https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J16k9nRFfjs
Oakland News Online Blog – vlog by Zennie62 YouTube. OaklandNewsOnline.com is the original blog post for this content.
So Does Black Ambition Age-Discriminate In Picking Black Startups To Help? Seems So
“Black Ambition” and other “black focused” organizations that say they want to help African American startup entrepreneurs, must stop treating us like they’re white. Here’s what I mean.
“Black Ambition” was established by the genius entertainer Pharrell three years ago. It focused on hosting several “contests” where black businesses can be considered and gain a grant. Well, dog-and-pony shows for money are not for me. Not at this state of my life. Zennie62Media, Inc. is my second tech startup. My first one is called Sports Business Simulations. What I learned from that company (not building a business around someone’s weird programming language and making sure your corporate basics and approvals were in place), I applied to Zennie62Media, Inc.
I am proud of what I built. But now, after a period where we maintained several clients, I’m on the hunt for new ones and for investors. So, I don’t have time for dog-and-pony shows. Yet, someone connected with Black Ambition sent email after email trying to get me to enter the program. The reason to do so is that it says it has several categories of possible grants a business can obtain, from $250,000 to $1 million. Fine, but the reason I avoided it at first was because it sent the message to me that I had to have some connection to what we call a Historically Black College or University. Or what we call an HBCU. Well, my degrees are from Texas-Arlington and U.C. Berkeley. I salute and applaud the history and work of HBCUs, but my personal history is that I went to two “white”, if you will, schools. But I don’t look at it that way.
I went to Texas-Arlington and U.C. Berkeley because I wanted to gain degrees in urban planning as an under graduate and a grad student, to make a long story short. Moreover, U.C. Berkeley is, in my view, the best place a grad student can attend because the intellectual freedom and access to some of the world’s best minds is without peer. I rejected Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for Cal in 1985. Cal was the best academic experience of my life. I am proud that I took that route as much as I am happy for those who followed their path and attended an HBCU. But I will not be made to be in a position where I am essentially punished for not attending an HBCU. That brings me to Black Ambition.
I wrote this letter below to Black Ambition and it expresses how I feel about the program:
To Whom It May Concern,
Zennie62Media is an operational and existing business, not an idea. It’s a Delaware C-Corporation three years in good standing. I am sorry I took the time to enter this program when all of the signs were there that I should not have.
Black Ambition isn’t about that in my view, it’s about placing yourself in the position of someone white. It’s also, in my view, a group that focuses on the young and I think you all discovered that I was 60.
I am not in the position of going or have time to be in dog-and-pony shows, yet that’s what this feels like it was. I remind you, you all hunted after me. I did not at all know about you. I had hoped that you all would not be like A Certain Black Venture Capitalist, who held himself out as a friend, but told. me he did not invest in media companies, only to have me discover that he invested in my friend Sarah Lacy’s blog Pando Daily. In other words, he lied to me.
It’s not at all helpful to have a program that basically copies what whate VCs do, but it seems like there’s that habit. You had ample chances to sent notes of advice without asking me to be in the program. I had already communicated my concerns as I am not connected to an HBCU.
The future for “us” is not good. We have too many people who want to help their own sub group and basically place themselves out as judge and jury. I am trying to gain investors and new clients. I don’t have time for this and I have a mother to help.
The only reason I took time to do this is because you asked me to be in it. And you sent email after email after I had said “NO”.
This is way not cool.
Sincerely,
Zennie
We Need Efforts That Truly Help Black Startup Entrepreneurs Not Reject Us
In closing, I have received email after email that goes something like this: “We have identified Zennie62media as one of the top early stage WorkTech ventures and wanted to invite you to apply to the…” And then they name the program. So far none of the efforts I’ve put my company’s hat in the ring for have panned out in any way: not even a follow-up for next steps. I have no idea what anyone gains by asking a black media tech organization to get involved in something that will be reported about by that black media tech organization, but the minders of these firms do just that.
If Black Ambition is going to really help black entrepreneurs and it sees that there’s a black media tech organization, Pharelle and company need to make sure that firm, in this case Zennie62Media, is out there helping to promote it, not putting us through a dog-and-pony rejection mill. And for the simple reason that we’re going to complain about it, as I am doing. Someone needs to raise a hand and stop this emerging black version of a zero-sum-game, where someone’s win is someone else’s loss. That does not improve the current bad situation for us.
As Crunchbase (where Zennie62Media is listed and I have been on since TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington created the platform) reported, “Black startup entrepreneurs still received only a tiny fraction — 1.2 percent — of the record $147 billion in venture capital invested in American startups.”
And that was in 2021, now it’s worse. For Black Ambition and the other African American focused firms of its type to operates as if black businesses are plentiful and gainful in revenue is just plain awful.
via IFTTT
Note from Oakland News Now Blog, Zennie62 YouTube, and Zennie62Media: this Oakland News Online Blog video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018, originally on Zennie62Media , Inc.’s Oakland News Now. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. This is what we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a “liked” YouTube video by a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then that YouTube video is uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Online Blog site and Zennie62Media -created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary, thus less chance for Oakland News Online Blog, Zennie62 YouTube vloggers to be robbed. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners. This process is entirely within YouTube terms of service, where embedding of videos for use on websites and platforms is allowed and encouraged.