Year: 2021

TechCrunch is excited to announce that Zoom chief revenue officer (CRO) Ryan Azus is joining us at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 1.

Azus has worked at Cisco, RingCentral and most recently Zoom. In his previous roles he held a number of sales titles, including his final role at RingCentral where he was its executive vice president of global sales and services.

Zoom needs little introduction, having crossed over from enterprise software success story to consumer phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which time companies, groups, individuals and families leaned on the video chat provider to stay in touch.

Azus has been at the helm of Zoom’s money engine since mid-2019, which means that he has sat atop it during one of the most impressive periods of sales growth at any software company — ever.

So we’re glad that he’ll be at TC Early Stage this year, where we’ll pepper him with questions. Bring your own, of course, as we’ll be reserving around half our time for audience Q&A.

But the TechCrunch crew has a plethora of things we want to chat about too, including the importance of bottom-up sales during the pandemic, especially in contrast to the more traditional sales bullpen model that many startups have historically used; how to balance self-service sales and human-powered sales at a tech company that presents both options to customers, and their relative strength in 2021; changes to sales incentive metrics at Zoom over time from which startups might be able to learn; and how to maintain order and culture in a quickly scaling, remote sales organization.

We’re also curious how Zoom managed to adapt to the pandemic itself, like how long it took the company to reach full-strength from a sales perspective as it moved to remote work and customers that were also out of the office. The simple answer is that his company simply used more of its own product, but there’s more to the story that we want to hear.

Often at TechCrunch events we round up a cadre of executives from well-known technology companies and then hammer them for news. Early Stage is a bit different, focusing instead on extracting knowledge, tips and what-pitfalls-to-avoid from tech folks interested in helping startups do more, more quickly.

Azus won’t be coming alone. Bucky Moore from Kleiner will be in the house, along with Neal Sales-Griffin (a managing director at Techstars) and Eghosa Omoigui (a managing general partner at EchoVC Partners). The list goes on, as you can see here. (We’re also having a big pitch-off, so make sure to come to both days of the event.)

TC Early Stage continues TechCrunch’s recent spate of virtual events, so no matter where you are, you can tune in and learn. Register today to take advantage of early-bird pricing, don’t forget to bring your best questions, and we’ll see you in early April!

TechCrunch is excited to announce that Zoom chief revenue officer (CRO) Ryan Azus is joining us at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 1.

Azus has worked at Cisco, RingCentral and most recently Zoom. In his previous roles he held a number of sales titles, including his final role at RingCentral where he was its executive vice president of global sales and services.

Zoom needs little introduction, having crossed over from enterprise software success story to consumer phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which time companies, groups, individuals and families leaned on the video chat provider to stay in touch.

Azus has been at the helm of Zoom’s money engine since mid-2019, which means that he has sat atop it during one of the most impressive periods of sales growth at any software company — ever.

So we’re glad that he’ll be at TC Early Stage this year, where we’ll pepper him with questions. Bring your own, of course, as we’ll be reserving around half our time for audience Q&A.

But the TechCrunch crew has a plethora of things we want to chat about too, including the importance of bottom-up sales during the pandemic, especially in contrast to the more traditional sales bullpen model that many startups have historically used; how to balance self-service sales and human-powered sales at a tech company that presents both options to customers, and their relative strength in 2021; changes to sales incentive metrics at Zoom over time from which startups might be able to learn; and how to maintain order and culture in a quickly scaling, remote sales organization.

We’re also curious how Zoom managed to adapt to the pandemic itself, like how long it took the company to reach full-strength from a sales perspective as it moved to remote work and customers that were also out of the office. The simple answer is that his company simply used more of its own product, but there’s more to the story that we want to hear.

Often at TechCrunch events we round up a cadre of executives from well-known technology companies and then hammer them for news. Early Stage is a bit different, focusing instead on extracting knowledge, tips and what-pitfalls-to-avoid from tech folks interested in helping startups do more, more quickly.

Azus won’t be coming alone. Bucky Moore from Kleiner will be in the house, along with Neal Sales-Griffin (a managing director at Techstars) and Eghosa Omoigui (a managing general partner at EchoVC Partners). The list goes on, as you can see here. (We’re also having a big pitch-off, so make sure to come to both days of the event.)

TC Early Stage continues TechCrunch’s recent spate of virtual events, so no matter where you are, you can tune in and learn. Register today to take advantage of early-bird pricing, don’t forget to bring your best questions, and we’ll see you in early April!

If we are not careful, every entry of this column could consist of SPAC news.

Special purpose acquisition companies, or blank-check companies, whatever you prefer to call them, are enormous business today. But they aren’t the only thing going on, and we’ll get to other things shortly. Consider this an apology for having written about SPACs twice in two days.

