Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Morgan DeBaun Talks ‘Blavity,’ AfroTech, Independent Creators, Racial Barriers, DEI Laws, Black Ownership + More

Transcript

INTERVIEW: Morgan DeBaun Talks ‘Blavity,’ AfroTech, Independent Creators, Racial Barriers, DEI Laws, Black Ownership + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hold up. Every day I wake up. Wake your ass up.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The Breakfast Club. You all finished or y'all done? Morning, everybody.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: It's DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha Guy. We are
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club. Lonely Rose is here as well. We
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: got a special guest in the building.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed. We have Morgan DeBond. Welcome.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: Hey, everybody. How are you feeling?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Feeling good.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Good to see you guys.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Good, good.
• 0:23
  Speaker 4: Happy to have you, man. You know, Afrotech, of course,
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: you know... Blavity. I wanted to talk to you about
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of things because I feel like, you know,
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: lately you've had to spend more time proving black people
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: are a valuable market.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Than explaining why your company is actually valuable.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: True. Yeah, you know, in this day and age where
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: DNI is totally being attacked left and right, it's almost
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: as if it's become cool to be like, no, we
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: actually don't care. We have no consequences for not caring.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: It's interesting to also be like, but if you care
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: about bottom line growth, then you're going to have to
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: care about multicultural eventually for your company. You're going to
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: have to care about advertising to us, for us, because
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: the next generation is so diverse. So at some point,
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: it's going to flip back. And we're going to be like,
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: where were you? What were you doing? You didn't stand
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: 10 tones down for us. And I think that we're
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: seeing that with different brands now. kind of going back
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: and forth on do we care, do we not care? And, yeah,
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: it's been an interesting few years, you know, since Trump's
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: been reelected.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Because Afrotech is huge.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Afrotech is huge. 40,000 people.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: And it makes me, like, you know, and I hear
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: you say if it wasn't a black tech company, people
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: would just look at it as one of the largest tech.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Conferences in the world. 100%.
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  Speaker 3: We're three times the size of TechCrunch Disrupt. We're the
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  Speaker 3: second largest trade show for black folks in the country.
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  Speaker 3: Essence is number one. We're number two.
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  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 3: And we have over 100 tech companies that come and advertise, recruit,
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: and do all types of stuff for us, right? So
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: it's interesting that we have to justify the investment in
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: our community.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: The video, I was saying that I saved a video
• 1:57
  Speaker 5: to talk to you about today. You made a video
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  Speaker 5: when the whole earn your leisure conversation was going on, right?
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: And you were talking about how that like because your
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: business is, I mean, because your conference is Afrotech and
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: it's like branded for black people, the difference in like
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: partnerships and like all these things. Talk a bit about that.
• 2:15
  Speaker 5: And then about do we do a good enough job
• 2:17
  Speaker 5: at holding, you were holding people accountable in that video.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I think the thing with Afrotech is 40,000 people.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: These are your smartest folks. These are people working at
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: big tech companies. These are VCs, venture capitalists. Less than 1%
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: of VC funding goes to black people still to this day,
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: despite our huge influence, right? And we shouldn't have to
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: beg for people to take our community seriously, right? Multi-trillion
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: dollar buying power. So when it comes to earn your
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: leisure and InvestFest, similarly, they have a huge audience. Take
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: black out of it. It's a huge moment. Another 40,000
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: people sitting in a room. It's very rare. You don't
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: see white conferences with 40,000 people. Name one.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I don't even know.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: They don't exist. Unless they're seriously very tech or industry focused,
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  Speaker 3: but not just people coming together as a part of
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: their culture.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nah.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Why do we have to even have a conversation to
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: justify an investment for brands spending millions of dollars on
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  Speaker 3: this audience?
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  Speaker 1: Do you think we're too hard on ourselves?
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  Speaker 3: We see it with Essence, we see it with Invest Best.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: You know, every year around this time, I go off
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: social media. So it looks like I'm still online, but
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: like the online discourse from our community to one another,
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  Speaker 3: for the people who've actually decided to build for us,
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  Speaker 3: it's atrocious. It's atrocious. Threads is like, I'm sure they're
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: going to clip this and be like, oh, here she go.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: But Threads is like so toxic.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: We're so toxic to one another. For the people who
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: are actually taking the risk to invest in themselves, invest
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  Speaker 3: in their business, hire black people at their companies, Those
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: are the ones you're going to attack. Where's the same
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: heat for Donald Trump? Like, we talk more about each
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: other than we do about politicians.
