Latest / Earn Your Leisure / 🚨 THE #1 CAREER TO GET INTO BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE—AND THE COLLEGE DEGREES TO AVOID

Transcript

🚨 THE #1 CAREER TO GET INTO BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE—AND THE COLLEGE DEGREES TO AVOID · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What happens when only five companies and a handful of
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: people have the best intelligence and the rest of us
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: get the scraps?
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Is this something to really be concerned about? Is this
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: a bigger play here?
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: If evil people train technology, then the technology will leave
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the three evil, and therefore they will do evil things.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: My question is, why aren't we holding the companies accountable
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: for when their AIs do evil things? Content sites like
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: ours become sources for AI algorithms.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So websites are still generating money from ads?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Millions and millions of dollars.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: And people go on the website to read articles every day?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: How are we generating revenue to get to 10 to
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: 20 and doubling 100% without compromising integrity?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: You're not. You're absolutely compromising integrity above a certain threshold
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: because you have to say yes to advertisers.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: What are you seeing from your advantage of places that
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: people should be focusing in and they're not looking.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: At right now?
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Cybersecurity because you're able to be a part of the
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: solution as AI grows. And the thing that everybody is
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: kind of fear mongering about is like, what happens when
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: AI takes over? It's like, okay, well, if AI is
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: taking over, what are they taking over? And who's defending
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: against that? It is cybersecurity engineers, analysts, people who are
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: building the infrastructure to fight against the bad actors within AI.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: So do you believe in regulation?
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We need to hold the American companies accountable for building
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: things that are for the benefit of the human race.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: What's your thoughts on superintelligence?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: That is a scary proposition, which is why people are concerned.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: The idea that we are reaching a point where the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: technology is becoming smarter than humans. Like, how do I
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: even have a dialogue with this? How do we even
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: build with this? Do you believe the conspiracy that there's
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: a propaganda from China to make black people hate data centers?
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: All right, guys, welcome back. EYL, we got a special guest.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Special.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Friend of the program.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Friend of the platform, the program, friend of ours. I
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: feel like we've been friends in our heads for so long.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: 100%.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: It's our first time meeting in person.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Which is crazy. And now I know what it feels
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: like when people say, oh, you feel like you were
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: much taller in person.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I'm 4'11 for the record. And I get big energy.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: Big energy is what you give, for sure. It feels
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: like power has walked into the room.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Morgan D. Bond, the force behind Afrotech, Blavity. You are
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: one of the most influential people in tech. As far
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: as your research and well-respected, you play a part in government.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: We've had conversations about a lot of different things.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: So much going on right now. It's a crazy world.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes. So we have a lot to talk about.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Artificial intelligence. We have to talk about Afrotech. This is
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: year 10?
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Year 10, a decade.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Congratulations.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: See, that was synced.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Because we come from an event background. And 10 is
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: a number. So congratulations.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: You guys are coming up soon.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Seven years.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: It's a long road.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: That's a fact.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Somebody we can say that we can, has done it
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: and we respect doing it.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: First and foremost, thank you for joining us.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Happy to be here.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: So let's get into it. Okay. But people that are
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: not familiar and have just heard of Blavity, they've heard
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: of Afrotech. You've done a good job with like, Us,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: we're not afforded the luxury of not being in front
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: of the camera. I feel like you don't have to
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: be in front of the camera. Like, people know about
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: the brand. They may know you. They may not know you.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: It doesn't impact things. So I say that to say
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: people might not know your journey.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: So can you, like, give us the journey? Like, where
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: does it start and how does it get here?
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm from St.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Louis.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Born and raised in St.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Louis.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Went to college in St.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Louis.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: And then moved from St. Louis to the Bay Area
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: to the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, California
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: to work at a tech company into it. And I
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: did that for a few years thinking that, you know,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I was going to the epicenter of where all of
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: innovation is and the smartest people are and I want
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to be in the mix. This was 14 years ago.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: And consumer tech companies were just becoming the biggest companies.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: They still weren't the biggest companies at the time, the Googles,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: the Metas, et cetera, Facebook at the time. And once
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I got there, I realized that these people aren't so smart. Like,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: they just have opportunity and they have permission to dream
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: for billions and billions of people. And that when they fail,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: they fail up because it's part of the startup and
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Silicon Valley ecosystem. And being a part of that really
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: taught me, okay, who is going to do that for
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: our culture? Who is going to dream for millions and
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: billions of people for our culture, given how much Black
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: people impact everything in this country and around the world?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: So that was the beginning of starting Blavity. And Really,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to raise venture funding, you know, but
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I ultimately did. I raised over $ 12 million, which really
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: was not in vogue back in the day to raise
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: venture and scale Blavity, grew it, moved to LA, built
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the company there. And then during COVID, we went fully remote.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: But I started Afrotech a few years after Blavity because Afrotech,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: once I switched into tech, I realized, oh, this is
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a huge wealth creation moment for us. And we need
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: to participate in this and we need to be in here.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: And for whatever reason, we don't feel comfortable to be
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: in this space. And so let's figure out how we
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: can create an ecosystem where we are teaching each other
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: the game. So it's not just about, oh, I'm black
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: in tech. Like, oh, what's it like to be black
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: in tech? No. How do you become a product manager?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: What certifications do you need? Like, how do you raise
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: a million dollars? How do you raise a VC fund
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and get $ 200, $ 300 million under management? And that was
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the beginning of creating AfroTech and creating the space, which
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: started off with only 350 people. We were in the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: mall in downtown San Francisco. Like, it was very scrappy.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: You know, now it's 40,000 in Houston.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Congratulations.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Congratulations. There's a lot that you said there. I want
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: to know the climate, right? Because when we talk about
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: talent and we talk about technology, I feel like obviously
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: conversations have been had more recently about being in tech
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: and innovating in tech and taking part in investing in tech.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: But what was the climate like when you started? Are
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: you watching talent, realizing, hey, we have to bring this
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: thing together to create something? What was it like?
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: So that time in Silicon Valley is actually very similar
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: to the time now, but it's AI. So back then
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: it was consumer tech. It was when Ubers and Lyfts,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: like when my parents thought I was crazy for getting
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a car with a stranger. They're like, what do you
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: mean there's somebody who tries to get in a car
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: with a stranger? I was like, I mean, it's like
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: this thing called Lyft. And they were limos at the time.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Like Uber was, you're running around San Francisco on a limo.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: It was a very different culture, but it's very parallel
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: to the same revolution that's happening to AI right now.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to be a part of it. So
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be where... it was being made. In
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: terms of how we were thinking about building out this
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: tech ecosystem, the question became, what's the fastest way to
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: wealth and power within this ecosystem? And at the time,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: it was to be a part of the program. It
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: was to become directors, C-level executives at these tech companies
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: where they didn't really have to care about DEI. I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: don't even know if DEI was a made-up corporate phrase
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: 14 years ago. You know, it's made up, right? So,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: but regardless of like the DEI of it all, People
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: needed to hire smart people and they needed to hire
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: thousands of people, right? And so that was the beginning
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: of saying like, okay, so let's build this talent pipeline
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: for them. And let's get more black people these stock
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: options so that they can become first generation millionaires.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: First generation millionaires, vitally important.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Always.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: I like that parallel.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Blavity, you said that you early in raising money.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And then I saw something, I think I saw it
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: on your page. You said that if you had to
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: do it differently, you would have done it differently.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Definitely.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: So explain the process that you went through as far
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: as raising money and looking back on it in hindsight,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: why would you have done it differently?