Yesterday, we considered the rise of the VC-led SPAC and whether venture capital groups that offer seed-through-SPAC money will wind up with advantage in the market over firms that specialize on any particular startup stage. Sticking to the blank-check theme, this morning we’re looking into two SPAC-led deals, namely those involving Rover and MoneyLion.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

We’re doubling up to prevent more SPAC-related posts. And we’ve selected Rover because Chewy, another pet-themed entity, is an already-public company. As both were venture-backed, we may be able to contrast their trading performance post-debut. Sadly, Chewy is focused on pet e-commerce while Rover is more centered around pet services, but they may prove close enough for some loose comparisons.

And why chat about MoneyLion? Because it’s a heavily venture-backed fintech startup, one that TechCrunch has covered extensively. If its SPAC-assisted vault into the public markets goes well, it could smooth the same path forward for myriad other yet-private fintechs sitting atop a mountain of raised capital.

So this is a SPAC post, but as we’ll largely be looking at the financial health of two companies that we’ve heard about for ages and never got to see inside of, I hope you join me all the same.

We’re starting with the Rover investor presentation, before zipping over to MoneyLion’s own.

Rover

Rover is merging with Nebula Caravel Acquisition Corp., which is affiliated with True Wind Capital. The deal gives Rover an anticipated market cap of around $1.6 billion, with around $300 million in cash on its books.

So, how attractive is this new unicorn? You can find its investor deck here, if you want to read along as we peek.

First up, the company stresses rising use of digital services in the last year thanks to the pandemic and the fact that pet ownership is growing. Both of which are true. We’ve seen the accelerating digital transformation for both companies and consumers. And if you’ve tried to adopt a pet lately, you’ve seen how few are left waiting for forever homes.

With those things behind it, you might be wondering why Rover is pursuing a SPAC-led debut as well. If its market is hot and it has previously raised venture capital, why not just go public via an IPO? Because 2020 was tough on the company.

Image Credits: Rover

Revenue dipped from $95 million in 2019 to just $48 million last year. Bookings fell from 4.2 million to 2.4 million over the same time frame, leading to gross booking value falling from $436 million in 2019 to $233 million in 2020. Why? Because everyone was stuck at home. With their pets. A situation that limited demand for Rover-delivered pet services.

If we are not careful, every entry of this column could consist of SPAC news.

Special purpose acquisition companies, or blank-check companies, whatever you prefer to call them, are enormous business today. But they aren’t the only thing going on, and we’ll get to other things shortly. Consider this an apology for having written about SPACs twice in two days.

Yesterday, we considered the rise of the VC-led SPAC and whether venture capital groups that offer seed-through-SPAC money will wind up with advantage in the market over firms that specialize on any particular startup stage. Sticking to the blank-check theme, this morning we’re looking into two SPAC-led deals, namely those involving Rover and MoneyLion.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

We’re doubling up to prevent more SPAC-related posts. And we’ve selected Rover because Chewy, another pet-themed entity, is an already-public company. As both were venture-backed, we may be able to contrast their trading performance post-debut. Sadly, Chewy is focused on pet e-commerce while Rover is more centered around pet services, but they may prove close enough for some loose comparisons.

And why chat about MoneyLion? Because it’s a heavily venture-backed fintech startup, one that TechCrunch has covered extensively. If its SPAC-assisted vault into the public markets goes well, it could smooth the same path forward for myriad other yet-private fintechs sitting atop a mountain of raised capital.

So this is a SPAC post, but as we’ll largely be looking at the financial health of two companies that we’ve heard about for ages and never got to see inside of, I hope you join me all the same.

We’re starting with the Rover investor presentation, before zipping over to MoneyLion’s own.

Rover

Rover is merging with Nebula Caravel Acquisition Corp., which is affiliated with True Wind Capital. The deal gives Rover an anticipated market cap of around $1.6 billion, with around $300 million in cash on its books.

So, how attractive is this new unicorn? You can find its investor deck here, if you want to read along as we peek.

First up, the company stresses rising use of digital services in the last year thanks to the pandemic and the fact that pet ownership is growing. Both of which are true. We’ve seen the accelerating digital transformation for both companies and consumers. And if you’ve tried to adopt a pet lately, you’ve seen how few are left waiting for forever homes.

With those things behind it, you might be wondering why Rover is pursuing a SPAC-led debut as well. If its market is hot and it has previously raised venture capital, why not just go public via an IPO? Because 2020 was tough on the company.

Image Credits: Rover

Revenue dipped from $95 million in 2019 to just $48 million last year. Bookings fell from 4.2 million to 2.4 million over the same time frame, leading to gross booking value falling from $436 million in 2019 to $233 million in 2020. Why? Because everyone was stuck at home. With their pets. A situation that limited demand for Rover-delivered pet services.

