Do you feel celebrated?
Founders and entrepreneurs of color spoke during a panel discussion on June 12 about what it means to them to be celebrated in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. 43North and Bank of America held the event at the Northland Workforce Training Center that was moderated by Christian Gaddis, director of recruitment marketing for 43North Compass at 43North.
For some, the answer depended on who is potentially doing the celebrating.
When Alicia and Alisa Officer started Unapologetic Coffee, they were told early on that their industry didn’t fit their demographic.
“To be frank, we were told that what we were selling was not made for Black and Brown people,” said Alicia Officer, one of the panelists. “So in order to be celebrated, we had to debunk that I think.”
When businesses stay true to themselves and who the founders are, the right people will like your brands. Others might fall away.
“Sometimes that celebration is my sister and I literally having a brief dance out in the back where no one can see us and sometimes it’s the big successes when you start getting the notoriety from other industries because they now see your brand as what you built it as, not what you conformed to,” she said.
Songe Laron, co-founder of Squire, which has created a business management software platform for independent barbers, said entrepreneurs have to believe in themselves before anyone else will.
But even after you’ve “made it” in the business world, there’s always hard times.
Last year, U.S. startups got $140.4 billion in venture funding, according to Crunchbase. Black-founded startups got less than 0.5% of that.
When Laron and Dave Salvant founded Squire, which has its largest chunk of employees in Buffalo, they began meeting with investors. They repeatedly got feedback that their addressable market couldn’t be that big. “How many Black barbers are there?”
“It’s very rare to have a Black-led tech company,” Laron said. “Therefore, we must only be creating a product for Black consumers, which was a bias, perhaps unconscious and unintentional, but it was a bias we had to overcome.”
Squire had to be intentional early on about its marketing, including images used in its pitch deck. The startup used photos of white barbers to try to communicate that the product was for everyone.
Brendan Bulluck, a panelist, took over as owner of Hale Northeastern, an event management company, in December. One of his goals is to make its workforce more diverse, including advertising for seasonal summer jobs with a front lawn sign at its 828 East Ferry St. location.
“How can I invite my neighborhood and my culture into here?” he said.
Squire organically built a diverse workforce because it was in the company’s DNA. The co-founders didn’t have a DEI person or quotas to hit, and they didn’t even track the diversity of its employees until recently.
Not only is it the right way to build a company, but it’s good for business, Laron said. The barbers it serves span across every culture, race, ethnicity and demographic area in the country, so having a diverse workforce allows Squire to better serve those customers.
When asked how the community can support the entrepreneurs, Ekua Mends-Aidoo, a panelist and founder of Clemintine Gold Group, said she’s gotten all of her clients from word of mouth. Even the equity-centered planning and strategy firm’s global clients came from word of mouth.
Along with using products and services from founders of color, Alicia Officer also said that reposting a social media post from a small business isn’t difficult and is free.
“Some things don’t have to cost us any money, but it might make a big impact,” she added.
