Good morning, peeps, and welcome to woke F Daily with me your girl, Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, it has been a wonderful Pride month here on WOKF and we are going to be rounding out our Pride celebration. You can't ban queer joy this week. And I'm excited because one, We've gotten to speak with some really amazing, thoughtful, innovative, courageous activists, writers, content creators this month that have really
reminded me about the purpose of pride. Right, And you know, particularly in this time that we are living in which I'm gonna be honest with you to say that I
never saw this kind of backslide coming. I feel really ignorant to say so, right, because there is nothing in our history that should have made me believe that it was just going to be smooth sailing from you know, from the passage of marriage and you know, and down with you know, bands on queer people in the military and the embracing of so much over the course of my life that I didn't see this coming, you know.
And so a part of me is just like wake the fuck up, right, And then the other part of me is just really sad because every time that I feel in this country that we make progress on any front, it's like, then we take like seventeen thousand fucking steps backwards.
And the fight for LGBTQ quality is honestly different than any other fight, right, Like, I'm a black woman in America, still fighting to be free, and we're coming up on the two hundred and fiftieth you know, year of America's existence in a handful of years, and I'm like, and we still just freeish, right.
So I think that.
As we move forward, and there have been a couple of wins that have taken place over the last couple of days that I think are really important, and those wins, you know, have been and I just want to, you know, name a couple, which is that judges are beginning to rule against these outrageous laws against drag performers, against LGBTQ people having freedom of speech and expression right, which is still a part of our constitution, and our constitution still
dictates things, right. So we saw that happen with a federal judge in Florida temporarily blocked a new law allowing the state to penalize businesses that admit children to quote adult live performances such as drag shows. So that happened, and that was yet another slap in the face to Ron DeSantis, who also had the Hamburger Mary ruling that came up against him as well, because guess what, folks, like, they're breaking the law in trying to deny people their voice.
And they're also calling drag shows quote unquote adult entertainment and like or as if it's burlesque, as if it's a strip club. But I don't see anybody trying to pass fucking legislation to deny strip clubs, right, you know,
like so amazing the hypocrisy here. But you're seeing these incremental wins that are happening, and they give me hope, and they give me, you know, that kind of mustard seed that we need to continue to walk around with, because if you just take in all of the bad day in and day out, you're not gonna want to get out of bed in the morning. Which brings me
to my next guest, Anna Deshaun. I was so excited folks about this conversation, and I'll tell you why because Anna has come on WOKP before as a matter of fact, Anna was on last year where Anna is the co founder and creator of The Cube, which is an LGBTQ and bipop app which is curated of all of these amazing black queer people of color voices and their podcasts and their content that is just like on one app.
So instead of going through let's say, you know, these larger streaming places and trying to figure out, well, what do I really want to listen to, the Cube is
a for us, buy us app. Anna and I get into really great conversation about what it feels like to be a black queer creator, the obstacles that she has faced, the obstacles to funding, right to have to show proof of concept when you know, white cysts, hetero men can walk into a room with like, you know, their fucking idea sketched out on a napkin and be given millions
of dollars. And so we talk about the real wheel, but we also talk about, you know, the power in creation and in owning something that is for the community it's being created by. And so it was a really great conversation and I really hope that you will enjoy this as we close out month this week, my conversation with content creator and the co founder of The Cube, Anna Deshon. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to woke f Daily Anna Deshon, who is the co founder
of the Cube. The conversation is centered around this, what this does. What the Cube is is an app that is created for and by us. I don't know how else to say that. You'll say it better, but I feel like it is four queer people of color about peer queer people of color. It is a space where you can find new artists, where you can find new creatives. And you know, we know that people who are listening to this right they find wok F Daily in a couple of different places. You're at being one of them.
iHeart being another place. And so tell people exactly what it is that makes your and are so special and important and necessary.
