Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - From Running Billion Dollar Brands to Funding Black Founders | Keenan Beasley - Venture Noire Founder & P&G/L’Oréal Exec

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Lessons - From Running Billion Dollar Brands to Funding Black Founders | Keenan Beasley - Venture Noire Founder & P&G/L’Oréal Exec · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lesson's episode, explore how community, confidence, and access to resources shape
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  entrepreneurial success for underrepresented founders.
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  Discover why density and shared
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  ecosystems accelerate growth, understand how wealth gaps and limited networks create barriers
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  to early funding, and uncover strategies that lower entry costs and connect diverse
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  innovators with capital and opportunity.
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  But as you built this out, I was looking on the site
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  And you said for Venture Noir, there's three resource pillars, curriculum, community, and access to capital.
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  Absolutely.
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  Is that, when I look at, when I think about an entrepreneur, curriculum, the knowledge, access to capital is obviously important.
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  I feel like community is something that isn't focused on enough.
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  Is this the community in your mind?
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  Is it like an incubation program?
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  Is it somebody who has gone through the same life experiences?
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  Is it somebody of the same color, understands cultural background or nuances?
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  What's community that you would bring to the table?
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  Because that's the one piece that I don't know well.
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  No, no, it's a great question.
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  It comes from the philosophy really that, you know, density breeds success.
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  So it's the idea of a strip mall, right?
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  So, you know, here in America, we have strip malls where, you know, you have one company that's doing well.
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  Well, those companies that are around it tend to get some of that, you know, fall off traffic.
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  Right.
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  And they tend to have better sales revenue because of that, just from sheer proximity.
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  So a lot of what I think was lacking in in the, you know, underprivileged or underserved or minority communities was that density of creation.
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  So there was no Silicon Valley with with diverse black and brown entrepreneurs.
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  So we have to build those ecosystems.
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  And what ends up happening is you start to rise then collectively together.
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  You share experiences, you share resources, tips, but you also can share talent, right?
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  A lot of times the failure rate of an entrepreneur is incredibly high.
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  but in order to recruit those people they need to feel like hey well if that company doesn't work
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  out is there another job nearby that i can get that's the unknown thing about you know silicon
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  valley you join a tech company up in san francisco right or a menlo park yeah hey that company fails
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  you got a thousand other startups that just raised capital that you can jump over to you walk down
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  the street create another job absolutely so that's part of what that community is right it's a way of
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  sharing resources, but it creates a bit of safety and familiarity.
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  And why, this is a big question, I guess.
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  I don't want to make this question too big.
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  But when there's a Y Combinator, or in Toronto, where I am,
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  there's Creative Destruction Labs,
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  and there's a whole bunch of other types of these types of programs.
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  Y Combinator is probably the best known.
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  At what point does an underserved or an underrepresented group
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  fail at getting into a Y Combinator?
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  Is it when they're very young
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  and they didn't have the educational circumstances
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  to facilitate that or enable them to get to the point
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  where they felt confident or competent enough to apply?
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  Is it at the very last point
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  where there's maybe perhaps not the ability,
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  I don't know, I want to say racism at that level
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  where they're not being accepted?
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  Are they getting accepted,
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  but they just don't feel like they have a lot of peers
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  represented in the same group?
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  Like, what's the point that the traditional venture capital or incubator programs fail underrepresented individuals?
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  A lot of it is confidence.
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  So what I found was, you know, a lot of these minority entrepreneurs just were insecure in the process because they didn't know anyone else who had gone through it.
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  There was no one in proximity.
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  So there wasn't the entrepreneur in the family.
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  There wasn't, you know, the aunt or the uncle that they could call on to talk about the process.
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  So it's this foreign land.
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  And a lot of what was happening in that foreign world of entrepreneurship, there were these early stages of capital that were not afforded to some of these groups.
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  And the thing that leads our venture space is not VC capital.
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  Less than a percent of all companies received venture capital dollars.
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  The bulk of that is coming from friends and family and personal loans.
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  Well, when you have a wealth gap in the United States that is 250 or so years, that has a real impact on being able to serve that community because there isn't an accredited investor in your family to give you a friends and family loan.
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  So that $25,000, $50,000, $75,000 to get you started doesn't exist.
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  So you now have to figure out, well, now I have to take out a personal guarantee.
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  Well, if I take out a personal guarantee and I fail, which 90 plus percent of us do, well, now that has a huge impact and a setback.
