Major Keys from AfroTech

It’s Thanksgiving week and I was feeling somewhat introspective after having a little bit of downtime and reflecting on all the dopeness that was Afrotech 2017. I tried to distill all of the content and takeaways into a few pieces of thought.

1) Be your best self. This sounds fairly straightforward and not totally earth shattering in its originality, but stay with me. I had the opportunity to hear Chamillionaire talk about his venture capital journey at Afrotech. Now I knew he was a VC investor, but hearing him talk about it was a different story. For one, he said when he first started going into rooms in Silicon Valley for his own company he dressed in the “tech mullet”, business up top and party down bottom. Tech bro stuff. But what he found was that his pitches started becoming kinda watered down in the process. And also more importantly, he wasn’t being Chamillionaire.

So he started showing up to his meetings in a snapback, hoodies, jeans, and Jordans. Beyond the obvious factor of him feeling more comfortable, he was actually normalizing streetwear in a space where that was very much considered “other”. People might take Chamillionaire seriously no matter what he had on because of his status, but they might not from the same guy without the celebrity from Baltimore. But if he showed that great ideas can come from an unsuspecting packaging, then maybe others behind him can get the audience they need. What I took from it is don’t make yourself more bland for the emotional safety and security of others. Be lit! Because that’s where you’ll be the most charismatic and creative.

2) If you’re gonna raise VC money, raise real money. I wrote a post before telling people that sometimes they should raise less money, but I should’ve put more clarity behind that. Raise less money if you are raising a pre-seed round with non-institutional investors (friends, family, and fools). If you are pitching venture capital investors, do yourself a favor and raise enough money that will allow you to hit some real benchmarks so that when you go to raise your Series A you stand a legitimate chance of building an attractive company. I saw several dope startups at AfroTech in the pitch competition and one thing struck me. They were all raising very small amounts of money but already had a functioning product and real customers.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, you stand a much greater chance of raising $1.0M to $1.5M than you are raising $97k (a real amount one of the companies was raising). The reason is that 1) there is just not enough skin in the game at that low amount of raise to make it worth it for a VC even if you become a unicorn, and 2) have some damn belief in yourself and your valuation. I’ve seen companies without even an actual functioning prototype trying to raise money at $10.0M valuations. So if you have something dope, have some confidence in it and raise the money and believe your company is worth at least $4.0M to $5.0M at the seed level. Either you’ll be funded or you won’t. But if you do, you’ll stand a much greater chance of succeeding.

3) If you’re a founder, hire based on Figure-Shit-Out-Able-Ness. I heard Mandela Schumacher-Hodge, founder of Founder Gym speak about what a founder should look for in both a co-founder and early hires. She made a statement that resonated with me. Hire based on Figure-Shit-Out-Able-Ness. It’s the age old wisdom that a good employee doesn’t bring me a problem, they bring me a solution. Startups are hard, we know this. You have little money, little resources, and you are likely building something that no one has before (hopefully). So there’s a lot of problems that come up on a daily basis. There’s no staff of 2,000 people and resource library from which to draw. So you need a squad that’s going to come with some creativity and scrappiness.

We know that accolades and pedigree are great to have if you can get them in a hire, but if that person can’t roll up their sleeves and figure out something without adding to your to do list, frankly they will sink your ship no matter how smart they are. We don’t need smart, we need scrappy. So figure out what they’ve done in their past that demonstrates figure-shit-out-able-ness!

In summary AfroTech was an amazing culmination of underrepresented talent in a space where we so often hear that there is a “pipeline problem”. To which I would challenge those very same companies to buy a sponsor package in 2018 and tell me if there’s the same “dearth of talent” they claim. See you at the conference next year.

Originally appearing on Marcus Musings