Trello, the Kanban board-centric project management tool acquired by Atlassian in 2017, today launched what is likely one of its most important updates in recent years. With significantly more than 50 million users, Trello is one of the most popular project management tools around, and in many ways it brought digital Kanban boards to the mainstream. That focus doesn’t change with today’s release, but the team is now adding a slew of new board views and new capabilities to the individual cards that make up those views, with a special focus on bringing more data from third-party tools right into those cards. That’s in addition to a number of changes to the overall look and feel of the service.

“Over the years, we’ve built this huge, passionate audience of people,” Michael Pryor, Trello’s co-founder and now Atlassian’s head of Trello, told me ahead of today’s announcement, “We have way over 50 million signups — and that 50 million number is from 2018 or something, they won’t let me yet give out the current number. [ … ] Then last year, the pandemic hits. We talked about the future of work, right? And then, all of a sudden, it was like: nope, that’s just work. That’s how everyone works. Now, it’s all distributed. We just compressed it all at once. And we had this overnight shift. We would talk previously about this explosion of apps, we would talk about all the browser tabs, people getting lost in information sprawl. Now, it’s just turned up to eleven.”

The reason behind a lot of the new features was to make it easier for users to do more work inside of Trello and to get better macro views of what teams are working on themselves, but also what is happing across teams and inside an organization. In addition, the new Trello adds more ways to see data from other tools natively inside the service, without having to switch tools.

Image Credits: Atlassian

In practice, that means Trello is adding five new views to Trello (and making it easy to switch between them): team table view for tracking cross-company or cross-project work in a spreadsheet-like fashion; timeline view for managing roadblocks and making data adjustments; calendar view for tracking deadline and time-sensitive tasks; map view for users who have location-based projects; and finally dashboard view for better visualizing success metrics and building reports.

For the most part, the names here are self-explanatory. What’s maybe the most interesting feature here, though, is that the new team table view is Trello’s first view that brings in multiple boards.

“It raises your perspective up to the portfolio level — not just at a single board level,” Pryor said. “Eventually, all the views will do that same thing and so we will essentially have this ability that if you’re on a board, you can pivot your cards and look at them depending on what the project is and how you need them.” The idea here, he explained, was to use and extend Trello’s existing visual language to add these shared perspectives.

What’s also important here is that Trello plans to open this feature to third parties that may want to build their own views as well. The Trello team itself, for example, built a slide view that automatically creates slides for all of the cards in a project to make it easy for somebody to present them in a meeting, for example.

Image Credits: Atlassian

Pryor argues that what Trello is doing with its new cards, though, is maybe even more important. The team is adding over 30 new card types where, just by adding a URL that links to YouTube, Google Drive, Figma, JIRA  or even other Trello boards, you’ll be able to see previews of what you linked to right inside of Trello.

“What that does, I think, is that it elevates what that card represents from just being a thing that exists only within Trello to represent work that’s happening across all these other tools,” Pryor explained. “So now your Jira tickets can exist alongside your Trello cards. And you’re categorizing that and moving and talking about it in a way that’s independent of what’s happening in Jira — it could be connected to it, but it adds this ability to create a dashboard that brings all that work into one place.”

Image Credits: Atlassian

Pryor noted that the team wanted to leverage the simplicity and visual language that Trello’s users already love and then apply that to other tools. “We could get into a race and just build project management-type features,” he said. The team wants to build more than just a project management app. It wants Trello to be an app that helps users manage all of their projects. Just adding features, he argues, would just lead to bloat. Instead, the team wants to take its card metaphor, expand on that and allow its users to build new solutions inside of Trello, using a visual language they are already familiar with.

Another new feature that’s coming soon — and one that the Trello community has been expecting for a while — is mirror cards, which essentially allow you to share the same card between boards. All you have to do is link from a source card to a card on another board and that new card will look just like the original card.

Trello, the Kanban board-centric project management tool acquired by Atlassian in 2017, today launched what is likely one of its most important updates in recent years. With significantly more than 50 million users, Trello is one of the most popular project management tools around, and in many ways it brought digital Kanban boards to the mainstream. That focus doesn’t change with today’s release, but the team is now adding a slew of new board views and new capabilities to the individual cards that make up those views, with a special focus on bringing more data from third-party tools right into those cards. That’s in addition to a number of changes to the overall look and feel of the service.

“Over the years, we’ve built this huge, passionate audience of people,” Michael Pryor, Trello’s co-founder and now Atlassian’s head of Trello, told me ahead of today’s announcement, “We have way over 50 million signups — and that 50 million number is from 2018 or something, they won’t let me yet give out the current number. [ … ] Then last year, the pandemic hits. We talked about the future of work, right? And then, all of a sudden, it was like: nope, that’s just work. That’s how everyone works. Now, it’s all distributed. We just compressed it all at once. And we had this overnight shift. We would talk previously about this explosion of apps, we would talk about all the browser tabs, people getting lost in information sprawl. Now, it’s just turned up to eleven.”