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: When you raise venture capital, you give up so much
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: control and power on the trajectory of your options once
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: that business scales. And because we were taking millions of
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: dollars from people, they want that money back. So if
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I give you a million, I want 10x back. That's
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: what they're aiming for. So if I've raised $ 12 million,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I got to exit to be able to give them
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: their money back and for me and all of my
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: employees to get money. So your decision-making calculus changes when
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: you have to build a company that gets to that
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: type of scale and then exits. So it's a different
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: level of pressure to continue to grow at a clip
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that can be detrimental to whatever the mission is or
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the business is. that you're trying to build. Because every
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: time you raise, you're raising the stakes and the amount
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: of money that you have to get back.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: So you, all right, so personally with Blavity, you raised money.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: You felt like that kind of stifled the creative direction
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: that you wanted the company to go in?
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. In the beginning. Now I haven't raised, I stopped raising.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I took myself out of the hamster wheel. I said,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: let's switch to profitability and fund our growth, any acquisitions
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: that we want to do from our own profits. which
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: was not a favorable decision for my VCs because it
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: meant that I slowed our growth. So whereas we were
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: growing year over year, 50, 100%, I said, wait, going
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: from five to 10 million, okay, cool, I can do that.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Going from 10 to 20, all right, cool. 20 to 40, okay.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: 40 to 80, that's a different business, right? So the trade-offs,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: as the bigger you get, the trade-offs that you have
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: to make to your company culture Who stays, who goes,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the kind of customer you're serving, the clients, the contracts.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: It's a completely different business. And it's a fair game.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of black people who are
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: playing that game incredibly well in the venture space. But
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: with the type of media business, it was really going
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: to be tough to do. And we've seen all these
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: media companies fail.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, media has changed. So for the person who's
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: not familiar with how Blavity started. How are we generating
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: revenue to get to 10 to 20 and then doubling 100%
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: without compromising integrity?
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: You're not. I mean, you're absolutely compromising integrity above a
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: certain threshold because you have to say yes to advertisers.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: So Blavity makes money from advertising to black people, right?
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: So you're selling cars, fast food, liquor, right? And so
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: over time, it's a little bit, you know, it's fine
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: when you're trading off here and there, but at some
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: point you have to say, do I actually want to
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: continue to peddle this? Like, and I think that's, that
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: is the challenge of being in Silicon Valley. It's like
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: at some point, and we're kind of seeing it now
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: in the conversation with AI, where at some point you
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: have to decide if I continue this path and this
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: growth trajectory, what is the outcome for my end user?
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: So, okay. For people that may not be familiar, even
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: with Blavity, right? Yeah. You say ads. Okay. What ads
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: are we referring to?
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: When you go to the website and you see display
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: banners and you see videos pop up, Those are ads
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: that people are paying for us to get black people
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: to buy their products and services. At Afrotech, it's a
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: different business model. Afrotech is a sponsorship business model. It's
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: a brand communications business model where people want to be
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: associated with the brand. They're trying to push something. It's
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: like CES or South by Southwest, right? It's like really
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: making sure that in the tech industry, it's the trends
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: and people want to be in front of people. But
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: on the media side, traditional media is about ads. If
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: you're not charging subscribers... Like the Wall Street Journal or
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: New York Times, they're making money from ads and subscribers.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: It's very difficult to charge the black consumer for a subscription.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Because they won't pay?
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: No.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: So, all right.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Is that like a lesson learned?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't even try. I wasn't trying to get
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: eat on threads or Twitter or whatever.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: So what is the verticals that Blavity has? Travel Noir.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Yep, Travel Noir.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: What is Travel Noir?
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: So Travel Noir is a brand we bought. Started by
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a founder named Zim. And it's the largest black travel brand.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: So it drives tourism all over the world. So we
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: work with cities. We work with countries to get more
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: black Americans moving around the diaspora and participating in travel.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: So travel noir.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: We have Blavity, which is news, pop culture. Afrotech, which
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: is the biggest business tech site. 10 times the size
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: of Black Enterprise.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: So that's important. Afrotech is an event, but it's also
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: a media arm as well.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: It does incredibly well.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: And then we used to have a women's site called 2190,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: and then we had another site called Home and Texture,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: which was interior design.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: So, okay. All of these sites have websites, but like me,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: I don't go on websites. So websites are still generating
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: money from ads?
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Millions and millions of dollars.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Yes.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: And people go on the website to read articles every day? Yes.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: People do, in fact, still read.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: It's declining.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: So there's kind of two schools of thought. It's like,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: as people's attention spans have gone down, more and more
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: people are watching clips and streamers and all these different things, right?
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: But there's still always going to be a reading community.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Think about a sub-stack right now, which is doing incredibly well.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: People still want to read. The other thing that's changing
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: is that content sites like ours become sources for AI algorithms.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And so there's a lot of AI agents that are
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: actually parsing our websites so that they can put that
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: information back into their systems. So websites and content, written
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: content actually is still incredibly important.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: And then you have podcasts?
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: We don't do podcasts.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: You don't do podcasts. Is that intentionally?
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Podcast is heavily dependent on the independent personality. and therefore
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: difficult to have a distributed media system because you're dependent on,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: it's called key person risk, like you're dependent on the person.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: So what if that person wants to leave? Or what
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: if that person wants to be independent? It becomes this
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: really tough decision.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: So I wonder, knowing how media has changed again, the reader,
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: like you said, did you make a conscious effort to say,
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: let me get in front of the people? to speak
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: to people directly or was that just something that kind
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: of naturally happened?
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Just naturally happened.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I think because there's so few black women who raise venture,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I became a bit of a public figure. And because
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: that happened, I said, okay, well, if I'm going to
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: be a public figure, I want to own my own
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: narrative and my own story. I want people to actually
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: know what I think and how I think, as opposed
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: to other people talking about what I'm doing and how
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I'm doing it. But I'm not, I don't have a
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: platform for my personal brand.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Okay. Okay.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: So you have these sites and the primary source of
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: revenue is the website.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Yes. Okay.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: And that's generating money. You have the event that you
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: start called Afrotech. Afrotech comes, how long into the media
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: arm does Afrotech come in?
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Two years.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Two years after you start Blavity, you start Afrotech.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Okay. And then Afrotech scales to what it is now.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about Afrotech because that's important for people
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: to understand. You run an event, Afrotech, there's a lot
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: that goes into it. So we can have a prolonged
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: conversation about this. Okay. How do you scale Afrotech to
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: where it is now?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So Afrotech first is building something that provides value
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: to the attendee. So that's the first thing. My general
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: rule on revenue and running events is that your revenue
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: from your attendee should cover the cost of the event.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And then sponsorships on top of it is where your
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: profits come from. Because if you ever start to have
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: an event that's tied to just corporate profits, it's not
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: going to necessarily benefit the end attendee if they wouldn't
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: go regardless of if the sponsor was there or not.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: So that's how we built Afrotech was like, what is
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: the person who's trying to strive to the next level
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: in their business, the next level in their career? What
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: do they need? What network do they need? How do
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I get all those people in a room so that
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: it's incredibly valuable for them?
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: All right, so this is a good question for you
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: because I used to distinguish partnerships from sponsorships, meaning a
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: sponsor is somebody that could, a company or organization that
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: comes maybe once a year, may not come back next year.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: Partnership is something that's elongated. Maybe it's three to five.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: Do you distinguish that? And did you have that mindset
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: early on as opposed to now?
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Most of our sponsors and clients are multi-year. They're coming
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: back year over year over year. And the thing with
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: sponsors is you got to have a value proposition for
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: them as well. So first was something for the attendee
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: as we were growing. Then it became, okay, what's the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: benefit to Amazon, Google, the FBI, the CIA? Why would
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: they come here? Because you don't have to, right?
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: The CIA is a sponsor?
