Build Tech Stack Equity

A Founder's greatest quality is to move forward from failure – because there will be many. Pierre Laguerre is an excellent example of "losing it all" and rebuilding an empire from scratch, on several occasions. Born in Haiti, Pierre struggled to adjust to life in East Flatbush, NYC when he moved to the US at age 14. These struggles empowered him to become a community leader and successful entrepreneur.

In this podcast, Pierre will share how his journey as a truck driver for over a decade enabled him to build a rapidly growing fleet management marketplace. He talks about how a life threatening carjacking inspired him to build a platform that supports underresourced and formerly incarcerated populations in gaining economic opportunities.

Founder Bio:

Pierre Laguerre is an entrepreneur in transportation logistics who has over 17 years of experience in the space. While generating more than $5M in revenue through his transportation ventures, Pierre has successfully mentored young men who have gone on to earn their commercial drivers licenses. He has also facilitated growth in his peers who now own their own trucking and dispatch operations.

As a Haitian-born migrant, Pierre found his entrepreneurial passion in trucking. He started his journey as a truck driver. Since then, he's earned the honor of becoming the first Black man to max out an SEC approved equity crowdfunding campaign. After excelling in the Quake Capital startup accelerator, Pierre has gone on to win pitch competitions with Harvard University, Chamillionaire, and Damon John, all while being a calm collected head-of-household for his three young children.

TimeStamps:

2:26 Born and raised in Haiti. Migrating to Brooklyn as a teenager

5:00 Every day life in Haiti

7:21 Arriving in New York City and overcoming bullying as a Haitian kid in East Flatbush

11:57 Leveraging street smarts to thrive in a life beyond the streets

16:15 How a desire to leave the hood inspired Pierre's early career as a truck driver

18:30 How Pierre moved from truck driver to entrepreneur with billion dollar aspirations

22:42 Losing everything | How Pierre rebuilt his business after a car accident destroyed it all

24:23 Coming up with business ideas to make money as an entrepreneur 31:23

31:31 How Pierre bootstrapped a business to $2.5mm in 18 months

38:00 Discovering tech as a tool to scale the management of a trucking fleet

41:30 How a special needs child and a life threatening car jacking inspired the start of Fleeting

48:41 Pitching Fleeting to investors with zero experience and straight out of the hospital

52:14 The Product | What is Fleeting?

55:08 The importance in listening to the market to determine best product approach

56:40 Solving truck drivers' biggest pain point

59:32 Closing a $500K seed round with Kyrie Irving of the New Jersey Nets and Lockstep Ventures

1:03:30 Find and support Pierre

Many Founders dream about taking their company public on the NYSE. For Augie Fabela, this became a reality at the age of 25.

What do you do after making enough money to retire at such a young age? Augie decided he'd turn his attention toward making an impact in the community. The son of Colombian and Mexican parents, he leveraged his diverse background to serve the community as a law enforcement officer.

Augie is the epitome of a Renaissance Man. You'll certainly want to tune into this serial entrepreneur's journey as he is on his 6th business, focused on leveraging AI to help small businesses better engage with customers via social platforms.

Founder Bio:

Augie Fabella is the Co-Founder and CEO of FastForward.ai, a Silicon Valley start-up, with a mission to bring digital services and mobile payments to the 5.5 billion customer mobile operator market by leveraging their vast $1 trillion payments infrastructure and increasing their digital market share.

Augie co-founded VEON at the age of 25, now the world's 7th largest mobile network operator with 220 million subscribers—more than AT&T and Verizon. In 1996 he did an IPO of VEON and became the youngest Chairman on the NYSE, reaching a peak valuation of $44 billion, with 60,000 employees globally.

After graduating from Stanford University with a M.A. and B.A. in four years, Augie spent two years working in Tokyo for Japan's largest media conglomerate, Fujisankei Group. He returned to the United States with a goal of starting his own business, ultimately founding six companies.

In 2010, as part of his contribution back to society, Augie became a police officer in Chicago, his birthplace, graduating from the police academy at the age of 44. He continues to contribute his time, talent and touch, actively serving at Chicago Cook County Sheriff's Office, with the rank of Chief, serves as a SWAT Operator and is the author of DECIDE: Tactical Crisis Decision Making for Law Enforcement.

Augie is a civic contributor, philanthropist and business policy innovator. He served as a member of the World Economic Forum (Davos) for 15 years and a Founding Member of its Global Chairman Community. He and his wife founded the Fabela Family Foundation, that supports Christian initiatives, education and law enforcement programs. He also serves on the Zimin Foundation and Zimin Institute for Engineering Solutions Advancing Better Lives.

