, like Uber, After a while you will be even if you're like, oh, we just did what we had to do, someone's gonna catch up to you and say, well, you don't ask permission,

so we're gonna start with your ship. Like so you know, there needs to be an awareness of it, but that there's nothing wrong with that happening that way to get in however you're gonna get in, um, you know for us, you know, whether it's energy or broader infrastructure, because we're dealing with things that also have high um that can

be highly dangerous. That's part of why we have to just move at a certain pace because I'm not gonna put you know, twelve kV in the ground under Grandma and just say, well, you know, okay, like like that's not what like like that's why like i gotta I gotta crawl because I'm dealing with power, uh and like I'm not trying to be out here with anyone's life on my conscious because I you know, you know, move fast and break things like it's not that's not that's

not it what that that's not it? Like there's life or death consequences. Which there's a whole argument we made that even the things that didn't seem as dangerous, like social media probably you know, it would have been helpful they thought about it just a little bit. Um you know, now we're seeing it exactly right now now on the other side of like how you get the governments to play and even the financiers who are often very risk averse, or like this is what works, we just want to

do this. I can just share what we've been trying to do. UM, so one you know, has been aligning what we're doing not with why we think it's cool, but why it matters to them. Most governments care about

two things, political optics and financial efficiency. So if you can present it in something in a way that's going to make them look good for their political goals, and do so in a way that does either doesn't cost them any money or um cost them less money than what they would have spent, and you're gonna get in there, usually for some sort of pilot or something, because why not once they've established that they care about the third big thing, which is time to deploy, because they you know,

people only have so long that they're in office, and so they want to be able to brag on that for as long as they can, and you have so they want to make sure you can move quickly, and that's that's tough. But operationalizing around that UM is a big deal. It's it's part of the reason why we think time to deploy is so massive for our platform. The faster, you know, we want to get to the point where we can get infrastructure solutions deployed in communities

in three to six weeks. It normally takes nine months, all right. So that's that's a massive thing, so that people can kind of get that that rush around it. UM. And then on the financing side, Honestly, as soon as you are showing that you can make money, they'll come. They're not dying driven like they just they're there. They they just oh, you make the money, all right, let me let me, let me give you some money to

make money. That's that's just what it is. UM. You talk a lot about being UM or how being a black woman doing this work, black woman in Harlem, you know, specifically, is an asset to an industry like this, even when that they may not realize is an asset to the industry like this. And UM that we can do more than people might want to. Let us let on that we can do. UM, what is it that we uniquely bring to industries that we are not overrepresented in value wise?

If we were to lean into our perspective all define our magic for us, like you know what I mean? I mean, so all I can say is just my personal experience, I spent a lot of my career wondering why me, or thinking, of course not me. I assumed that there were people who are better suited to be doing I'm doing right now, and it took a long time for me to get to the point in realizing

that that that couldn't have been farther from the case. Um, there are things that are coming up now, like when we go deep into competitive analysis and let me look at you know, why is it that we can deliver something that Cisco couldn't, The Nokia couldn't, um, you know, the Google couldn't. Like I say their names low because like it's kind of wild, right, Like these guys are

not they know, they're not slouches. And when you look at the things that differentiate how I came to this point from how they came to the point, you realize that so many things that makes you who you are and gave you that perspective are exactly the missing piece, because let's face it, we wouldn't be living in a world where Texas could have happened that they had it

and they had it covered. Um. And so for me, you know, there's there's little things like our ability to kind of be this missing link between the smart in the smart city. If you, if you're upbringing was such that you took the grid and power for granted, you would start innovating from the point of assuming that that was fine, and he would start innovating on top of that.

Just the fact that I was coming from the perspective of like, no, it's not because I'm thinking about my own family automatically gave us a competitive advantage because I was thinking about a system that they couldn't even fathom, didn't wouldn't exist. But I was like, no, this is JANKI because you can't scale like but that was only me thinking that now to oh and right now, everyone's

funny talking about the the infrastructure around transmission lines. I was saying that to CEOs and chairmans of utilities three years ago. Why because like, we had the experience of trying to scale a speed bum and integrate into the grid and it didn't work. It didn't make any sense,

and it was the fault of the grid. And off the record, not off the record for you, but like these people said, hey, Jess, off the record, yeah, we know this is always the thing that you know works, So we didn't invest any R and D in it. But yeah, we know this is bad. And that was back in and I was like, okay, so now and now now I for real, No, something's up. Um. When we when we look at from a platform perspective, the things that we're doing to drive adoption, you know, it's

really understanding engagement. Knowing that people would be able to understand a whole new type of energy if I packaged it in a soccer ball. It's why our platform is going to be accepted and scaled and understood in a way that all these other platforms couldn't. And so all of that, you know, it's it's not just about being like, you know, like black or whatever, as much as it's about saying, who are you and what's the life that

you have lived? Um? And if everybody in the room right now has basically had the same life, just by the fact that you are leaning into who what makes you different? That's most likely if we're still sitting here one, that's probably the missing piece. That's probably the thing that that that we've been waiting for. Um. And so that's that's why this is exciting. We've been left out for so long, right, Like it's it's almost like they're trying

to cook something in the kitchen. They ain't got no butter, and we out here just buttery, just buttery as hell, just like just sitting here, like all right. And then we come in there and they're like, all right, we got this vanilla, we got this, and you're like, but do you have the butter? And now something that would be as like hard of the board is delicious shortbread.

That That's how I feel I feel like, I feel like we we have an often ignored experience that is the missing ingredient and what we need for the world that we all want. Jessica Matthews friend ending, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, this is awesome. Black Tech Green Money is a production of Black the Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Networking I Heart Media. It's produced by Morgan Dubon and me Well Lucas. Additional

production support by Love Beach and Raven Nearport. Special thank you to Michael David's since the car savan Yan you know like the wine. Yes, that's his real name. Learn more about my guests and other tech dis represent innovators at afro tech dot com. Go get your money. He's in love one