The reason behind a lot of the new features was to make it easier for users to do more work inside of Trello and to get better macro views of what teams are working on themselves, but also what is happing across teams and inside an organization. In addition, the new Trello adds more ways to see data from other tools natively inside the service, without having to switch tools.

Image Credits: Atlassian

In practice, that means Trello is adding five new views to Trello (and making it easy to switch between them): team table view for tracking cross-company or cross-project work in a spreadsheet-like fashion; timeline view for managing roadblocks and making data adjustments; calendar view for tracking deadline and time-sensitive tasks; map view for users who have location-based projects; and finally dashboard view for better visualizing success metrics and building reports.

For the most part, the names here are self-explanatory. What’s maybe the most interesting feature here, though, is that the new team table view is Trello’s first view that brings in multiple boards.

“It raises your perspective up to the portfolio level — not just at a single board level,” Pryor said. “Eventually, all the views will do that same thing and so we will essentially have this ability that if you’re on a board, you can pivot your cards and look at them depending on what the project is and how you need them.” The idea here, he explained, was to use and extend Trello’s existing visual language to add these shared perspectives.

What’s also important here is that Trello plans to open this feature to third parties that may want to build their own views as well. The Trello team itself, for example, built a slide view that automatically creates slides for all of the cards in a project to make it easy for somebody to present them in a meeting, for example.

Image Credits: Atlassian

Pryor argues that what Trello is doing with its new cards, though, is maybe even more important. The team is adding over 30 new card types where, just by adding a URL that links to YouTube, Google Drive, Figma, JIRA  or even other Trello boards, you’ll be able to see previews of what you linked to right inside of Trello.

“What that does, I think, is that it elevates what that card represents from just being a thing that exists only within Trello to represent work that’s happening across all these other tools,” Pryor explained. “So now your Jira tickets can exist alongside your Trello cards. And you’re categorizing that and moving and talking about it in a way that’s independent of what’s happening in Jira — it could be connected to it, but it adds this ability to create a dashboard that brings all that work into one place.”

Image Credits: Atlassian

Pryor noted that the team wanted to leverage the simplicity and visual language that Trello’s users already love and then apply that to other tools. “We could get into a race and just build project management-type features,” he said. The team wants to build more than just a project management app. It wants Trello to be an app that helps users manage all of their projects. Just adding features, he argues, would just lead to bloat. Instead, the team wants to take its card metaphor, expand on that and allow its users to build new solutions inside of Trello, using a visual language they are already familiar with.

Another new feature that’s coming soon — and one that the Trello community has been expecting for a while — is mirror cards, which essentially allow you to share the same card between boards. All you have to do is link from a source card to a card on another board and that new card will look just like the original card.

Talkshoplive is a startup that’s worked with stars like Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks, as well as small businesses, to host shopping-focused live videos. Today, it’s announcing that it has raised $3 million in seed funding from Spero Ventures.

CEO Bryan Moore founded the company with his sister Tina in 2018. Moore previously led social media efforts at Twentieth Television (previously known as Twentieth Century Fox) and CBS Television, and he said he was inspired to launch Talkshoplive by the rise of livestreamed shopping experiences in China.

At the same time, Moore said it wasn’t enough to just copy what worked in China: “Small businesses are different here, talent is different, the needs are different.” One of the keys, in his view, is to focus on helping creators and businesses meet their customers where those customers already are — which he also suggested differentiates Talkshoplive from competing services as well.

For one thing, the startup does not require consumers to download any additional apps in order to watch its videos. Instead, it’s created a video player that works on the Talkshoplive website, on the websites of its partners and anywhere else that videos can be embedded. And wherever those videos are played, they also include a one-click buy button.

Moore said Talkshoplive started out with a focus in books and music, working with famous names like Matthew McConaughey, Alicia Keys and Dolly Parton, as well as the aforementioned Brooks and McCartney. For example, Brooks used Talkshoplive to exceed more than 1 million vinyl pre-sales for his “Legacy Collection” box set in 2019.

On the book side, Talkshoplive has worked with publishers including Harper Collins, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan. Moore claimed the platform is driving three to nine times the sales an author would see on other e-commerce sites.

At the same time, he emphasized that the startup is also working with more than 3,500 small businesses, and he said that when a small business owner is broadcasting on Talkshoplive, “You’re creating your own microfandom by being able to tell the story … You’re making yourself a brand story, even as a small business.”

He added, “When you’re able to help people move $25,000 in a show — for a small business, that’s a huge deal.”