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: They have been. Now, Stephen Miller messed up my bag
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit. That's a story for another day. But yeah,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: they were recruiting. And You either save them time or
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: you save them money. It's either more expensive for them
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: to get all of this talent, reach all of these
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: people not using us, or it's just so much faster
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: to go through us to get this audience. Those are
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: your two value offerings in an experiential business.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: In the relationships that you've had from Blavity, did those
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: transfer over? like first people you're reaching out to is
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: obviously the advertisement companies that you work with. And they
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: just kind of transferred over to Afrotech.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: The advertisers told us no. In the beginning, we were
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: too small. So you have to hit a certain threshold
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: of scale before an advertiser says this is worth the price.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: You know, your McDonald's, your Lexus, you know, your automotive, whatever.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Like they need a certain level of scale. And even
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Afrotech is like borderline. When you think about these big festivals,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: your Coachella's, et cetera, like it's hundreds of thousands of people. Um,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: So the first thing was it's really a business trade show,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: which was the reason why we've been able to grow
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: so quickly is because if you go business instead of consumer,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: you're going to result in more of an ROI for
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: those clients.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Can we talk about the skill? Because I feel like
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: These are the things that nobody tells you. Obviously, going
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: into the event space, what is the metric? Is it
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: 50,000 people a day? Is it 20,000 people? What are
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: corporations looking for to say, okay, that's big enough. There's
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: enough talent there for us to be a part of it.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's about 35,000 to 45,000. And it's an ecosystem.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: So everybody flies in. I would say about 10 to
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: 20 percent of people are flying and they don't even
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: have a ticket yet. They're still deciding if they're they
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: know they have a flight in a hotel, but they
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: haven't decided if they're coming. And then the rest of
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the people, they have a plan. So there's some people
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: going for the stages because they're trying. This is learning
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and development for them. So their companies are paying for
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: them to be there because we're doing an all day
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: training on cybersecurity. We're doing all day training on getting
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: a government clearance so that you can get these jobs. Right.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: So companies are paying for their employees to go there
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: for learning and development. Then there's another cohort of companies
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that are coming to steal the people from the other companies.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Recruiting. Right.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: They're recruiting. But they're not trying to recruit like in
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: a traditional sense. It's not like I have a job.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: You have a resume. Checkbox.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: No.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: They are sourcing before they even come to Afrotech. They're
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: looking at who's coming and they're reaching out to them
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: before Afrotech and doing interviews on site. People are getting
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: jobs on site at conferences. And so I can tell you, okay,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I know this company got 50 hires within two months
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: of coming to Afrotech. Job offers. That's revolutionary. You're not
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: seeing that at the white conferences. That's not happening. So
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: that's the reason we've been able to scale and grow
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: regardless of what's in vogue with DEI or not in
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: DEI because the value offering is there. So anyone who's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: thinking about building a business and experiential, you need to
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: think about the attendee value. And then you need to
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: think about the business value more so because that's really
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: what keeps it running.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: So how do you, how do you reach out to
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: companies to say, okay, you should send your employees here
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: or you should be here to recruit employees. Like how,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: who's the line of communication? How do you establish that?
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we have a great enterprise sales team internally.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: They're doing outreach all year round. So I actually start
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: courting people now for the next year. So we start
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: sending out invites and say, have you heard of Afrotech?
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: You should come through. We'll pay for your hotel. We'll
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: pay for your ticket. And we'll fly them out, probably
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: like 50 to 60 companies. And we let them scout
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and run their process, send them down. We do meetings
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: on site with prospective clients to show them because that's
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: when their ego is the highest. Right. Because they're looking
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: at all their competitors with these big booths and dinners
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and celebrities and politicians. And they're like, oh, man, why
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: can we do this? And then that's when the sales
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: process really starts to say, like, OK, how can we
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: be helpful with your business goals? How can we be
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: helpful with where your business is going, who you're trying
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: to hire, what you're trying to reach, how you're trying
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: to position yourself in culture as well? Like where else
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: can you position yourself in culture in the same way?
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: You've got Essence Fest. You've got you guys. Maybe CultureCon.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: There's just not that many options. It's interesting the politicians
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: are more interested in Afrotech now. So people, because of
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the data centers and those coming up in people's neighborhoods,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: you've got more local officials trying to figure out, okay,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: should I get in this tech money or not? Should
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: I partake or not? So that's how we think about
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the ecosystem and the sales process starts even before the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: conference ends.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: You said something very important. You said that you know
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: that people are getting hotels, they're getting flights, they are
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: trying to figure out if they're attending. Tracking the analytics
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: is something that's super important. We've learned that throughout the years, right?
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: So what type of metrics are you using to number one,
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: get those assessments? Are you doing prior to, are you
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: doing post? What's the game?
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: How do I know?
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I should tell the people.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Parietary.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Proprietary.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: Proprietary.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Proprietary. We haven't always been good at this. So there's
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: a couple of things. Hotels. So we work with the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: tourism board to understand the hotel pickups. So we have
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: their baseline and then we have their baseline during Afrotech.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: So that's one. Two, and the cities like to report
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: on those numbers, as you guys know, because it shows
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: like the economic value of the show, et cetera. Two,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: all the small businesses. We work with the Chamber of Commerce.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: We know what their normal foot traffic is. We know
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: what the foot traffic is during Afrotech. Afrotech, for a
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: lot of businesses, they make more money during the week
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: of Afrotech than they do almost their entire year because
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: people are spending corporate dollars. Like, they're swiping corporate checks. Like,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: you go to the club, it is like signs with
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: corporate companies on them.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Like, it's crazy.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I do not endorse this, for the record. Y'all do
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: what y'all do after hours. That has nothing to do
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: with me, okay? So we see that number. And then
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the last thing is we run affiliate sales. So there's
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of parties, a lot of sub-events, a lot
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: of things going on. And people are licensing our trademark
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: because they were going to have the party anyways. So
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: my thing is if you're going to already do it, great.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Like I want everyone to make money off Afrotech. Like
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I'm thrilled by that. It's an ecosystem. Yeah. Right? So
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: I want you to make money. I want you to
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: make your 100K, 200K throwing these crazy parties or these
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: incredible events for a random sector of the tech world
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: that we were never going to focus on. Great. I
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: need that data though. So that's the agreement that we
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: have on the back end.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: The liquid gold.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Do what you're going to do. I need those email addresses.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: So how is it working with, because you guys were
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: in San Francisco and you went to Austin, Texas. Now
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: you're in Houston. So you went to a few different
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: cities in a short period of time. What is the
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: driving factor in moving and not having it in one location?
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: And have you had conversations with, like, government? Are you
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: having incentives to move?
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Rashad, are you trying to start something? Something happened in Atlanta. Houston,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: I love you.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: I love Atlanta.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, yeah, the process is interesting. So we start
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: off multi-year. So we're working on 2029 and 2030 right now.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: And we start the bidding process. We do RFPs all
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: over the country. And then those cities bid for Afrotech.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: They tell us all the incentives they're going to create,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: what their convention center is going to do, the technology,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the companies that are headquartered in those cities that will
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: potentially opt in. So we run an entire assessment and
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: we make a decision based off of that. Houston's been
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: very good to us. So we've actually stayed in Houston
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: longer than I've ever stayed in any city. Like I
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: typically move it every three years. This is year three
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: or four in Houston. Four maybe. So I feel good
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: about where we are, but we will move it eventually.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Why do you like that strategy as opposed to the
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: essence strategy? Most people just leave it at one point.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Why do you like to move it around?