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  Speaker 6: Because my thing is, how do you turn that around? Like,
• 4:01
  Speaker 6: how do you, it still seems like that's going to
• 4:04
  Speaker 6: be just what it is. How do you stop our
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: own from.
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  Speaker 1: Tearing down our own?
• 4:10
  Speaker 6: Even when we ain't doing nothing wrong. It's just, it's
• 4:13
  Speaker 6: always a flaw that you find, well, that they find
• 4:16
  Speaker 6: in something.
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  Speaker 3: You know, I've had to do a lot of, like,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: self-reflection to be able to even show up after. I mean,
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Afrotech's over a decade, right? That's, we're celebrating 10 years
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: this year. And one of the things that I tell
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  Speaker 3: myself is I have to come from a place of compassion.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: It's because we are the few that have made it.
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  Speaker 3: We are the few who have become this platform. And therefore,
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  Speaker 3: if not us, then who? So if we're not the
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: ones advocating and building these platforms, these businesses, and giving
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: back to our community... then who else would be doing it?
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: And so they feel really attached to the perfection of
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: everything that we say we're going to do that we do.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm not saying we shouldn't hold ourselves to high standards.
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  Speaker 3: I'm all for feedback. But the personal attack is crazy.
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: Is there a danger in calling something a black tech company?
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I don't think anyone should call
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: themselves a black tech company today. Not in this market.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
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  Speaker 4: Have you ever had to convince someone that serving black
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: people doesn't mean your business I guess has a black size.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Ceiling, whatever.
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  Speaker 3: You know, I advise a lot of startups and founders.
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  Speaker 3: You know, I've raised over $ 12 million in venture funding
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  Speaker 3: a long time ago. So I've been in this game
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  Speaker 3: for a minute. I started in Silicon Valley working in tech.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: And when I talk to young founders who are trying
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: to figure out what they should build and they're black,
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: I definitely suggest go after the biggest market possible. Like,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: go after the largest market. You can still serve black people.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: You're going to because you are black. So you're going
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: to naturally... be more inclusive in how you operate. But
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: let's go for the gold. We don't need to just
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: serve our people all the time when it comes to
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  Speaker 3: building something that people are trying to build billion dollar
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  Speaker 3: businesses on. We don't have that many black billionaires that
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: are billionaires off of black products and services. There's like
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: a handful.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's only been one.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, there's only been, the largest exit has been
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: BET with Bob Johnson.
• 6:09
  Speaker 6: Yeah, and Sheila.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Bob and Sheila.
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  Speaker 3: That's right. And then You know, Rich Dennis, in essence,
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: and Shea Moisture. Who else?
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: So does the black company thing, does it help us
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  Speaker 1: or limit us?
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  Speaker 3: I think it's limiting right now.
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  Speaker 1: Just because of the political climate?
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  Speaker 3: You can't get investors. It's hard to get multicultural dollars.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're completely laying off and firing anybody with
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: a DEI title still to this day. The executive order
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: from Stephen Miller, you know, led by Stephen Miller... is
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  Speaker 3: still causing a ripple effect in terms of contractors, companies
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: that have contracts with the federal government, they're under a lens.
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  Speaker 3: And so one thing about Afrotech that we were intentional,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: even before all of this happened, was we don't even
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  Speaker 3: call Afrotech a black conference in that way. When you
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: go on stage at Afrotech, we're not like, oh, it's
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: so exciting for you to be black. How do you
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: become black in tech? How do you become black product manager?
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: How do you raise black dollars? We're not talking about that.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: We're talking about AI. We're talking about cybersecurity. We're talking
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: about what certifications do you need? We're talking about how
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: do you scale to a million users? Because that's actually
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: what's going to unlock the next level of us being
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  Speaker 3: self-sufficient as a community. It's not going to be us
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  Speaker 3: playing their game. Like, we're not going to win that.
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  Speaker 3: I think we tried. It's not working.
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  Speaker 4: You said something earlier that I agree with, too. Like,
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  Speaker 4: eventually the pendulum is going to swing back. Like, this
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  Speaker 4: administration is not going to be in the office forever.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: These companies have to understand that this is going to
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: be a black and brown society. And people are going
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: to remember this time.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: Gen Z is not playing with us.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Democratic socialism is on the rise for a reason. It's
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: terrifying both parties because people are like, this isn't working.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: We have to have a different plan. They're just young, right?