In this sense, Moore said he sees Talkshoplive as a continuation of his previous work in social media, all connected by the question, “How are you creating human connection in a digital landscape?” The “ultimate goal,” he added, is to turn the platform into a “digital Main Street” for businesses everywhere.

More recently, Talkshoplive has been moving into other categories like food and beauty, and Moore said he’s excited to work with Spero founding partner Shripriya Mahesh (previously an executive at eBay and First Look Media) to “continually evolve our product and create these tools that help us scale faster — and also help benefit these businesses.”

“From the moment we met the Talkshoplive team, we were impressed with their focus on enabling SMB’s with a new, creative, innovative way to build their businesses,” Mahesh said in a statement. “Talkshoplive also innovates on the marketplace model with a way for buyers to truly engage with the sellers, get to know them, and experience shopping in a whole new way. We are incredibly excited by the community that is taking shape at Talkshoplive and are thrilled to be working with Bryan, Tina, and the TSL team as they grow their community and the marketplace.”

I’m a Black man in America — that’s hard. Black founders, and uniquely Black founders in tech, are facing insurmountable odds.

As the recipients of less than 1% of venture capital raise, institutionalized systems are visibly at play. Within almost 10 years of my entrepreneurial journey, I have encountered just as many setbacks and failures as I have successes.

However, I have pressed forward despite the disparities that often plague the Black entrepreneurial community. From imbalances in fundraising to minimal capital and access, Black brilliance and its cloak of resilience continues to rise.

Now, as a CEO who has ambitiously raised nearly $13 million for my current venture, against the odds, I posit that it is not the Black founders who are missing out the most — it is the investors who are at a loss, not comprehending that they have underestimated the power of these founders’ Black brilliance.

When you think about the intersection of venture capital and technology, and specifically how it works — it is being led from an engineering perspective. Developers and coders historically go to specific schools and colleges, entering a funnel that guides them to success.

Historically, many Black students (more so Black male students), are influenced by sports as a vehicle to higher education and not necessarily the institutions recognized for technological prowess.

Their parents and community encourage athleticism because that is the only thing they know — as an institutionalized mindset reinforced over time. Unless they are guided into the accepted foundations for technology, or get into a Cal Berkeley, Stanford or Harvard, where many of the technology companies are built, they are immediately funneled outside of the “circle,” which sets the first of many ongoing obstacles for a Black tech founder.

I offer, however, that these “obstacles” are not in fact barriers but the crucial catalyst for these founders’ superpowers.

Admittedly, there were no entrepreneurs in my family. I did not have access to information about the best colleges. Despite having great grades and graduating with honors, I was completely unaware of how valuable an Ivy League education could be.

As a star basketball player, with my skills and grades, I could have played and graduated from somewhere like Yale, Brown, Columbia or even a school like Southern Methodist University where I was offered a full scholarship. But because of the lack of knowledge that I could actually do so and benefit from being inside the Ivy League “circle,” I didn’t.

I was in college from 2000 to 2004. A lot of great companies were started at elite schools during that period. It is this institutional blocking of information from myself and many other Black students that molded our overall perspective and created our glass ceilings.

Breaking through that glass ceiling, overcoming these odds to press forward relentlessly, with unyielding focus, and to hold conversations with the types of investors I have had to sit in front of, with the type of company that I have built, takes a different level of brilliance that only the Black experience can provide. For 2021 and beyond, Black founders need to not only recognize, but unlock that power as they look to fundraise and catapult their tech companies to success. It would be smart, and incredibly beneficial for investors, venture capitalists and the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem to take heed.

For Black founders, a paradigm shift is evident, but it can only manifest if implemented in these five ways.

Black founders: Forget what you think works in fundraising

Black founders and specifically Black tech founders are fed a monotonous script of how to raise money “the right way,” in light of disparaging statistics highlighting a lack of funding — so much that there is a robotic approach to the process. They try to become this cookie-cutter entrepreneur that is designed to raise money from investors, with their playbook and by their rules.

Black founders capitulate and conform to what society has dictated as appropriate fundraising, often glorifying the investor with the fate of their startup in their hands, without realizing that they hold the negotiating power. Their playbook hasn’t won us any games. As of today, own your power.

Become an irresistible force: Leverage your expertise

Set the playbook aside and lean more into your expertise and uniqueness.

Years ago, Mark Cuban delivered a keynote address at Dallas Startup Week that chronicled his road to success. One of his main points was to “Know your business, and know your business cold.” It was so simple, yet so impactful.

Early on in my career, I learned about venture capital from my experiences working for a startup. While I did not know the area in depth, I referenced what little knowledge I had as I raised for my own company years later. Although I was limited in my dealings with venture capitalists, I was confident in my background and expertise (at that time as a payroll technology sales professional) to truly stake my claim and seat at the table.