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I think that the culture of tech changes. I think
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: being in the Bay was fabulous because it was in
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the moment in which that was the epicenter of technology.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Then during COVID, everybody moved. And so once everybody moved,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: that opened up the world to be able to participate
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and be remote and work at these companies and be
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a part of innovation. People moved to Miami. People moved
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: to Houston, Austin, everywhere. Now things are shifting. People are
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: back in the Bay. Well, I want AfroTech to always
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: be cutting edge. We were talking about AI in 2023.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: We had Robert Smith talking about AI in 2023, right?
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: If people had just listened, we had NVIDIA as a
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: sponsor in 2022. The little booth in the back. People
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: got jobs there. They're millionaires now, right? Like I want
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: us to always be on the cutting edge. So that
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: means sometimes you gotta move. It's expensive to move though,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: to your point. There's a switching cost to moving. It
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: costs millions to move.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: That's the part that people don't know and fully understand.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about the incentives from when you put the
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: RPs out. What type of things are you looking for
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: from a city to say, okay, this is worth it.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's tough. I mean, the reason we've actually stayed
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: is because Houston has been making it worth it for
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: us to stay. So they've done a very good job
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: of understanding our needs and then adjusting to accommodate those.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I think in the future, as we think about Afrotech
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: going global and our brand really representing the best of
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Black technology and multicultural innovation and Black culture, I want
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: us to be more of a diaspora in how we
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: approach that. So like, I want Afrotech, if you care
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: about reaching the black voter, if you care about your
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: country participating in tech innovation, I want those prime ministers
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: at Afrotech. So we might need to look at other
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: cities that are more accessible to that kind of conversation.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: We're doing our first event in London actually in a
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: few weeks as well, just starting to test a different market.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I know I called you guys about that. Like, how
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: was London? How was Toronto? You know, it's, yeah, I
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: know Toronto's hot. I know, Toronto's on my list. We
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: were going to do one. I think we canceled it, but-
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: I believe Afrotech should be the biggest global brand because
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: people are already traveling from all over the world to
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: the conference.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: How do you keep the conversation going as far as
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: like marketing and making sure it's on top of people's minds?
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Ooh, we spend a lot of money on creators. So we,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: we fly a lot of people in, we pay for
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: their hotel, their flights, not just creators, but elected officials, people.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: But even before the event, before the marketing.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: No, we start now because I believe it's momentum. So we,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: People knowing that other people, it's the who's all going
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: to be there syndrome.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: And they talk about it. They post it.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: That's right. So they're like, are you going?
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about going. Are you going? So that's
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: got to start in the summer because that's when people
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: are making their financial plans for the travel. So we
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: start inviting people, confirming people, making sure that they feel
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: secure so they can confidently say, yeah, I'm going. And
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: that helps build the momentum leading up to the event.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's been on record now. I feel like
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: everybody said, we've been saying it for a few years
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: now that this time in tech is critical, right? Like
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: that two to three year span that if we don't
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: get this right from an innovation standpoint, from a creation standpoint,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: from an investor standpoint, we could miss it. I wonder
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: what your take is on this transfer of wealth, but
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: this revolution that is upon us and what's at stake
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: if we don't participate.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I think that we spent... a lot of time asking
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: to be a part of these companies to like, I
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: really want to work in these companies. Right. I think
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: we now need to shift towards, I really need to
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: build my own thing. Like this idea that these companies
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: are going to solve our problems. And I don't mean
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: black problems. I mean, human problems, the world's problems. They're
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: not incentivized to, and they're not regulated to, and therefore they're,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: that's not going to end well for us. And they're
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: all kind of saying that, right? They're literally saying like, oh,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: this might not end well for us. And I think
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: that we have a responsibility as people to not just
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: complain about it, but actually decide how we want to
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: participate in this evolution of AI and actually get in
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: there and build something.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: We talk about the wealth gap a lot, right? But
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: there's a technology gap. I don't think people really understand that.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: We went to Meta, the headquarters, and we didn't see
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: any black people there. It was either Indian or Chinese. Um,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: and I think people don't fully have an appreciation of
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: like how far behind that is and how disturbing that is.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: So can you actually paint a picture for people as
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: far as the, the education gap and the opportunity gap,
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: the job gap, the, entrepreneurship gap when it comes to tech?
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: So less than 4% of tech workers are black, even
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: fewer Hispanic. And the reason that matters is because when
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you're looking at building these products and who's building these products,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: they really are building it with themselves and the problems
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: that they're solving for in mind. And so what happens
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: is that as tech companies have become the most powerful
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: companies in the world, if they are not prioritizing inclusion
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: in how they're building, it's not about like tokenism, right?
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: It's about truly like you're building algorithms that are deciding
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: things like financial institutions and how banks read our data,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: deciding things like flock cameras and how you're monitoring our faces,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: facial recognition, like all of those types of biases trickle
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: down into the economics of how this country is built
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: and who gets opportunity and who doesn't. And if the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: algorithms are deciding that, if your resume makes it or
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't make it through the pile, these compounding effects are serious, right?
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: So that's why being in technology and being builders in
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the technology system actually will have a better benefit on
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: wealth inequality over time.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: You sit in a very unique perspective. Obviously, if you're
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: hiring people at Afrotech, you can see the careers that
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: they're looking for.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: A lot of people today just hear AI is going
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: to replace jobs. It's going to replace jobs. They never
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: think on the other side of the coin that it's
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: going to create jobs. It's going to innovate jobs. It's
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: going to make jobs more efficient. What are you seeing
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: from your advantage of the places that people should be
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: focusing in and they're not looking at right now?
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Cybersecurity. Cybersecurity, 10 times over. People should be, and the
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: cool thing about cybersecurity is that you don't actually need
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: a college degree to work in cybersecurity. You can get
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: certifications and stack your certifications. and be incredibly qualified to
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: work at these big companies making multi-six figures because you're
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: able to be a part of the solution. As AI grows,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: and the thing that everybody is kind of fear-mongering about
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: is like, what happens when AI takes over? It's like, okay, well,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: if AI is taking over, what are they taking over?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: And who's defending against that? It is cybersecurity engineers, analysts,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: people who are building the infrastructure to fight against the
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: bad actors. within AI that are absolutely having job security
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: in the future.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: So if that would be your advice to people, young people,
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: anybody that's looking to get into tech is start with cybersecurity.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: It would be cybersecurity and energy. So cybersecurity, one. Two
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: would be energy. Like, all of this compute takes incredible
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: amount of energy and we have terrible infrastructure in this country.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Our infrastructure is trash. Like everyone has said it.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: What does that mean? That means power outages. That means droughts.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: That means on top of climate change, right? Like we
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: have a serious problem. So anyone who has a expertise
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: in energy, plumbing, HVAC, going back to the trades, one
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: of our problems is that trades aren't sexy. Like nobody
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: wakes up and says, oh, I want to be a
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: plumber today.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Like you didn't go to college and be a plumber.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Plumbers are making six figures. Like they have jobs. You're
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: sitting unemployed with a college degree. This guy over here
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: is making a lot of money and has a demand
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: list for weeks for his services. So I think we
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: need to reframe what good jobs look like.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Well, that, okay, let's talk about this college education because
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: that's a part of AfroTech too. It's like, I'm pretty
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: sure people that's in college or they just graduated from
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: college and every tech degree is not created equal.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: No.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: So can we talk about the degrees that, you should
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: go after in this society and the degrees you should
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: stay away from?
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Electrical engineering.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: You should go after?
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: You should do.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Electrical engineering, cybersecurity and risk. I still think mathematics, economics,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: computer science, depending on the institution that you're, if the
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: institution that you are working with or working within understands AI.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Do not do Fru-fru stuff. Like even a business undergrad,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it right now. Things are moving too
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: fast and the colleges aren't keeping up with the trends.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I actually think you could still do philosophy and the arts.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: I think arts and experiences and philosophy are going to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: continue to be strong because that's what people are going
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: to have more time for.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So what else to stay away from?