Yes, yes, and yes see all of that. And thank you for inviting me to share this with your audience and for being back on WOKF because I love your work and always have so I'm always grateful to be on your platform. What makes us different is that it was born out of our own need. I was sitting around with my two co founders, who are also my two best friends talking about the radio station that we have that's online. We play queer music all day, we
report on prier news. But we knew we had to expand in the podcasting to remain relevant because we're in such an on demand society. But we couldn't find any podcasts that were hosted by queer folks of color, that were hosted by black and brown folks within these apps that exist today, and we were like, where do we find the pods for us? We know they're out there, but we can't find them. And as we began digging into this idea, we were like, we got to create
this app. We can create it. We can create the change right And one of my favorite quotes and I share it all the time Shirley chisholm, Okay, if they'll give you a seat at the table, bring a fold in chair. And I just felt like we brought plenty of chairs, and it was just time for us to build our own tables. Like what are we waiting on?
We can do this ourselves. And so the idea came to create this platform where we can curate, you know, these podcasts and create a hub for the very best and that's really at the heart of what makes our platform different is that we do listen to everything. It's not just oh, come here, you can claim your pod, and you know, I'm not interested in the quantity. I'm
interested in the quality. I want you to come here, and even if you're not down with this particular topic, it's gonna be a good podcast and you can just go find another good podcast hosted by a bipod or qt pock person. And we deserve that. We deserve a place built for us, centering us and centering our identities. And because of technology, we're using artificial intelligence to be really smart around things that we value, which are our
identities and the things we care about. And so when you come to our platform, you create an account, you select your identities, you select the categories you'd like to listen to, and our platform serves you up content that uds you both of those things at the same exact time. And I'm really excited about what we're building. We've got
ninety four podcasts accepted into the platform. Today you can go to the q dot app and begin discovering and searching and listening right from our platform and being an entrepreneur out here in the world is tough raising money BC. We could talk so many.
Things right right right, yeah, and all.
Of the disparities around funding for women, funding for people of color in the BC space. But at the end the day to day, I'm doing it because I feel like we need it. I wanted it when I talk to other people, they wanted and I also I also know that we can create something that's really beautiful. Some folks have said it's like the be et a podcast. I'm like, I mean, okay, okay, we can receive like, okay, okay, yeah, I get where you're going. I've had people say, like,
you like the Green Book of podcasts. I was like, Okay, I see where you're going. I see the vibe, you know. And when people tell me things like that or mirror what the Cube is to them, it reminds me just how important it is that we exist. And so yeah, y'all check out the Cube. Be down with it. Yeah, I think, you know.
I think it's like, there are a couple of things that you said that I think are really important, which is, you know, when we see let's say, companies like Spotify that promote the voices, you know of people who are anti uh, you know, anti humanity, and trans, anti queer, anti black, you know, anti women. Just the list goes on and on and on. And we see the ability of you know, governments to threaten to pull away apps like TikTok because of what country is behind them. You know.
We often say or we see takeovers of the town square like with Twitter, right, people say, well, we need something that is for us, by us. We need something that we own because what happens, particularly with black creatives I feel as one myself, is that you get on these other apps, right, and you create content, and you try and monetize, and you try and build out an audience in a platform, but at the end of the day, if you don't own it, it can be taken away from you.
At any given moment, right, And that's exactly the opposite of what we're doing. We don't own anybody's content that's inside the platform. Everybody owns their own stuff. We are
really pulling in their RSS feed. And my hope is that by the end of twenty twenty five, because y'all gonna get into my business head right now, and by the end of twenty twenty five, my hope is that we have the brands and the advertising relationships needed that if folks who are in our platform want to monetize with us, that we can do that, that we can write add campaigns across you know, our entire platform to help support creatives because we know so many people, especially
in the podcasting space, are not getting paid for their work, right, and people do not value who they reach, And I think that it's it makes me actually kind of upset because I feel like, if you are reaching one hundred people every week, those are one hundred people that somebody else isn't reaching, and there's value in those hundred people. Right. We live in a society where people are always trying to be the billion dollar or million follower person, and
I'm like, you don't need that. You need to five your people, cultivate your audience. Right. It could be one hundred people, it could be five hundred people, a thousand people, but those are your people and they're gonna listen to you, and there's.