So while they may have sold a company for $7 billion or have $35 billion AUM (assets under management), I knew that they were not as well-versed in payroll or payroll technology than I was. It was this tenacious mindset that made me look at investors, rather than up to them, thereby positioning us on equal footing.

Connect in the common goal of brilliance

As a Black founder in tech, I have encountered many injustices — from networking to fundraising to the game of business as a whole. Even among those sitting at the table, there is a plethora of worldviews, political preferences, religious propensities and more that create a melting pot of divisiveness. However, recognizing that the common thread between all of the players in the game is the desire to be part of the brilliant business opportunity at hand is what will ultimately prevail.

It served me well not to overindex whether the venture capitalists liked me or on our differences. Locking in on the ambition of my entrepreneurial spirit and focusing on my brilliance — my Black brilliance — made them want to invest in me. Simplistically, investors want to give their money to founders who will make them money — passionately and ambitiously. Be you and find the investor that appreciates you.

Get in front of as many investors as you can

Black founders are not getting in front of enough investors. Systemically, the venture capital landscape has marginalized this community and has failed to expand their network for inclusiveness. Currently, ethnic minorities are severely underrepresented in the venture capital industry. Eighty percent of investment partners are white, with only a staggering 3% being Black or African-American.

Regardless, Black entrepreneurs must press forward and still show up. The sheer number of people that entrepreneurs must face during the fundraising process is astronomical, so one must not be swayed by the disillusionment of opportunity.

Realistically speaking, it takes a long time to raise money. Period. I have talked to thousands of potential investors to raise nearly $13 million for my current company. If you are a Black founder, it is going to take you longer to fundraise and you are going to have to get in front of more people. So I ask, “Do you have enough oxygen in the tank to withstand the obstacles, for a long enough period of time, to attract the venture capital that you need?” The wealth gap says no.

When I first started Gig Wage, the number one question I received from investors is, “How much runway do you have?” I would answer, “Until I get to where I need to get.” They would then rephrase, “How much money do you have in the bank? How long is your wife going to let you do this?” I would reply, “It does not matter how much money I have in the bank because I’m going to keep going until this happens.”

Discriminatively, there was this unspoken expectation that I lacked the financial wherewithal and stamina to withstand the fundraising process, and at times it was extremely discouraging — because to be honest, when I looked in the bank account, I realistically had about nine to 12 months of runway.

The reason Black people raise less than 1% of venture capital is because the racism weaved into the fabric of American society bleeds over into the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Despite it all, I took thousands of meetings. I was willing to endure with an ambitious conviction that I was going to win. Again, this is Black brilliance.

Own your resiliency, own your power 

As a Black man, I have personally endured challenges to build resiliency — mirroring similar realities of other Black men in America. Whether it was dealing with the police or witnessing men in my family struggle with drugs, violence, poverty or the like — I often think, “Why would I be intimidated by an investor meeting or a term sheet?” The construct of America has dealt me much worse.

Black founders need to own their resiliency and leverage the power that has resulted from their unique experiences. The victory mentality that ensues thereafter is the type of mindset that venture capitalists should want to invest in, and if they do not, they are undoubtedly missing out.

The unyielding focus of “The world is stacked against me but I’m not going to quit. I’m going to pivot. I’m going to be resourceful. I’m going to figure it out — even if I’m scared,” is a person you need to invest in. It is not necessarily that they have a groundbreaking business idea, but culturally, Black people have a passion and a perspective that is unmatched, with limitless possibilities that venture capitalists are overlooking.

So for 2021 and well beyond, Black founders, and those especially in tech, need to shift their respective paradigms, own their place within the entrepreneurial space, take back their power and continue to operate at the utmost in Black brilliance. It is the investors, not the founders, that are missing out. Be bold. Be courageous. Be audacious.

As for me, the best thing that I can do right now is to continue to drive the conversation, illuminate the disparities and be as successful for Black entrepreneurs, Black professionals and the world at large as possible. I am owning my power and I’m committed to epitomizing and evangelizing Black brilliance.

I’m a Black man in America — that’s hard. Black founders, and uniquely Black founders in tech, are facing insurmountable odds.

As the recipients of less than 1% of venture capital raise, institutionalized systems are visibly at play. Within almost 10 years of my entrepreneurial journey, I have encountered just as many setbacks and failures as I have successes.

However, I have pressed forward despite the disparities that often plague the Black entrepreneurial community. From imbalances in fundraising to minimal capital and access, Black brilliance and its cloak of resilience continues to rise.

Now, as a CEO who has ambitiously raised nearly $13 million for my current venture, against the odds, I posit that it is not the Black founders who are missing out the most — it is the investors who are at a loss, not comprehending that they have underestimated the power of these founders’ Black brilliance.

