D.C.-area musician and entrepreneur Alfred Duncan wants to help close the wealth gap. So he created Black Men Ventures to do just that.
Sound familiar?
That’s because it’s modeled after Shelly Bell’s Black Girl Ventures, a 4-year-old District organization that helps Black female founders secure grant-based funding through pitch sessions and connect with investors as they grow.
Duncan reached out to Bell in June with the idea to build a similar effort for Black men, he said, after writing his song, “BLM Plaza.” When he wrote the chorus — “breaking bread, making plans, building with my brothers” — “I was thinking about a lot of my friends who are in business, and they’re doing great work,” he said. “However ... I don’t think we do a great job of sharing information with others who have the desire to be an entrepreneur, or those that are already entrepreneurs and may need some assistance.”
So Duncan’s venture aims to foster access to capital, from financial to human capital, for Black male founders. He pulled together the team in July and they spent the rest of 2020 “in the trenches, trying to organize ourselves and get all of our ducks in a row,” Duncan told me. College Park-based Black Men Ventures went live Jan. 1.
“Alfred Duncan and his team are businessmen of great integrity and care for the community,” Bell said in an email to the WBJ. “As a leader, Alfred reflects the artistic mind, big vision and management style that is sure to build firmly on the Black Girl Ventures (BGV) model to impact thousands of Black men as BGV is continuing to impact thousands of Black women. Together, BGV and BMV’s whole family approach to economic development is the way of the future.”
Black Men Ventures pitch competition planned for April
In a play straight from Bell’s book, BMV will hold a pitch competition and invite the community to vote for their favorites by investing their own money.
BMV bills the pitch event as “Shark Tank” but “with an audience, where everyone is a shark,” per its website. Scheduled for April 16, the first installment will feature eight people virtually presenting their early-stage and revenue-generating businesses. Those entrepreneurs, to be announced soon, will also have access to pitch deck guidance and practice ahead of the contest. The first-place winner will receive $10,000, second place gets $5,000 and third takes $2,500. But any presenter can earn investments from audience members.
Duncan and his team raised an initial $25,000 from personal investments, friends and community partnerships to put on this competition, he said. But they’ll need to raise more funding, and are targeting roughly $500,000 this year to support a pitch competition each quarter and introduce more programs going forward. BMV will pursue that funding sometime in March when it secures nonprofit status, which is now pending.
“Ultimately what we want to be is a difference in the wealth gap, because when you invest into Black entrepreneurs, then that brings the money to the community or to the people, and then they are able to do different things for their community,” Duncan said. “I think that’s where we lack — is that there’s not enough entrepreneurs that can pour into their individual communities, and then share their stories and their experiences, and people that look like them in their community can see that they can do it too.”
Building on a career building community
Duncan might not be a venture capitalist, but he’s no stranger to community engagement. His day job is as communication and community engagement specialist for the D.C. Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, which aims to reduce homicides in the District by approaching violence from a public health standpoint and running programs for at-risk youth.
He’s also lead vocalist and songwriter for D.C. go-go band Mambo Sauce, a two-time Grammy-nominated artist for his work with local reggae band Soja, an Emmy-nominated narrator for PBS docuseries “The District,” a published author and a viral video star — after he proposed to his now-wife and threw her a surprise wedding in the same day. That led the couple to writing, producing and starring in a stage play called “Views from Forever,” which they sold out and performed at various D.C.-area theaters.
Duncan also runs a safe space discussion group for men to meet and talk without judgment, among other local events and initiatives. These experiences have collectively led him to see the value in community, he said.
“Once you start to see people that look like you and people that share some of the same stories as you, and you see an entrepreneur realize that he’s human and some of the things that he went through are some of the things that you’re going through now, gives you a sense of confidence that you’re on the right path,” Duncan said. “I think just creating a community, or me being involved in a community, would have pushed a lot of my businesses further because I think I would’ve learned a lot from different people.”