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, these are all millennials that are coming into
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: power from a politician's perspective, so they're young in the
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: political sphere. But that is trending because we are saying
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  Speaker 3: as a community, like, this isn't working. And it's not
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: left or right. We need to actually rethink how wealth
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: and distribution is working in this country.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: For somebody who's never been to Afrotech before and listening,
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: why should they go and what should they expect there
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: while they're there?
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: For someone who's first time at Afrotech, they should be
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: thinking about how do you leverage this market, this moment
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: where AI is rising, it's accessible to everybody right now.
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  Speaker 3: How do you leverage your unique skills, your network to
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: take advantage and become an owner in the system? I
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: think 10 years ago, it was about how do we
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: get access to work in these companies? How do we
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: go work at a Google? How do we go work
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: at a Meta? How do we go work at the FBI?
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  Speaker 3: I don't know that that's what we need to be
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: aspiring to anymore. Now I'm saying, how do you take
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: your dream of what you believe the world should look like?
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: How do you take this technology and go build something?
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Go network with the other people who are on site,
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: who are incredibly smart, PhDs, people who have built huge
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: businesses from scratch with no college degrees. How do you
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: work within our own system to build the next level
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: for our generation?
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: Well, speaking of building, Black Media, the conversation that you had,
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: it was weeks ago on your Instagram about how y'all,
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: people were mad at you guys for scaling back content,
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: but you're like, people don't read it and people don't
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: invest in it.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: Then BET did the thing where they just took down
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: all of their written articles, right? And it turned a
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: lot over the video and like, you know, it's scaling
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: back a bit.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: Where do you think independent creators... that are in the
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: middle of all this? Where should we focus our time
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: and our energy? Is it going out to get the
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: money because people are scaling back? Or is it creating
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: the content that now these bigger platforms are taking away
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: because it's a hole in the market?
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: I think there's two things. One, we as consumers have
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: changed how we consume content. I mean, think about this
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: entire platform, right? You guys are going to reach more
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: people than me today, despite the fact that I have
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: multiple brands and an entire publisher network. And the reason
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: for that is because, one, people are reading less and less.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: They like visual. They like audio. Our attention spans are
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: going down. That's a problem, okay? But you can't fight
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: that problem. So the old and traditional way of publishing
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: was very much predicated on this sense of we're in
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: an ivory tower. We're going to tell you what's important.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: We're going to have our reporters make a decision about
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: what's important, and then we're going to pass all that
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: information down to you. Now, anybody can reach anyone in
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: two seconds. They can stream, and they're reaching thousands and
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: thousands of people, whether they're credible or not.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, with a bunch of misinformation.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: That's my problem.
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: But what's the cut through, though?
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: That's my problem.
• 10:36
  Speaker 5: Because everything, because it's like you have a person that's
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: credible in a space, and then it becomes a popular space,
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: and then everybody infiltrates it, so it's credible, uncredible.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: What's that cream of the crop? I think it's another
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: inflection point as well, where it's like, Right now we're
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: in a place where anyone can say anything, no fact check.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Before we were in a place where we would spend two,
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: three weeks fact checking one story, right? And people might
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: spend a minute reading that story and also spend the
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: same minute reading something nobody actually fact checked, right? I
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: think eventually we have to go back in the middle.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Now your point about BET and them kind of getting
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: rid of their archives, the challenge with that is that
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: when you think about AI and you think about these algorithms,
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: they're reading massive amounts of data. And so if we
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: start deleting our data, then we are not going to
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: be within the system that these algorithms are built on
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: top of. So when I think about media and fact-checking
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: and reporting, it's actually more important today than it ever
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: has been because misinformation can move through algorithms really, really fast.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: And if the systems that people are typing into are
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: just regurgitating what the sources say and there's no governance
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: on those sources, that's a problem.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: It's a serious problem. So the.
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: Com isn't there.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: You just got to refocus it a bit. That's right.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: So we're going to change Blavity.com into be more of
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: an aggregator where we use trusted sources to say, okay,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: of course, here's our reporters. Here's the people that we
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: work with. But also we're going to work with The Root.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: We're going to work with Black Enterprise. We're going to
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: work with other black media companies and even the Roland Martins,
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: like the people who have built infrastructures where I know
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: they have vetted their sources. And we all need to
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: aggregate and come together and say like, okay, This is
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: a clearinghouse of information that we trust because we need
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: to make sure that these web crawlers also have that data.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: That'll work for you because Blavity already has a lot
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: of validity because there's a lot of new sites that
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: are aggregator sites.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: And they're taking articles from trusted sources and posting them.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: But if you cite that site.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: No distribution.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying?