Valuation and they'll show up. And that that's the thing too. I think that that people really need to understand. Yes, they're always looking for, you know, the million followers or what have you, but when you turn to those people and you're like, you know, for action or to activate them. Are they really connected or are they just you know, a bot that is in You know that that is a part of your of your viewership. You know, are they really are they really down for you? And I
think that that what you said is really important. I do want to talk about the business aspect of it, because you know, if you go to tech conferences, which I know that you do, and go into these spaces, what we know is that black women get zero points zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero. I think I could keep going. You could point one percent of VC funding. Can you speak to that and how you have been able to to to to create this, to create this app given the statistics that.
Do not work in our favor. Yeah, I put a pause on fundraising with vcs because of that. I actually I was like, you know what, I'm gonna build this with my people. I'm gonna do what I know which is grassroots community building, building relationships with my audience, and then let's do this the way that I know how to build. In this moment, I will say I entered this space thinking about going the BC route. We definitely got our first check. Big up to Fifth Star Funds.
They wrote us our first check. They are a VC firm out of Chicago who who support BIPOC founders here in the city, and they wrote us a twenty five thousand dollars check. That was our first check that we got and their support has been invaluable. Okay, but all vcs are not like Fifth Star Funds. And what I found was that people are not investing in media and entertainment. That's one thing that's different right about our platform. I also found that I have to prove a little bit
more right. I'm not just going off of what is possible. I have to go off of what we've done, which is not always the same standard as anybody.
Else calling for a second, it is not the same standard that it's not kind of the same standard. It's not the same standard. You as much you you have listened and you've heard, you know, sis white straight men talk about the ability to you know, continue to fail up and talk about somebody just putting millions of dollars
behind the dream. Meanwhile, you know, people of color, particularly black women, have to show you know, a body of work and wrapped around their dream and so much more when dudes are walking in with a handshake.
A handshaking idea, nothing proving, right, I've got a with proof traction supporters, beta users, you know, all this other, all this other stuff, and it's so exhausting. I had this experience. I got to meet the Brat and Judy. It's just it's gonna sound like a random story, but it's not. Daniell Arms, Okay, what had the opportunity to meet Brett and Judy? It was really dope. There's a queer basketball club here in Chicago called Swish and they invited me, They invited them, we got to meet. I'm
in this room with Brat and Judy. I'm thinking to myself, I want to talk to Judy because she has built a multimillion dollar brand from the ground up, and I believe the Cube has an opportunity to be that. And I'm like, who knows it's gonna get a chance to talk to her again. I want to pick her brain. Right, So we're in the back before Brat, before Brat performs, I'm talking to Judy. I'm like, what do you think
I should do? Should I continue fundraising VC? And she was just like Nope, no, build it, build it, figure out how you bring in consistent cash flow, figure out your business how you want it to be before you let someone in who may want to control it, who want to push their own agenda. Come on, She's like, She's like, I know too many people who have taken VC funding and their business doesn't look like anything they wanted to be. And I took that and I listened.
I haven't fundraised since that moment, and I feel like that was some of the best advice. It was worth the brat coming over there like are you okay? I thought the brat was gonna come get me dam up if everybody was with her and I was with Judy, and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm married. We're good. We're good here. We are so good. I don't want
no problems, Brad. Respect. But that was some of the best advice because when you are doing a startup, and you're doing a tech startup, that's the way everyone thinks you should be going vc BC. But at the end of the day, they're giving you capital. But can you keep the capital going or you're gonna can you the fundraise for the rest of your life? Because that's also
what I hear. Once you start fundraising, you can't stop because you have more milestones to me, more people to manage, more people on your cap table, and.
More money to give back, right, more money to get that to And that's stairus.