When you think about the intersection of venture capital and technology, and specifically how it works — it is being led from an engineering perspective. Developers and coders historically go to specific schools and colleges, entering a funnel that guides them to success.

Historically, many Black students (more so Black male students), are influenced by sports as a vehicle to higher education and not necessarily the institutions recognized for technological prowess.

Their parents and community encourage athleticism because that is the only thing they know — as an institutionalized mindset reinforced over time. Unless they are guided into the accepted foundations for technology, or get into a Cal Berkeley, Stanford or Harvard, where many of the technology companies are built, they are immediately funneled outside of the “circle,” which sets the first of many ongoing obstacles for a Black tech founder.

I offer, however, that these “obstacles” are not in fact barriers but the crucial catalyst for these founders’ superpowers.

Admittedly, there were no entrepreneurs in my family. I did not have access to information about the best colleges. Despite having great grades and graduating with honors, I was completely unaware of how valuable an Ivy League education could be.

As a star basketball player, with my skills and grades, I could have played and graduated from somewhere like Yale, Brown, Columbia or even a school like Southern Methodist University where I was offered a full scholarship. But because of the lack of knowledge that I could actually do so and benefit from being inside the Ivy League “circle,” I didn’t.

I was in college from 2000 to 2004. A lot of great companies were started at elite schools during that period. It is this institutional blocking of information from myself and many other Black students that molded our overall perspective and created our glass ceilings.

Breaking through that glass ceiling, overcoming these odds to press forward relentlessly, with unyielding focus, and to hold conversations with the types of investors I have had to sit in front of, with the type of company that I have built, takes a different level of brilliance that only the Black experience can provide. For 2021 and beyond, Black founders need to not only recognize, but unlock that power as they look to fundraise and catapult their tech companies to success. It would be smart, and incredibly beneficial for investors, venture capitalists and the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem to take heed.

For Black founders, a paradigm shift is evident, but it can only manifest if implemented in these five ways.

Black founders: Forget what you think works in fundraising

Black founders and specifically Black tech founders are fed a monotonous script of how to raise money “the right way,” in light of disparaging statistics highlighting a lack of funding — so much that there is a robotic approach to the process. They try to become this cookie-cutter entrepreneur that is designed to raise money from investors, with their playbook and by their rules.

Black founders capitulate and conform to what society has dictated as appropriate fundraising, often glorifying the investor with the fate of their startup in their hands, without realizing that they hold the negotiating power. Their playbook hasn’t won us any games. As of today, own your power.

Become an irresistible force: Leverage your expertise

Set the playbook aside and lean more into your expertise and uniqueness.

Years ago, Mark Cuban delivered a keynote address at Dallas Startup Week that chronicled his road to success. One of his main points was to “Know your business, and know your business cold.” It was so simple, yet so impactful.

Early on in my career, I learned about venture capital from my experiences working for a startup. While I did not know the area in depth, I referenced what little knowledge I had as I raised for my own company years later. Although I was limited in my dealings with venture capitalists, I was confident in my background and expertise (at that time as a payroll technology sales professional) to truly stake my claim and seat at the table.

So while they may have sold a company for $7 billion or have $35 billion AUM (assets under management), I knew that they were not as well-versed in payroll or payroll technology than I was. It was this tenacious mindset that made me look at investors, rather than up to them, thereby positioning us on equal footing.

Connect in the common goal of brilliance

As a Black founder in tech, I have encountered many injustices — from networking to fundraising to the game of business as a whole. Even among those sitting at the table, there is a plethora of worldviews, political preferences, religious propensities and more that create a melting pot of divisiveness. However, recognizing that the common thread between all of the players in the game is the desire to be part of the brilliant business opportunity at hand is what will ultimately prevail.

It served me well not to overindex whether the venture capitalists liked me or on our differences. Locking in on the ambition of my entrepreneurial spirit and focusing on my brilliance — my Black brilliance — made them want to invest in me. Simplistically, investors want to give their money to founders who will make them money — passionately and ambitiously. Be you and find the investor that appreciates you.

Get in front of as many investors as you can

Black founders are not getting in front of enough investors. Systemically, the venture capital landscape has marginalized this community and has failed to expand their network for inclusiveness. Currently, ethnic minorities are severely underrepresented in the venture capital industry. Eighty percent of investment partners are white, with only a staggering 3% being Black or African-American.

Regardless, Black entrepreneurs must press forward and still show up. The sheer number of people that entrepreneurs must face during the fundraising process is astronomical, so one must not be swayed by the disillusionment of opportunity.

Realistically speaking, it takes a long time to raise money. Period. I have talked to thousands of potential investors to raise nearly $13 million for my current company. If you are a Black founder, it is going to take you longer to fundraise and you are going to have to get in front of more people. So I ask, “Do you have enough oxygen in the tank to withstand the obstacles, for a long enough period of time, to attract the venture capital that you need?” The wealth gap says no.