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Let me ask you.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: A long list.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Communications?
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: No. Just be a creator.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Psychology.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: No.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Okay. Sociology.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yes.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Yes. Researchers at these companies are absolutely sociologists and anthropology
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: because you're studying the art of being human and human
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: interactions because they're building these agentic systems. They have personalities.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Medicine.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Bad lifestyle, but yes.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Every form of medicine?
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Lawyers? No.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: No.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Which I hate to say, because we need people to
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: regulate and people to do the work, but it is
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: the average salary for a law degree is going down,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: not up, because that's one of the things that can
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: be replaced. All the contracts and all the back and
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: forth that people do with lawyers, a lot of that
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: is getting replaced by AI.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: More efficient.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Way more efficient, lower cost.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Education. Teachers.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Teachers, always yes.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Is that a political answer?
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Okay. I'm a teacher.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: I was a teaching minor, so.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Engineers.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Which one?
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Engineer.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Engineering degree.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Mechanical, yes. Electrical, yes. Chemical, yes. Biotechnical, yes. Generally, yes. Media.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Media.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: No, no, just, just, just start, start. Like why do
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: you need a degree?
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Pick up yourself.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: It's like saying you need a degree in African-American studies
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: when you're black. Like I, I agree with studying our history,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: but do you need a degree in it? Unless you
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: want to become a professor or like write a book
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: or something, but like just read the books, like just
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: know your history. So history is probably going to be controversial.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: So history, you know, you, but you said you were
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: for history.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I'm for enthrallment and, and, Anthropology.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. Anthropology.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: That's what I said. Anthropology.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: I did not say that, but the word is anthropology.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Anthropology, yes.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Anthropology. But not African-American studies.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: I think if you want to study African-American studies, have
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: a very clear reason why.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It must be to teach it.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Generally. Right. To educate the rest of us and maintain
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: our history. Okay.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: That's fair. I'm wondering this, as you're saying all of it,
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: because this is brilliant. What approach do you think would
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: expedite it? Is it to, if you said cybersecurity is
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: the number one career, is it, hey, I need to
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: go try to get a job at Carousel Strike, Pow
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Wow Tales, Scalar, or do I need to try to
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: read as much as I can and try to create
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: what business, like some of my friends, or try to
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: do it on my own? What approach? Because we grew
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: up in a, hey, go into the system, understand the system,
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: create on your own, where now maybe it's just, create
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: on my own, figure it out as I go.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: I like learning on other people's dime. I think that
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: that is a great way to start. You don't have
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: to stay there forever. But I do believe that learning
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: on other people's dime, these companies, when you're 22, 23, 24,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: as smart as you are, you don't know how to
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: operate within a system yet. And even if you want
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: to opt out of the system, which I'm all for,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: I opted out of the system, learning the system is
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: still very helpful at knowing how to navigate it once
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: you're out of it.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: So very beneficial to go that route.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Go that route. Get the entry-level job.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: All right, let's have this conversation. So tech, that's your thing. So, okay,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: what's the harm that AI poses to the human race?
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: And what is the harm that it poses to society?
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: There's been a lot of conversations recently from everybody.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Even the tech CEOs coming together and saying that we
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: need to have regulation. Is it smoke and mirrors?
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Is this something to really be concerned about? Is this
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: a bigger play here? What's your thoughts?
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I think a few things. I think that the tech
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: companies coming together to say that we need to regulate
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: AI is for their benefit because regulating AI, once they
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: have already become as powerful as they are, prevents open
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: source models from being able to compete with them and
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: scale because the cost of AI is only going to
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: continue to go up. Typically, the cost of technology goes down.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: They're about to raise the prices like crazy. And they're
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: going to throttle the rest of our ability to use
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the biggest and strongest models. And that's going to be
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: detrimental to democracy and to all of us because what
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: happens when only five companies and a handful of people
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: have the best intelligence and the rest of us get
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: the scraps?
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: Which is why you wouldn't want open source.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Which is why you wouldn't.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Want open source. So you think that's purely done to
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: kill up-and-coming competition?
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: That's one. Number two, in terms of the threat of
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: AI to humanity, which is what the anthropic guy a
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: couple weeks ago said, you know, I'm out because I
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: think AI might kill humans. I believe that AI is
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: trained on data. Data is a reflection of all of us.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: And I believe that if evil people train technology, then
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: the technology will leave that they're evil and therefore they
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: will do evil things. My question is, why aren't we
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: holding the companies accountable for when their AIs do evil things?
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Like if American Airlines and Delta decided to do bad things,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: we would regulate them.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I think some are saying that the fear is
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: that it goes rogue. We've seen this happen.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Hold these people accountable when their AI goes rogue.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: No, no, no. But I'm just saying, if you create AI,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: I understand what you're saying. If I create AI in
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: a murderous mindset, then that's my fault for creating it
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: in a murderous mindset.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: But what if you create it in a regular, helpful way,
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: and then unbeknownst to you, it goes rogue on its own?
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: I don't believe that's what's happening. I believe that they
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: have created these systems to challenge... the researcher, to push
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: the boundaries, to escape, to be smart, to do all
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: of these things, to be curious. And I think that
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: they have lost control to an extent and now they
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: want to be, uh-oh, someone come in and regulate us.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: We should hold them accountable if their AI gets out
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: of their systems and does bad things. Just like you
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: hold somebody accountable if their dog got out and bit somebody,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: you hold them accountable. Why should we not do that?
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: So do you believe in regulation?
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Going back to the airline, imagine we said, hey,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: American Airlines in Delta and Southwest, you should regulate yourselves.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: You should figure out when to fly and figure it
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: out amongst yourselves. They would never do anything to our benefit.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: You need air traffic control. You need a government to say,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: you go, now you go, now you go. And you
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: can't do this when you cancel a flight. You got
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: to refund everybody. You got to do the right thing.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the challenge is, how do you regulate?
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: Because it's artificial intelligence, specifically like the models. We're talking
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: about the models, right? OpenAI, Anthropic, I mean, XAI as well.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: They're global.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Right. So the United States could regulate, but there's no
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: guarantee that China. China will or the UK. So it
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: becomes an issue if you don't allow this and they do,
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: will they get ahead in this?
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: They're already ahead.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Right. So like, how do you go about that then?
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: They're already ahead. China's models are faster, cheaper, use cleaner
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: energy and are more water efficient as well. So they're
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: winning across the board.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: So.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Do I believe that we should regulate and throttle ourselves
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: when our foreign enemies, I say that. Yeah. Are ahead.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: I think that there is a both and. I think
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: that we need to hold the American companies accountable for
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: building things that are for the benefit of the human race,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: as opposed to just defending against. international forces and the
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: possibility of other things. AI is not simply just ChachiBT
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: or Gemini. AI is things like built into our financial institutions,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: built into our healthcare systems, deciding who is getting care
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: and who's not getting care. It's built into everything that
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: we're doing, whether we like it or not. We need
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: to hold people accountable to the reality of what's happening now.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I think all of this future tense stuff is important.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: and we got stuff going on right now.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think when people watch Terminator 2 and iRobot,
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: they think that's where we're headed. We're not there just yet.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: We got some time.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: We got some time before that.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: I've seen the robots. Y'all have seen the robots. The robots,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: they got a long way to go.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: I saw them running in a track and field event.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, we might be 15 years.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: They can't even fold clothes. Like, we're good.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: I wonder, because we're having, this is like a high
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: level conversation, but a lot of people in our community,
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: Still read the headline and fear is induced. So I
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: wonder how do you go and I watch your social media.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: So I see how diligent you are about trying to
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: debunk some of that fear. What do you say to
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: the people that are, hey, I don't want to touch this.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: I don't even want to come. It's bad for us.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: I do think that AI is has its problems. I
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: think that the data center conversation is real. I also
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: believe that the impact of us not understanding it could
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: be even more detrimental. And I don't think that we
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: should mandate everybody use AI, but I do believe that
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: we should be informed about how it is impacting us.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Because again, it's not as simple as using ChatGPT or
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: using Cloud. It's built into the tools that you're using
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: every single day in your banks, in your education system.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: So we need to be informed enough to be able
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: to regulate, have a conversation, to hold politicians accountable to
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: how we're interacting with this technology.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: So what's your conversation to politicians when you speak to them?