Timestamps:

3:30 Building a multi-billion dollar public company, in Russia

9:10 The value of local partnerships when starting a business in another country

11:06 Augie's roots | Learning entrepreneurship for Father, moving all over the US, early career

13:30 Lessons learned from managing talent from different countries and different cultures

15:50 Joining the police academy, becoming a SWAT Commander and becoming a Chief

21:20 The origins for FastForward.ai and how it works

27:28 The decision to implement AI into the platform

31:09 Building the MVP with a remote outsourced team

35:26 Strategies for creating culture in a remote work environment

37:16 First steps in building an AI product

41:44 Deciding on a go-to-market strategy in the early days of the startup

43:54 Augie has authored 2 books: "Decide" and "The Impatience Economy"

Very…Very few tech companies generate revenue the day the product is built. For that reason, many would-be tech entrepreneurs find the jump from a steady paycheck and/or name brand employer to full-time entrepreneur.

One way to bridge this divide is by creating a services business. Like an employee, you are still trading hours for dollars, but the benefit is the opportunity to test your idea in the market by using your expertise to solve a customer pain point.

Today's guest, Jasmine Shells, worked at a Big 4 accounting firm (Ernst & Young) before moving into non-profit where she began testing her business idea as a "side-hustle". By launching a networking and events business, she understood where value was created in this space and began to build a reputation that inspired potential corporate customers to request her services. Armed with the learning lessons from running her services business, Jasmine built tech that would allow her to serve her soon-to-be corporate customers at scale.

Founder Bio:

Jasmine is the Co-Founder & CEO of Five to Nine – a virtual event management and evaluation software for program leaders at companies. A few of Five to Nine's customers include DoorDash, MasterClass, and Verizon Media, among others.

Jasmine was recently named Forbes' 30 Under 30 for enterprise technology, a Google for Startups Recipient, and a US Department of State Fellow for teaching entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Jasmine graduated from the University of Notre Dame and is pursuing her MBA at the University of Chicago where she was named an Entrepreneurial Scholar.

Jasmine served on Notre Dame's Black Alumni Board, is a P33 Chicago Advisor, and teaches entrepreneurship to companies, universities and non-profits globally. She's been featured in Vice, Forbes, Business Insider, TEDx, Black Enterprise, Yahoo Finance, and Marketwatch.

Timestamps:

2:45 Born and raised in the Midwest – from Toledo, Ohio to Chicago, Illinois

5:23 Launching her career at a Big 4 Accounting firm

7:10 Leaving a cushy corporate job to setting foundation to start a business

11:11 Launching a networking community as a springboard to building a tech platform

14:36 What is FiveToNine? Evolving from a services business to a tech company

17:13 Building the first version of the product

18:30 Establishing an initial team to build out tech

24:45 Lessons learned in selling into enterprise customers as a startup

31:18 Sales and implementation consideration when pursuing enterprise vs SMB customers

34:27 Creating value through data driven insights

38:19 Defining business objectives where AI creates tangible ROI

42:25 Fundraising history: Leveraging grants, accelerators, and then seed round ($1mm+)

43:35 Lessons learned from fundraising

When faced with an existential crisis in business, tech founders are left with three basic but tough decisions: maintain the status quo, change markets, or shut down the business. Prior to the pandemic, our guest, Fatima Dicko had launched a rapidly growing business which served as the "Craigslist" for college campuses. When universities shut down, she found herself pondering which of the three decisions she would make.

Today, Fatima is leading the charge as an innovator in proptech. Her team at Sugar is closing on a $2.5mm funding round to enable their mission to bring connectivity to residential living. In this episode, Fatima gives a live sample of her investor pitch. It was completely unplanned, and she nailed it! Make sure you tune in!

Founder Bio:

Fatima Dicko is the Founder & CEO of Sugar. Sugar makes residential properties feel like home by fostering community among residents and integrating deeply with the technology stack that powers modern buildings. The company has raised VC funding from some of the top investors in the PropTech sector. Before Sugar, she worked as the youngest senior engineer on a product innovation team at Procter & Gamble, receiving several awards such as 'Most Transformative Product Research' and the P&G 'Global Innovation Seed Fund Grant'. Fatima came to the U.S. from Mali at a young age and grew up in New York City, receiving her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University and MBA from Stanford Business School. Fatima is a frequent mentor and volunteer for organizations such as Built By Girls, Black Girls Code and MLT.

Timestamps:

2:36 What Fatima and her family moved from Mali, Africa to New York City

5:26 The decision to study chemical engineering at Columbia Univ.