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: No brand.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: Even though the article could be accurate and could have
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: been sourced and came from a reputable source. you know, organization,
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: they'll say the aggregator site isn't reputable.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: That's right. And MSN and Yahoo does this incredibly well. Like,
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: their traffic is mostly just aggregated all of the rest
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: of the content, right? But people know that as a destination.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: They wake up in the morning, they open up their
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Yahoo email, and they see all the news. We should
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: be doing the same thing with black media, right? You
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: should come to Blavity. You should wake up. And it
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: doesn't need to just be my content anymore, right? Now,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: the question is about advertising. How do you do rev
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: shares on that? How do you make sure people are
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: properly compensated for content syndication? I mean, there's all these
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: different levels. I do believe the black creators are constantly underpaid.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, the numbers are pretty bad compared to white creators.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: So you have to think about just the economics of it.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: We've had an ad network for a long time. So
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: we have some kind of traction doing this before. But
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: it's not an easy problem to solve.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: Have you ever had people use your success, right, to
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: dismiss you? the racial barriers you're telling them still exist.
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: So they'll be like, well, Morgan, you, you raised capital
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: and you have a successful conference.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: So what do you mean racism exists?
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think a lot of people
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: have made a lot of money off of my success.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: So I think it's probably the reverse where people like
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: she's successful. So we can duplicate this and raise more
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: money because she's winning, you know? And so if she
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: can win, these other people might be able to win too.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Now you talk about advertisement and you're saying, uh, It's
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: not as easy to get advertisement as some of these
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: other conferences and other networks. What makes it more difficult,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: and why are they saying no?
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: I think it's risky for some of them. I think
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: they have to jump through so many hoops.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: What's risky about Afrotech?
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: They don't want to target on their back from the
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: federal government. They're terrified of these people.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Terrified.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: They've been very successful at making companies say, we don't
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: want the risk of being bothered.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Got you.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: And again, the question is, what do we say? Do
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: we say, okay, we're out then. Like, I shouldn't have
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: to beg you for the privilege to advertise to our people.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: Or do I say, well, let me play the game.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: Let me meet you where you are. Let me do
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: the dance. And then, because we need this institution to
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: continue to survive. And we need to pay our teams,
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: the thousands of staffers that we have, the businesses that
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: we support. We have to do that. So it's this
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: constant delicate balance. There's some companies that my team and
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: I are like, oh, you can keep that 500. You
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: can keep it.
• 15:10
  Speaker 6: I was just about to ask you, is there any
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: moment where you're like, look, no, we're not even going
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: to do this. Okay, so there are moments.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're like, I'm good.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: And then there are moments where you do have to
• 15:20
  Speaker 6: play the game, but at what point do you stop
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: playing the game? You throw your hands up.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 15:26
  Speaker 6: This ain't benefiting me. This is benefiting y'all more. It's
• 15:29
  Speaker 6: not benefiting me as much.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: That just happened this summer.
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: And it's a constant dialogue. It's so funny because if
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: you look at the public sentiment, you know, there's all
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: these people on threads and all these different places that
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: think that we all just say, like, we're just going
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: to take any dollar.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, do you know.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: How much money I've left on the table to be, like,
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: morally in alignment with y'all?
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Lord have mercy.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: They have no idea.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: I don't even want to talk about it.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: I don't even, because sometimes, you know, you'll get those
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: phone calls and be like, hey, such and such wants
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: to advertise and blah, blah, blah, this and that.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And you'd be like, but you know, there's going to
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: be backlash.
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: And I'm sitting there thinking, they're going to run them
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: same commercials somewhere else and nobody's going to say shit. Oh, word.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: And I see it. I'm literally like, oh, so-and-so said
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: yes to this. I can literally see it. I'm like, oh,
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Essence said yes to that. Oh, Revolve said yes to that.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: I can see it. It's the same RFP.
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: It has to be a Robin Hood mentality. And what
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: I mean by that is Robin Hood would take from
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: the rich. to get back to the point.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: It has to be that.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: But we also have to have boundaries at some point.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: What's the lowest price we're willing to sell for? Yeah,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: that's true too. Especially if we're the last guardrail between
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: us and our people and the capitalists, how are we...