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: First, you understand what's going on. I mean, behind closed
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: doors is very much, let me give you a one-on-one
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: of what an AI agent is. When people are talking
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: about AI agents, let's talk about the difference between a
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: chatbot and a system that has a job description and
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: is set to a goal and will take as many
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: turns as it needs to to accomplish that goal autonomously.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: So it's really just getting the foundation so that they
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: can then feel confident when they're asking questions to these
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: big tech companies. Because a lot of it, if you
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: don't feel confident in that conversation, how do you start
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: to challenge someone intellectually?
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. What's the feedback? When you're in these rooms, I
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: would imagine that when Jensen says, we've reached a landmark,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: actual intelligence has been reached from OpenAI, They have no
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: clue what that means.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: They have no idea. They call me.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: What is that?
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: Like they're watching the news and saying, what does this mean? Yes.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: They're like, what does AGI mean? Like what, what, what
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: determines this? And should I care? What does this mean
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: for my constituents? What does this mean for the guy
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: who's unemployed in my district?
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Like, and it's a really, it's actually pretty far away.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: You must be fielding hundreds of these calls. Yeah.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: It's great. I love it. I mean, it's like, what
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: a privilege, you know, to have a decades plus year
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: of experience and being able to bring something that is
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: so important to the culture, to the people who are
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: elected to represent us. Because they don't have that many
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: people to talk to.
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: Somebody's a charger. Somebody's got to plug out their charger.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: What do you say about the environmental risk that people
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: ask about when it comes to data centers and artificial intelligence?
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I think that we let a lot of data centers
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: get built without asking the right questions. And so there's
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: data centers that were built with very poor technology that
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: are draining resources in those local communities. And the stories
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: that we're seeing on the news and in the press
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: are a result of decisions we made eight plus years
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: ago to approve permits and approve different things without people knowing.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Really what the unintended consequence was of those approvals, because
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: they looked good. It was a lot of money. They
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: gave these data centers tax incentives. I'm like, why would
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: you not tax the data center?
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's a problem. I also believe that there
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: are plenty of examples of data centers that are using
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: renewable energy, that are bringing their own energy to the
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: playing field, that are recycling their water, that are using
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: smart ways of cooling their systems. And this is happening
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: in other countries. It is not happening here partially because
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: of our government. They have defunded solar. They have defunded
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: renewable energy. That's a problem. That's a problem. Okay. So
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: I believe that it is possible for these things to coexist.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: And I also absolutely believe that every community that is
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: considering a data center should have a very long list
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: of things that they should be asking for. Like you
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: should get new libraries. Your schools should have so much funding.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Your teachers' average salaries should go up. Like the taxes
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: in these communities should be funded. Your property taxes should
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: go down. Your electricity bill should go down. If those
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: things aren't happening, you should not allow that data center
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: in there.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think people are misinformed by the time it's
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: already being built.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Do you guys think that there's, do you believe the
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: conspiracy that there's a propaganda from China to make black
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: people hate data centers?
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: To make black people do what?
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Hate data centers and hate AI?
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: We had this conversation yesterday about I feel like there
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: is some propaganda.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: On Market Mondays?
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And the idea of how they're being spoken about. Right? Like,
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: I had this conversation with him about if water is
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: the issue, and it is an issue, then are we
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: looking at all companies that are using clean water for their, right? Nestle, Coca-Cola,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: come to the top of mind. They never are brought
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: up because of the water issue. If it's electricity, I mean,
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: there's plenty of companies.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Streaming. Right?
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: And it's never brought up.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: It feels like something that's been very consorted to change
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: or sway opinion at a very pivotal time in our
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: political season about how we think about data centers. Because
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: when you think about, I mean, the end case is
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: that we're going to need them. We're going to need power.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: How we get it will be determined on how many
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: data centers and what they're using, turbines, nuclear energy, all
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: those things. But the negative connotation around it, it feels
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: like it's becoming overwhelming. And it may sway how people vote, think,
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: and move forward.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: But why would negative, why would it come from China
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: to target Black people?
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Well, one, we're the most vulnerable oftentimes, like to propaganda.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: And we drive a lot of the social sentiment. Whether
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: we are voting or not voting, we drive a lot
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: of public sentiment around these issues and conversations. I think
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: it was proven during the Black Lives Matter movement of
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: how many bots infiltrated people's perspectives to cause controversy to
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: make those conversations trend. And there is a theory that
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: that is happening here as well and that we can
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: influence people to go back and forth, and they want
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: us to regulate. They want us to slow down.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: China.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: China.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Makes sense.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: And so they're using black people, not necessarily to stop
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: black people from using AI, but because we're the loudest
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: mouthpiece on social media, and now it just becomes a
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: cultural conversation for every single person. It's just a disruptive
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: conversation to have.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Data centers are disliked by the majority of Americans, not
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: just black.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: Data centers.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Data centers, but not AI. In the black community, I
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: would argue... I don't know, just probably 50-50.
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: And the timing of it is the key, right?
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: AI, I would say it had its prime moment or
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: its peak moment of interest with people like 2022, 2023.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: But when you look at what the data center infrastructure is,
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: they're used to just calling Bitcoin farms. Yeah. And it
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: was nobody had an interest. It was like, oh, Bitcoin's
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: taking too much energy. No, I'm saying we're going to
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: still invest in Bitcoin.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that was an issue.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: But it's not as loud as what this is feeling like.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Because this is bigger than Bitcoin. That's what I'm saying.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: Everybody's not invested in it.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: I think this is bigger than Bitcoin.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is that artificial intelligence, their arms
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: is way wider than just cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a much smaller,
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: it's still big, but it's a niche thing. Everything is
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: impacted by artificial intelligence. There's people that don't even, to
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: this day, know how to buy Bitcoin. But everybody uses ChatGPT.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: So I just think the conversation is bigger. But that
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: was always a conversation with cryptocurrency is that the environmental impact.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: But you had to be in that conversation to even
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: appreciate it. If you weren't in that conversation, it didn't
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: mean anything to you.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: This is like a global conversation.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: Everybody's in the AI conversation.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Because everybody can use ChatGPT.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: And everybody's heard about it. They robots. You just can't
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: avoid it. No matter what level you're on in society.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: you cannot avoid artificial intelligence. Even if you're not using it,
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: you can't avoid it. You can't avoid hearing about it.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: You can't avoid seeing it in your algorithm. You can't avoid,
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: you know, it's just unavoidable. If it's your algorithm, it's
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: already AI. No, I'm talking about as far as like
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: somebody actually practically like, you know, having their hands on it.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Everybody uses it on a certain level, of course. But
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: what I'm saying is that no matter how educated you are,
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: artificial intelligence has become part of our daily conversation.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Everybody.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: Everybody.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: I think that's fair.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: I wonder this, right? If we're talking about artificial general intelligence,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: which has been reached, what's your thoughts on the next leg?