6:45 Developing products 3-5 years from going to market (at P&G)

11:10 Getting started as an entrepreneur + Uncomfortable conversations with parents

14:00 Humble beginnings and overcoming failure on the path to entrepreneurial success

19:20 Pivoting: Launching Sugar as a "hyper-local Craigslist" on college campuses

21:15 Should I shutdown? How Fatima decided what to do after COVID shutdown college campuses

27:28 Fatima's approach to raising a $2.5mm VC round

32:51 The little known secret to interacting with investors

36:57 Fatima's experience building an MVP and the VERY interesting way she found her CTO

Latino sports fans are known to be passionate and die hard. Though sports is the one industry that unifies people across the globe, culture and geography play a key role in how we prefer to get our sports fix. Our guest, Marcos Araujo, grew up a huge fan of the popular US sports content curator, Bleacher Report. That exposure, combined with his Brazilian roots, led him to question why there wasn't a similar content curation platform for Latinos – so he built one.

Founder Bio:

Marcos is the CEO and founder of Esportudo, a leading digital sports content provider in Latin America that is creating new ways for fans to engage with their favorite teams and sports. Esportudo now reaches over 40 million Latino sports fans a month and helps brands engage this growing demographic. Before founding Esportudo, Marcos was a key driver in launching HubSpot Inc. in LatAm. Winner of Latino 30 under 30, 25 Most Influential People of Color and other awards.

Timestamps:

2:13 Marcos's roots in rural Brazil. Humble beginnings in the suburbs of Boston

4:43 Thoughts on co-founding a company with family

9:19 How being a child of immigrants and facing economic hardships influenced entrepreneurship

12:03 Launching a career at Hubspot and leading expansion into LATAM

16:08 Hubspots 3 reasons for building a team in Colombia

19:49 The competitive advantage in leveraging LATAM talent

25:24 The genesis of Esportudo | Curating sports content for Latino sports fans

30:29 Bootstrapping the first 2 years in business, before joining Techstars

32:18 Serving the often forgotten but quickly growing and strong Latino market

36:12 Using an US agency to build MVP + the strategy behind building a dev team in Brazil

40:48 Selecting the first dev hire in Brazil

49:18 The value in leveraging artificial intelligence to hyper-personalize content consumption

Authenticity is a common term discussed when we think about branding and how entrepreneurs should present to customers. It's also a challenge many minorities work through when navigating homogenous environments. For Amanda, a Jewish and Brazilian background created some questions about identity in her early years. Her passion for education empowered her to answer those questions, which has ultimately helped her to understand her place in the world as a tech entrepreneur.

Amanda is transforming education by creating social learning environment for AP students, outside of the traditional education system. She's a non-technical founder whose voracious appetite for learning has allowed her to quickly acquire the business acumen and tech wisdom to launch a growing tech company.

Founder Bio:

Amanda DoAmaral is an educator, activist, and co-founder of Fiveable - a social learning network for students. She spent a half a decade teaching high school history in Oakland, CA, where her passion for creating equitable educational opportunities was ignited. Amanda has been a vocal advocate for inclusive history curriculum and is active within the Milwaukee tech community.

Timestamps:

2:11 Growing up as a "history nerd" and the inspiration for becoming a teacher

4:14 How Amanda found her lane within the education industry

6:31 Finding her identity as a biracial youth and how being a Teacher empowered her authenticity

11:27 How a toxic work environment in education led to a career as an activist

15:55 The origins of Fiveable | How former students pulled Amanda into entrepreneurship

18:30 Becoming a first time founder without business experience

20:50 Hacking together a no-code solution as a non-technical founder

22:38 When and how Amanda decided to bring in a technical co-founder to build the platform

25:50 Joining an accelerator and the decision to share equity

29:45 The benefit of building a tech company outside of tech epicenter cities

34:22 Why Amanda rented a home in Philadelphia to house her entire team

36:44 What is Fiveable and the magic behind social learning?

40:45 Fiveable has grown from serving a handful of students to serving over 600,000 students

42:00 Using content as a demand gen strategy

45:30 Establishing the pricing model at Fiveable

Imagine posting up in Silicon Valley for a year to soak up the entrepreneurial ecosystem while while waiting for inspiration for a startup idea. Sounds artsy, but from a business perspective it can be incredibly helpful to sort through various uses of technology and the business modes that get them to market. Fresh off a career in private equity and a short stint studying medicine, Chris Bennett took this exact approach. With a passion for using technology to improve the quality of human life, he has built Wonderschool to improve the quality and access to childcare.

Founder Bio:

Chris Bennett is a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur and early childhood education advocate passionate about the power of the Internet and using it for social good.

Chris is the co-founder and CEO of Wonderschool, an all-in-one online platform that helps families seeking childcare and microschools to find available options near them and supports those who provide that care and education. Born out of Chris's realization that early childhood education is what enabled him to be the first member of his family to go to college.