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  So now I would just I just took that 250 year gap now just went to 253 years or 260 years.
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  Right.
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  So it's very detrimental.
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  So, you know, you have to figure out ways to build that confidence, which is why.
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  How can we lower the cost of barrier?
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  Right.
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  The entry point of entrepreneurship.
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  Why Combinator and those groups don't address that?
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  That's an interesting way of putting it.
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  So you're lowering the cost.
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  You're giving them the resources because you have the ability to offer these at scale as opposed to going and fixing all the venture capital out there and trying to funnel it more towards young, black, or underrepresented entrepreneurs.
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  And I think that's an interesting way of putting it or not putting it but actually helping facilitate.
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  because all I see all over Twitter is just,
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  I hate referencing Twitter.
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  I'm sorry, it's not an educational resource,
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  but I see a lot of, anecdotally,
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  a lot of people speaking about,
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  well, VCs have to invest more
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  and VCs have to invest more in underrepresented.
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  And I was actually gonna ask you, how do we do that?
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  I don't know if you have a thought
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  on how do we actually facilitate that,
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  but you're taking the other route,
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  which I think is actually a very smart way
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  because it's a quicker thing to action.
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  You don't have to change the whole cultural
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  of a certain VC group that doesn't invest in underrepresented,
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  you can enable them with the tools and resources you already have
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  at a much cheaper, almost like wholesale rate is the best way to put it.
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  Yeah, I mean, look, venture capital is a formula, right?
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  So there's a way to hack that.
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  And so they're investing in very like-minded companies
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  and a profile of people.
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  You know, if you're a Stanford dropout and you want to start a company,
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  you'll probably get a million dollars, right?
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  Just by saying you want to start a company.
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  And, you know, the minority communities, you don't have that familiarity.
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  So I had to address that in a different way.
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  And part of what I feel the responsibility within Venture Noir is to make the process of entrepreneurship in the underserved community and make it more familiar with that investment community.
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  So invite those venture capitalists into workshops.
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  workshops, let them see the innovation, right?
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  The creativity, the thought.
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  Now let's give that
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  then innovator, the process and the formula and how to package and sell that idea.
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  And that's
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  just part of the work that we have to do.
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  And it's tough, but you know, I can give you, look,
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  you know, I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but I think what you also find in a lot
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  of minority based communities is the easiest thing to start with very little capital is a service
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  business.
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  A service business does not require venture capital because it doesn't scale in the
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  same way.
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  Well, it's probably only venture capital because they want that exit.
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  Exactly.
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  So that's why when you look at a lot of minority founders, they don't have the right
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  businesses for venture capital.
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  Now, if you transpose that with a guy like my friend,
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  Rodney Williams with Lichner, it's a technology, right?
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  It's a beacon ticket.
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  So people get that.
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  It's totally a very clear narrative that is modeled after a lot of what
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  Silicon Valley has done in the past.
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  I'm not going to say it's ever easy to raise capital,
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  but he has a much more,
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  a much better chance than someone that is starting an agency.
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  Like it was my first business.
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  My agency would never raise venture capital.
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  And where, and whereabouts,
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  Where are you finding entrepreneurs?
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  What's your best audience that will have the best chance of success?
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  Is it people in universities or are there individuals that are later on in their career?
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  Where are you finding your group?
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  I think the great thing is the entrepreneurs find us because they're just so curious.
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  A lot of the work that we're doing and why we are constantly trying to raise sponsorship dollars is we need to do more events, more activities.
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  Um, and in case that people can then, yep, they can find us and, and they reach out.
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  So we've done some great things with colleges, um, have a great partnership with USC.
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  We've worked with TCU with, uh, uh, uh, internships, university of Chicago, et cetera.
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  Um, I've even done some talks at West Point and if you want to believe they have an amazing
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  entrepreneurship community there.
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  Um, so colleges, absolutely.
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  But then I think there's people with that real expertise from some of these companies
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  that would do well in a startup environment, right?
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  That I think they could really start to shape a culture
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  because they have that technical expertise.
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  So I'm also looking at bringing some of those folks over.
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  And then I think you have your influential leaders, right?
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  Your cultural leaders that I call it, right?
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  People that start trends.
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  They may not have the technical ability,
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  but they have the means to get reach and attention,
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  which is also needed for success.
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  well now I'm pairing them with a technical expert and now you have a really cool team
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  to build from so yeah we we look everywhere thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see
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  you in the next one