Right, that's right. Yeah, that's right, And they want it quickly, depending what the type of investor you have. Some people want one hundred x ten x in the next two months. Can you turn that over? No? No, Oftentimes the answer is no. So where we're at right now, I have leveraged our audience. We've done crowdfunding, right, we have. I've got a monthly give call them the Cute Crew. They
give monthly to our Queer News podcast. And I have built just based on my community and building on partnerships and aligning our brand with other people who are doing the same exact thing in the podcast and community. And that's fueling our Cube tour that we're actually going on starting in July. We're kicking off in New York City with the Black Podcast is a social.
I mean, hello, do I get an invite? I'm in New York City. I would like to come?
Yeah, absolutely please, It's because summer social. We're kicking it off July fifteenth in Brooklyn. And you know what, Danielle, you should actually be our special guest in Manhattan.
Saying I mean going to Podstream Studios.
We're gonna be with Chris. With Chris, Yeah, I want to come, all right, Yes, Okay, we're gonna get it. We're gonna do that. Yeah, We're doing the second tecond Activation and Podstream Studios in Times Square with Chris. We're gonna be going to the DMB. We're going to Atlanta, We're going to Denver, We're gonna hit Oakland, We're going to Minneapolis, and we're partnering with all of these amazing podcasting companies who are amplifying black and brown voices in
the space. And there's a lot of them, but there's a lot of them, and we're gonna do this together and I'm really excited about that. Also, going to Baltimore, we're gonna take our podcast to the people. We're using silent Head as our immersive way of people listening to the Yeah. Yes, we're gonna play trailers from our Cube original podcast. We've got Black HIV in the South, which is now an award winning podcast. I'm so grateful for that piece of work, and we've got PolyAm chats coming out.
We just dropped the WNBA podcast called Rebound Revolution. It is so queer, it is so black, it is so great. If you enter the WNBA, you should tap in. If you're not, that's okay too. We actually made this pod for people who don't follow the w but want to know more about it. And then we're doing a podcast called Second Sunday in collaboration with PRX about being black
and queer in the Black Christian Church. So we're gonna play trailers, have conversation, highlight podcasts within the Cube network, and come together. We listened to podcasts alone, but podcast is community, so we should do it together sometimes. You know, I love that.
I love that idea because you're right, you know, the whole the experience of listening to a podcast for the year June it on a run on your commute, walking, you know, gardening and taking care of your house or what have you, is a very solo app But I do find that when people get into community, whether you're at brunch with friends or what have you, it's like, oh what are you listening to?
You know, what what are you getting into? This?
Similar way would people watch shows, you know on the streaming, it's like, you know, what are you watching? You want to be able to have conversation about it. So I love the idea of bringing something that is a very
siloed activity together in community with people. And I also think, you know, Anna that frankly crowd funding right, Getting people who are able to see themselves in what it is that you're creating to be a part of something that is being built for you matters more, I want to say, than like, you know, the millions of dollars that you could get from a faceless person that has no real
connection to this community. Look, the money is great, but the money is only great if you're able to do with it what you want, what you envision and what
you see. And I think that that's really important. You know, you hear these stories of folks, you know, going on shows like Shark Tank, right, and they're thinking like this is going to be their biggest thing, And you hear more stories of people that end up failing, you know, hard after that, or losing diluting their business in order to bend to the whims you know of the sharks, and then the at the end of the day, They're like, we were doing fine as as is, you know, and
we could have just kept building incrementally. But our society is about immediate gratification, immediate fame, immediate wealth, and anything outside of that is not applauded. It's not celebrated. And I think so, I think that what you're doing in the way that you're doing it will do so much more for the community and so much more for your company, h than than than anything else.
Thank you, because I believe in a strong foundation and it can't be built just because we have a whole bunch of money to throw at something. I think we've all felt, as black, brown queer folks, what it feels like with someone when you know someone's just throwing money at something they can just market to you over and over again. But I still have no connection to them.
I don't want to support them. I don't want to show up for them if it feels inauthentic, and I want this to be the cube is way bigger than me. I feel like anything that I build, I don't think of myself as the center of it. It's really for the people, and the people have to want it, and that people have to want to support it, And it don't matter how much money I put into it. If
people love it, they tell a friend about it. And I think that the power of word of mouth, the power of relationships is what's gonna make the Cube successful, not a million dollars from a VC, even though that'd be nice, But it's not that, right, right, it's not that.