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: We have to have some sort of boundary. But that
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: boundary shifts, I would say, depending on the company, depending
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: on their track record, depending on who's in leadership, the
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: intent behind it. Is it just a checkbox? Is it
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: a band-aid because you really messed up and now you
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: need to show something shiny over here? Or are you
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: actually trying to do something that's going to have an
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: economic benefit to the rest of us? So it's a
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: constant conversation.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: You already know. Does it matter sometimes?
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is, like, who cares
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: why they decide they want to give a black company
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: the money?
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: It's going to a black company. I care more. Like,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I know your intention. I don't care who gave you
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the money. I know what Morgan is going to do
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: with that money.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: My nervous system disagrees. Like, I need to be able
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: to wake up every morning and look myself in the
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: mirror and say, yeah.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: And sometimes I will take the check because I'm like,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: you know what? That is like these three people's salaries
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: and they have been asking for a raise and we
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: haven't been able to do it. And now I'm going
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: to do this. And now they get a raise.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: So I will justify it sometimes for those things, but
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: it's tough. It's a tough question.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: And it's hard to discuss business with people who don't
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: got nothing.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: True. It just is.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: They don't get it.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: They don't understand your mindset. But do they have to
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: get it? No, I don't think so. Right.
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: I mean, they don't, but then you have things that happen,
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: like when Essence Festival gets all that bad conversation around it,
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: knowing that in a business, things happen that you got
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: to correct sometimes.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: But it puts them in a position where the following year,
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: because of that backlash, certain things are supported, certain things
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: are not.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: I think that there's some level of criticism that is always,
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: there's some truth in some sort of large sets of criticism,
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: in my opinion. You just have to decide, do you
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: care or do you not care? Do you want to
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: take action? Do you not want to take action? There
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: was a time when Afrotech, when people were really mad.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: We started off very, very techie because we were based
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: in Silicon Valley. It was very much for engineers, nerds.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: And as it grew, we had a lot of people
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: come in from the music industry, from the film industry,
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: from culture, and people were like, Where's the tech? Like,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: where's the tech in Afrotech? And I was like, you
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: know what? We maybe went a little too far to
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: the left. We should make sure that we have proper, in-depth,
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: hands-on workshops where people who are very technical can still
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: get value out of this space and still grow from
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: this space. It was valid feedback. How they delivered it?
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: A little rough. But valid.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: My last question, because I know you got to go.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: What has building a black company taught you about black
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: people's relationship with ownership that you couldn't have understood before
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: becoming this CEO that you've become?
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: I used to believe that the goal was instead of
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: more white millionaires and billionaires, we need more black millionaires
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: and billionaires. And I don't know that I believe that
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: that is the answer anymore. Like now having reached a
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: certain level and having access to tons of billionaires, I
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: don't believe that that is going to save us.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: What do you think? Institutions, infrastructure? Yeah.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: It's institutions. It's community benefit. within our institutions and that
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: being a part of the cycle it can't just be
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: about profits profits profits it won't work for for this
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: next generation and with the evolution of ai and the
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: future of work it's just not going to work in
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: our favor to only care about getting a certain.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: Level of wealth Yeah, I think you need people who
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: get the money but are also intentional about building that
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: infrastructure within certain communities.
• 20:13
  Speaker 6: That's right.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: And some people are doing good at that, and there's
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: some people in our community that just, they don't care.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Tell them when Afrotech is and everything.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Give them all the information so they know.
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Afrotech's November 2nd through 6th in Houston. It's our
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: third or fourth year in Houston. Houston's been holding us down.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of fun and also a lot of work.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Come to be curious with an open heart. It's a
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: life-changing experience. If you've ever been thinking about how can
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: I build something, I have an idea, I have something
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: on my heart to provide back into this community, I
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: want to get into tech, or I want to build
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: on top of this AI revolution, come. We've got something
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: for you.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Are the student tickets done? Somebody asked me about the
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: student tickets.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Student tickets are sold out.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: The kids don't play.
• 20:53
  Speaker 6: Damn it, man.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Student tickets, I'm sorry, guys.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: What's the website?
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: AfroTechConference.com.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Morgan DeBond, thank you for joining us so much.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: Thanks, guys.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: It's the Breakfast Club.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Good morning.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Hold up. Every day I wake up. Wake your ass up.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: The Breakfast Club. Y'all finished or y'all done?