Since its start in 2016, Wonderschool has expanded its offerings and partnerships, pivoting to meet the unique needs of today's families and providers. Recognized by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies, Wonderschool has been funded by Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Imaginable Futures, Cross Culture Ventures, Uncork Capital, Rethink Education, Edelweiss, Lerer Ventures, 500 Startups, FundersClub, and others.

Timestamps:

1:54 How his uncle's experience as a black doctor in Honduras influenced a passion for entrepreneurship

7:24 Life at Wharton (Undergrad) | Struggling as a student, but thriving as an entrepreneur

10:00 Exploring the right early career fit – private equity, medicine, and then to Silicon Valley

11:55 The origins of Wonderschool

15:18 Strategy for validating market demand before building tech

17:56 Raising $2mm to build engineering team to build product

18:30 Wonderschool described – platform, functionality, and value prop within childcare

22:40 Matching supply and demand in a marketplace

27:30 Chris receiving his first investment via NewMe accelerator (and 500 Startups)

30:30 Benefits of joining and accelerator

34:33 What help investors can provide…not including funding

38:35 Taking the team remote and moving to a global talent strategy

Long before here exciting life as a proptech founder, Vanessa Alvarez was debating whether college was right for her after poor grades forced her out of school in her Sophomore year. A not so gentle nudge from loved ones and a starter career in tech as an analyst changed her entire life. Vanessa has emerged as a leader in blue chip tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft. She is the perfect "anything is possible" example and is joining us talk more about her life, from a small Latino town in Rhode Island to the mecca of tech in Silicon Valley

In this episode, we really dive into Vanessa's story as a first-generation child whose parents immigrated to Rhode Island from El Salvador. She describes her early struggles with school and lack of visions and how love and tech changed her life. We also dig into her experience in startups and big tech, as well as her decision to keep her job while launching a company. So many gems to pull from this conversation!

Founder Bio:

Vanessa Alvarez is the co-founder of Seattle based startup, Nexme, Inc, an on demand real estate platform that instantly connects homebuyers and sellers with access to homes. Launched in May 2020, Nexme is available in the greater Seattle and greater Boston areas.

She spent time at a number of startups in the Bay Area before joining Amazon Web Services and most recently Microsoft, where she is a Sr. Program Manager. She's fluent in Spanish and is a mentor to young Latinos looking to enter the technology industry. You can find her on Twitter: @vanessaalvarez1.

As a Grammy award winning producer and songwriter, Devo Harris has made a career of turning ideas into inspiring experiences. Insight into what moves people has driven the success of previous ventures, such as founding GOOD music alongside business partner (and cousin) Kanye West. Devo is a visionary armed with a skill for organizing the right technical talent to bring game changing ideas to life. Recognizing the incredible potential brought on by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Devo has built an interactive video platform that enables companies to provide their customers with a more dynamic and real-life buying experience.

Founder Bio:

Devo Harris is a serial media executive who merges world class creative, cutting edge technology and business strategy. Devo started his career in strategy at PwC before joining Kanye West to found GOOD Music. At GOOD, Devo won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Song (Kanye West's "Diamonds (from Sierra Leone)") while producing and writing for artists from Britney Spears to Jay-Z & more. He also discovered and signed EGOT Winner John Legend to GOOD Music while leading national product launches across several consumer categories. Devo hacked YouTube to pioneer interactive web video in 2010 followed by time leading video player product at streaming giant Vimeo as Senior Product Manager. Devo is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Business School.

Timestamps:

1:28 Teaming up with Kanye West & John Legend| Devo's beginnings as a music exec

4:56 Reinventing his career – from media exec to tech mogul

10:40 Introducing Adventr.io | Creating smart video at scale

13:13 How companies can use interactive video

15:35 Building a prototype as a founder without an deep engineering experience

18:25 Validating market demand with prototype via A/B testing

21:17 Getting the right talent onboard to develop a marketable solution

23:25 How Devo raised a Friends & Family round

29:09 Latest development at Adventr

32:00 Earned media | Creating demand and driving inbound product interest

38:37 Why Devo believes AI is the future and how it's being incorporated in Adventr

41:34 How non-technical founders can leverage other skillset as a competitive advantage

45:40 Learn more about Adventr.io and connect with Devo (@springsteezy)

Darius joins Kimmiko James, Host of the Black Enterprise Network podcast, to discuss artificial intelligence and why it's critical underrepresented tech founders get involved in it's development. They dive into it's impact in business and the real world as well as strategies to get educated and up-to-speed on the technology.

Check out Kimmiko's podcast at: https://www.blackenterprisenetwork.fm/

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