I want to ask you with a couple of minutes that we have left, you know, it is it is Pride Month and we've had just an incredible time on okay app this month talking to you know, qu are brilliant creators and musicians and activists and therapists and you know, and teachers and all of these different pieces of our community that build up just a beautiful mosaic. But with that mosaic is the backdrop of just a lot of
pain and strife and activation on the right. Uh, that is about nothing more than cruelty, nothing more than trying to steal our joy, beat away our joy, legislate away our humanity. And I wanted to get you know your thoughts on how you are feeling, uh in this moment, and how you feel about Pride this this year.
So I'm feeling a lot of different things. One thing I'm feeling is a call to action for allies and accomplices and comrades, because in this moment, we need them to activate themselves. Like we've been out here, Dan, Ye, you've been out here. We've been talking about what's happening in these legislatures for the last two years. It's been
happening two three years. It's been a steady increase, and they just went all ham okay, DeSantis found success and they all are just copying what he's doing in Florida like this, This isn't just happen and so for me, it's not about queer folks all. It's not about queer folks doing the fighting. It's like, allies, wake up. This
is your moment. You consider yourself an ally or a comrade to this community, this is your time to step up and say something, be active like this is queer folks have to deal with all of the pain and the mental anguish and the harm that's happening to our friends. Right.
My heart breaks when I think about my friends who didn't make it through COVID, my friends who are having to move out the States because they don't feel safe, people who and the people who can't move, the people are not in a place where they can just pick up their whole life and go somewhere else. They're having to deal with it. Right, We got enough on our
plate now. I think this is the time for people who consider themselves liberals to step up and speak up and figure out what it actually means to be in a fight, because we are in a fight. This is a fight right now. So for me, you know, the marketing always like say, Pride is a protest, Pride was a right. Pride is a fight right now and you have to really fight to be proud today. And so for me, that's what this is. And I think I'm
seeing all the parties. Okay, we are celebrating I know black queer folks are fighting joy this Pride season post COVID to be together as community and creating safe spaces for us to be and there is work to be a lot of work to be done. I think I heard that the Equality Act was going to be reintroduced. I mean, we I don't even know what's happening right now.
Banning books at an enormous rate, like they're erasing our humanity, erasing our history, trying to erase who we are right now, and we can't sit around and act like it's a normal day in the neighborhood. It is not a normal day in the neighborhood. Trans folks have less rights today than they did fifty years ago. What world are we living in? There's nothing okay about that. And if we aren't standing up and fighting right now, then what the world are you doing? What are you doing? We can't
sit back right now. This is time for us to double down, double triple down on what democracy really means. What does democracy mean to you? Because right now it's a whole bunch of fascism happening. Like, if you believe in democracy, then it's time, just time to do something.
I'm actually really proud of Illinois. They just we just passed a build that you can't ban books here, right don't if you can, if you ban books, you don't get no state funded Like that's the type of legislation, that's the active allyship that we need right now to counteract what the right wing hatred is doing and across all of our legislatures across the country.
You know, yeah, one hundred percent, Anna, I thank you so very much for the work that you're doing, for the company that you're building, for the app that you're that you have created, for the queer and bipoc folks who have found home and space with the Cube. I'm really excited for you, know, for for your continuation and anything that we can do on wok F we will because you know it's we're always stronger when we're together, so we appreciate it.
I appreciate you so much. I appreciate you so much. And I'll say, if y'all enjoy WOKF, I think you might enjoy my pot too. It's called Queer News. Yeah, I'm saying. We drop it every Monday, four or five queer news stories, and in summertime we do interviews with amazing LGBTQ folks whose work deserves to be amplified. So if you get down with that jam check us out. Amazing. Thank you, Thank you, Danielle, thank you so much.
That is it for me today, Dear friends on wok F as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.