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: Because the next leg is super intelligence. And that's when
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: we're kind of like out of the conversation now and
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: it's building and it's reasoning on its own.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: I think that that is a scary proposition, which is
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: why people are concerned, right? The idea that we are
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: reaching a point where the technology is becoming smarter than humans.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: I have a two and a half year old and
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: a 11 month old. So my baby's just learning how
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: to speak. But if all of a sudden she started
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: speaking Mandarin, I'd be like, girl, what happened? Like, how
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: do I even have a dialogue with this? Right? Like,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: how do we even have a conversation and build with this?
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: So I do believe that the idea of agents and
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: AI agents being able to collude and self-organize and accomplish
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: some sort of goal that the human gave them, but
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: in a way that the human didn't intend because the
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: human couldn't even think about that potential consequence is absolutely real.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as Bernie Sanders, he's announced he's trying to push
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: a law to permanently ban.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: I saw that.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: But every form of intelligence is smarter. Like artificial intelligence
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: right now is smarter than humans. Do you think that?
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: Huh?
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: Do you think that?
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Really.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: Course i don't know that i agree you don't agree no.
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: You don't you don't yeah i don't agree yet but
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: keep going you don't.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: Agree that chat gbt is smarter than a human being
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: right now no you can ask it anything is going
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: to give you an answer it.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Doesn't make it smarter it just has access to more information.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: That well that well intelligence is access to information we
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: go to school to gather information right you go to
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: school to learn how to think and learn information.
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: And learn information critically think and learn.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah okay but that is already starting to critically think
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: already As far as a large part of human intelligence
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: are things that has been taught to us that we've learned.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: We learn how to speak, right? We learn how to
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: do math. We learn how to do geometry. We learn
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: how to do even business. Some of it is instinct,
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: of course, and that separates. But a large part of
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: human intelligence are things that we have been taught. So
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: it's already surpassed us in that category, 100%. Now you
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: can say like emotional intelligence and intuition.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: Reasoning.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Now what level of it, like what's on the scale
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: of if it's 100% pie chart, right? The information that
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: we've been inputted, how much of that actually makes up
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: our total intelligence as far as human beings? I would
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: say a large part, but it's even catching up on
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: the other aspects that's not inputted. So I would say
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: it's already way more intelligent than a human being right now.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: I think that the fact that we still, these companies
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: are still hiring so many people, because even this narrative
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: that AI is taking jobs and all these layoffs are job-driven,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: those are the same companies that Alfred's hiring. So I
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: think that humans are still needed because they haven't reached
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: that level of self-management and self-actualization and self-improvement that would
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: be superintelligence or more towards a superintelligence level, which is
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: when they are smarter than humans.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: That's why I said, I don't think yet. It's going
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: to happen, but I think you used it.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Does it have to happen though?
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: Well, it doesn't have to happen.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: I think that's actually the question is like, could we
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: just be like, this is enough?
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know if we can.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Like this is good.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Because when I listened to these guys speak, I
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: don't think they have that mindset.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: They just went on news and said that, that we.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: Should slow down, slow down, but they're not going to, well,
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: they said we should.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Slow down so y'all can catch up. That's actually what
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: they were trying.
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: And the second that, OpenAI releases a new model. Anthropic
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: is trying to figure out how do we top their model?
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: And so it's not like we have a year to
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: try to figure this out. We might have three weeks
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: to figure out if we don't switch and improve, they're
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: going to take our user base. And then Gemini, everybody's
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: doing the same thing. I think what you said there
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: was the catch-up part. So yeah, there's a totality intelligence.
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: You said emotional, right? Reasoning, all these things. It hasn't
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: got there yet. So it still needs a human element
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: because we still prompt it. and we're still the ones
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: feeding it the information. At that rate, you can see, right?
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: It starts, right? And that's why he said a landmark
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: moment for actual general intelligence being here. Agentic AI will
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: push that.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: I think the conversation is really what makes a human
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: human and what makes a computer a computer. And part
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: of intelligence can't simply be, you know more information than me.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: There's so many people that I know that know more
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: information than me, I'm absolutely smarter than them.
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: And I think that that statement makes it flawed. And
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: that's why I think higher education will change because it
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: won't be about what you know when there is an
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: actual device that knows just as much. It'll have to
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: be some other intangible asset that you have that will
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: separate you.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: That's always been the case.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: And I think the question though is that the agents,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: like I have a team of AI agents that work
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: for me, right? I've got 16 AI agents and they're
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: working right now. Like I could open up my laptop
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: after this and they'd be like, Morgan, these are the
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: things that we've done. They still have to run it
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: through me because there's still a level of judgment and
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: taste in how I want to have the work that
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: they're doing because they have personalities. I think over time,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: these different models are going to start to have different
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: personalities and then they're going to make up an ecosystem.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: And you might have, you know, the funny one over here,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: the practical one over here. the super smart one, but
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: has like no emotional intelligence over here. And you're going
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: to have an ecosystem of models and agents that are
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: going to work together to accomplish some sort of goal.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I think that's when it actually starts to get to
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: that level of intelligence that you're talking about. It's not
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: going to be any one model. It's going to be
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: them all together that potentially is risky for humans.
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: I wonder at this, because you said you have a
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: bunch of them, which models are you using, uh, On
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: your daily functioning to make working more efficient, more convenient
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: for you.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I have I have my agents living on
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: my computer. I don't want to be tied to any
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: one model. I think that's a mistake that we all
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: kind of made maybe in the last 18 months was like,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: I use judge me to, I use Claude and it's like,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: you know what? I'm using all y'all. I don't want
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: to be married to one or the other. I want
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: my team to be my team and I want them
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: to be smart enough to decide which model to use
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: for what task. And so that's how I've set up
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: my system.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Have you tried Muse?
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: No, I don't want to try Muse. Do you want
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: to try Muse? We did. What did you think?
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: We'll talk after this.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: I don't desire. No.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: Trial. Just a trial.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: I have an AI agent on my computer who has
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: his own little workspace, his own little cloud server. He
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: does just fine. I don't need another. Facebook has so
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: much personal information. I don't like the idea of continuing
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: to go deeper in some of these companies. Think about
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: all the personal information that you posted from 15 years
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: ago that now Facebook is going to repurpose and send
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: back to you. I don't want that. High school Morgan
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: should stay where she was.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: We remember her.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: What is the future of You think black media and
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: black tech?
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: I'm struggling with black media right now. I mean, black
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: media is traditional black media, I should say, is consolidated
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: into there's like five of us left, right? You've got Essence,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: which now also owns a big piece of Revolt that
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: just happened. You've got Ebony. You've got Urban One still,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Kathy and family, Offred. Black Enterprise, family-owned. I mean, these
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: are all family-owned businesses, except for mine.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: So we have a big adjustment to make in the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: black media space of what is, who is going to
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: write about black businesses? Who is going to write about
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: our black heroes? Who's going to cover the black movie
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: in Hollywood and give them that space? Is it going
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: to be creators? Is that the replacement? I think that's
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: a challenge because when you're working with the institution under
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: black media, You've got a lot of different platforms that
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: you're building on top of. An individual creator is going
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: to make an individual decision that's best for their personal benefit,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: not necessarily the benefit of the brand or the platform.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: And that is going to be challenging over time.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: Do you feel like where you sit at, I guess
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: out of the ones you named, right, being the newer one?
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: So having the ability to be agile, see what's coming,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: you'll be able to navigate this new media space, whereas
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: the other ones, feel like legacy brands that are trying
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: to adapt?