When I first started Gig Wage, the number one question I received from investors is, “How much runway do you have?” I would answer, “Until I get to where I need to get.” They would then rephrase, “How much money do you have in the bank? How long is your wife going to let you do this?” I would reply, “It does not matter how much money I have in the bank because I’m going to keep going until this happens.”

Discriminatively, there was this unspoken expectation that I lacked the financial wherewithal and stamina to withstand the fundraising process, and at times it was extremely discouraging — because to be honest, when I looked in the bank account, I realistically had about nine to 12 months of runway.

The reason Black people raise less than 1% of venture capital is because the racism weaved into the fabric of American society bleeds over into the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Despite it all, I took thousands of meetings. I was willing to endure with an ambitious conviction that I was going to win. Again, this is Black brilliance.

Own your resiliency, own your power 

As a Black man, I have personally endured challenges to build resiliency — mirroring similar realities of other Black men in America. Whether it was dealing with the police or witnessing men in my family struggle with drugs, violence, poverty or the like — I often think, “Why would I be intimidated by an investor meeting or a term sheet?” The construct of America has dealt me much worse.

Black founders need to own their resiliency and leverage the power that has resulted from their unique experiences. The victory mentality that ensues thereafter is the type of mindset that venture capitalists should want to invest in, and if they do not, they are undoubtedly missing out.

The unyielding focus of “The world is stacked against me but I’m not going to quit. I’m going to pivot. I’m going to be resourceful. I’m going to figure it out — even if I’m scared,” is a person you need to invest in. It is not necessarily that they have a groundbreaking business idea, but culturally, Black people have a passion and a perspective that is unmatched, with limitless possibilities that venture capitalists are overlooking.

So for 2021 and well beyond, Black founders, and those especially in tech, need to shift their respective paradigms, own their place within the entrepreneurial space, take back their power and continue to operate at the utmost in Black brilliance. It is the investors, not the founders, that are missing out. Be bold. Be courageous. Be audacious.

As for me, the best thing that I can do right now is to continue to drive the conversation, illuminate the disparities and be as successful for Black entrepreneurs, Black professionals and the world at large as possible. I am owning my power and I’m committed to epitomizing and evangelizing Black brilliance.

Tackling the learning curve that comes with building a startup is not for the faint of heart. So many questions, so little time to search out reliable, actionable advice. Enter TechCrunch Early Stage 2021 — two distinct, virtual bootcamps designed specifically for early-stage founders and open to entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts.

Budget-friendly tips: TC Early Stage part one takes place April 1-2, and you have two weeks left to score the early-bird price and save up to $100. Founder passes cost $199 and Innovator passes (for investors and other startup fans) cost $299. The early-bird deadline ends at 11:59 p.m. (PST) on February 27. Buy a dual-event pass to learn and save even more (TC Early Stage — Marketing and Fundraising runs July 8-9). The TC Early Stage April and July bootcamps feature different speakers, topics and content.

At TC Early Stage, you’ll take part in interactive sessions and learn from the leading experts and investors who span the range of the startup ecosystem — operations, product lifecycle, fundraising and recruiting for starters. Here are just two examples of the people ready to help you move your startup dreams forward.

Learn from folks like Alexa von Tobel as she leads a discussion on Finance for Founders. Got questions about raising Series A funding? Don’t miss Bucky Moore of Kleiner Perkins as he breaks down that complicated topic.

Ready for an awesome plot twist? We’re adding an exciting opportunity on day two of both TC Early Stage bootcamps — the TC Early Stage Pitch-Off. Ten early-stage startups will get to pitch live to a global audience of investors, press and tech industry leaders. That kind of exposure can change a startup’s trajectory in the best possible way.

You’ll find all the Pitch-off details here — how it works, who qualifies to compete, what competitors receive and the prizes in store for the ultimate winner. Or cut to the chase and apply for the April 2 pitch-off here before the clock hits 11:59 p.m. PST on February 21.

Whether you’re competing or watching, Katia Paramonova, founder and CEO of Centrly (who attended Early Stage 2020), says a pitch critique shows you ways to strengthen your pitch deck:

The pitch deck teardown session was great. VCs reviewed my deck and gave specific, actionable advice. Watching them provide comments on other decks was helpful, too. We’re incorporating the feedback and when we start fundraising, the improved slides will make it easier for VCs to understand our value proposition.

TC Early Stage Operations & Fundraising takes place on April 1-2. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn the essentials of building a stronger startup. And don’t miss out on early-bird savings. Buy your pass (remember, you’ll save more and learn twice as much with a dual-event pass) before 11:59 p.m. PST on February 27.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Early Stage 2021 — Operations & Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.