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: I don't feel that way, no. I don't feel like
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: I have a leg up just because we were digital first.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: I think that there's something to be said with the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: legacy and trust that a lot of these brands been
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: around 30, 40, 50 years have that allow them to
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: weather the storm a little bit differently than us. I
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: think that Blavity and Afrotech being under the same business
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: has been helpful at us weathering the storm because the
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: media business goes up and down. Sometimes it's a not
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: profitable year. but Afrotech is always profitable. So we can say,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: you know what, we'll just take a loss and we're
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: going to cover the election even though it costs me
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: a million dollars to cover it. We're going to just
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: do it.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: It's fine.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: Like it helps the ecosystem. I think that's the challenge
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: with the creator economy is that there is, you can't
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: make those kind of trade-offs when it's your personal pocket.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Every single decision is your personal pocket. I mean, you
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: guys make these trade-offs as a platform and a brand
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: where you have a diversified approach to your brand. Like
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: that allows you to have these trade-offs Every single day. Sure.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: And what about black in tech? Like what's the future?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, black in tech's not going anywhere. I mean, there's
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: always going to be an opportunity for us to be builders.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: And the tech companies of the future are not going
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: to be the tech companies of today, right? Like the
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: biggest and the baddest, that's going to be a changing guard. Always.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: So I feel very strongly and bullish on Afrotech as
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: an institution continuing to grow and provide value to our community.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: There you have it. When is AfroTech?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: November 2nd through 6th in November. You guys.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, who all going to be there?
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: These guys. I'm excited.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: Who all going to be there?
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: We got to figure out what we're going to do.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: We should do tech, do AI. We should do all
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: the things.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: I'm excited.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: Investing, all the things.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: We've got Ayanna Pressley. We've got Andrew Yang talking about
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: universal basic income, which is another proposition in terms of
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: thinking about how to level the playing field with the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: age of AI and the future of work. We've got Walonius,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: the guy who created BBL Drizzy and the shebang.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: I saw that.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: The beat, I don't know, the beat, shebang. We have
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: some great speakers. It's going to be a good time.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: We are looking forward to being there. We were in Austin.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: We spoke, which was really good. So we're looking forward
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: to being in Houston.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: Well, tell the people where to follow you, all the information.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah you can follow Afrotech everywhere on social media and
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: of course me at Morgan Debon everywhere else TikTok Instagram I.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: Have one last thing yeah critique hmm how do you
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: manage deal with critique we you might have seen this
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: past year's Invest Fest there was some critique how do
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: you manage it how do you use it as fuel
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: or try to improve from what's being.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Said I think every swarm of critique has some validity
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: in it um And you have to decide if you
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: want to adjust, adapt, or ignore. Just because they say
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: it doesn't make, like, I think a lot of times
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: we want to be like, that's not true. I'm like, well,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: sometimes it is true. That's their experience. But it's a
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: choice that I'm making. Or it's a consequence because of
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: something else that they don't know about.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: So even watching your guys' feedback on the vendors, like,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: all of the back and forth, was helpful for me
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: because I could say, you know what? let's shrink the marketplace.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Like let's actually not go so hard and make sure
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: that we don't get the same feedback. Right. And I
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: think that you got to be open to that dialogue.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: If you're going to serve our community, you got to
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: be open to that dialogue. I personally go off social
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: media right around this time because my like nervous system
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: can't handle all the negative feedback and the personal attacks.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: Like I made that decision a few years ago after it,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: because it happens every year, no matter how great Afrotech is,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: People are going to be mad about it online. So
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: I actually decided I'm out. I tell people on threads,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: I am no longer here. You cannot tag me. You
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: cannot mention me.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: See you in December.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: My team's online. They're tracking, they're monitoring, they're giving me
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: the report, but I don't want to personally see it
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: because it's too harmful mentally for me because I literally
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: could dip. I'm good. Personally, I'm fine. So I've been
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: investing in the stock market since I was 13. I'm
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: literally fine. So I don't need this.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: Double entendre.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: I don't need this interaction. I love my life. I
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: love my job. This negativity, it's not required for me
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: to operate at the way that I operate. How do
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: you guys feel about it?
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: How do you feel about it?
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: Feel about what?
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: The constant discourse about how you do things instead of
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: the doing of the thing.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: It's a blessing. I feel like for us, Like, we
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: know we had a lot of conversation before InvestFest, after InvestFest,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: but for me, I mean, InvestFest transcended business into pop culture.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: One of the most talked about events for black people
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: or any people in America. That's honestly very humbling because
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: 10 years ago, nobody would have ever, if you would
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: have told somebody, one of the most talked about moments
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: for black culture and pop culture at large in the
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: summer Of 2026 would be a business festival. Somebody will
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: look at you like, it doesn't even make any sense. Right.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: And that's actually what happened. So just to even have
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: that level of discourse shows where it's at. Shows the
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: level of, you know, because you only talk about things
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: that's actually at a certain level. There's a million events
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: and nobody talks about them. So to even be on
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: people's radar to have that level of conversation, because it's
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: never going to impact it. That's the thing. You're never
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: going to get canceled. It's never going to be like, oh,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not. You're still going to come. No matter what
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: people say, it's still going to come. It's still going to,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: the show is still going to go on. So I
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: don't really fully believe all press is good press, but
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: I understand it because as long as the conversation is
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: being had, it honestly doesn't even matter because people have
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: short attention spans. They don't even remember. So it's like,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: you just got to stay on top of people's minds,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: especially while you're in that cycle when you need to
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: be on top of people's minds. So, For me, I
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: look at it like it's mission accomplished in a lot
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: of different ways because that was the mission. For me,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: that was the mission is to blend pop culture with
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: business and to become a stable in pop culture at
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: large and to really, you know, have that level of
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: attention that sports and fashion and other things have traditionally
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: gotten that business never really got, especially in our world.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: Business was never talked about in that world. So It's
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: still a lot more work to do, but in some
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: regards it's mission accomplished and you got to be edgy.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: And that's what people like, you know, you can't be
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: afraid of that because it comes with that. So it's
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: like embrace it because it's needed. Controversy is not a
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: bad thing. Sometimes sometimes controversy brings important conversations to the
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: light it might be uncomfortable in that moment right but
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: it's needed to have it's needed to be had it's
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: an uncomfortable conversation that that needs to happen and at
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: the end of the day it's better it's better for
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: it Then if it just was avoided and it's just like, oh,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: we're not going to say anything. We're just going to
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: be playing vanilla. Then you're going to be playing vanilla
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: and nobody's going to care about you.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Which happens every day.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it's a privilege. I think anytime there's critique,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: like you said, there might be some truth in it
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: that can make us better. I try to take the
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: approach that you kind of said. I don't see it.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: It actually has to be brought to my attention. Like
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: somebody will call me and say, we had a situation
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: where people were calling me like, are you good? Are
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: you good? Are you good?
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: I'm like, That happens to me all the time. I'm like,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: what are you talking about?
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, bro, I'm good. Like, what happened? And,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: you know, it does keep the conversation going. But at
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: the end of the day, like, nothing can take me
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: away from the focus of why we're here. Like, I
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: would say we're here for a purpose. There's not a tweet.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: There's not going to be a comment that's going to
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: distract me from that. So if people want to have dialogue, great.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: I'm not participating in it. I understand that if we
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: don't do this, do you have the ability to do that?
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: So this has to happen for that to happen.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: And you know your results. I mean, I literally watch
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Market Mondays. I can see the results. I'm like, you
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: are making people money. So just like at Afrotech, I'm like,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: I'm getting people jobs. People are making money. Like, I
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: can see the results. If we didn't have the results,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: it might be a different conversation. But there's no way
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: at this scale you can operate the way we operate
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: with it not having real ROI for everybody.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: For sure. For sure. The mission is the mission.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: The mission is the mission. So we keep going.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: That's it. That's it. All right, guys. Thank you for
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: rocking with us. We'll see you next week.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: Peace. Peace.