Two weeks after Punch Street’s launch we were featured in Forbes.com.  Later that night, after some fearless marketing on our part, we had our Forbes piece read and retweeted by the actors who played Omar and Rhonda Pearlman from The Wire — the HBO show that was the catalyst for Punch Street; a highlight for us which we will never forget.  Yet, rewind to just a couple of weeks before that point and we were ferociously scrapping the Punch Street site together and fighting tooth and nail to have our launch even happen.

Let me tell you a bit more about the beginning of my journey.  My role as startup founder is actually my second career.  I started as a summer associate and then worked for 5 years as an attorney at a top Manhattan law firm, starting at age 24.  After watching an episode of The Wire, I was inspired to start creating and designing street style greeting cards to embrace modern young adults and teens. I would work on my idea during late nights and weekends while I was still an attorney.  With the support of my family, I eventually left my high-paying legal career and comfy lifestyle to fully pursue my dream.

Going back to the day when I put in my two weeks’ notice at my old law firm – my apartment was already sold, my custom website had just begun coding, hundreds of greeting cards were already designed, and my bank account was plush with money and savings.  I felt prepared, ready and hopeful. I thought I would be telling you a different story; one in which I was on an express lane to launch.  Wrong.  I didn’t escape life and I didn’t escape brick walls.  I’ll tell you about one startup struggle in particular (although there are so many more).

When I started, I had my mind set on a fully customized website.  I worked so hard — oh, those 3am nights — to work on my “perfect site”. By the time I handed off my “road map” to the developers, I had almost 60 pages, back and front of all the features, buttons and custom designs that my little heart desired.  After a month or so, when I was supposed to get my first look – the developers asked for a little bit more time. I gave them more time. When their time came around again, I received nothing and instead got word that the main developer ran off to a foreign country!  Alarm bells went off while I was told not to worry. A replacement developer was swiftly found who is nothing but amazing, but the work had to start over again.  Delay.  I gave a little bit of leeway time and when I checked in again it was like pulling teeth.  Still no clear communication.  I couldn’t get my questions answered.  As you can imagine, I was not pleased.  I saw a skeleton of the site and was told they were hard at work on the “guts” but it wasn’t presentable for me quite yet.  I did not believe what I was being told so we started looking for other developers on the side.  In the end we didn’t find a third set of developers that we could afford to pay for the custom site and (long story short) the second developers never did come through either – failing on their promise to give us a working test site the day before a huge investor conference.

During this time, my brother desperately began to learn how to code and although I wanted to learn as well, with a heavy heart I headed back to work as an attorney to ensure we were financial stable.  By returning, my faith and belief in my desire to launch Punch Street was tested.  The temptation of a secure legal career staring me once again in the face as I continued to pour my heart into a startup that just wouldn’t move closer to being coded – much less launching.  I can’t even begin to describe the feeling of having to step back in one direction wondering if I would ever get my shot to step forward in the opposite direction again.  In the backdrop, we were losing team members who probably thought our launch would never see the light of day and there were whispers that maybe I should just go back to being an attorney.  I realized that I was staring a brick wall in the face but I kept gathering my strength to charge ahead.  I wanted what I wanted.

In the end, the Shopify platform helped me topple that sucker down.

One day in late October 2012, my brother and I were on a flight coming back from the Dublin Web Summit, a European tech conference where Punch Street was invited to showcase.  We were depleted yet strategizing on the plane what would be the next best steps for our site. “Christmas is around the corner.  Let’s sell without a site through email.  Then we should just sell off of Facebook? Maybe Etsy?”

The next day, my brother and I tiredly attended a meet-and-greet for startup entrepreneurs.  At the meetup, I unabashedly spoke about my developer issues.  I learned that developer frustrations were a common theme, with other teams being left to dry with non-working sites too.  I was glad to hear that I wasn’t alone.  I was advised to try Shopify.  The next day I checked it out and signed up.  I started testing it out immediately and thought it would work.  It would still take some clever implementation techniques to get the Punch Street site to function the same at the core but I knew we could figure it out.  The team (the small one that was left) and I were ecstatic. We shifted into full gear — slashing features to fit the new platform and slashing products beyond our core to speed up the launch time.  We worked as if we were possessed (!) – designing and typing out pages and creating new platforms for our products.  By this time it was around Thanksgiving and only my brother and I were available to keep charging ahead. Our Thanksgiving weekend was shot.  In fact, our lights blew out and we plugged in an old electric lamp to get us through the night!  That’s how badly we wanted Punch Street to happen.

In the end, we got in orders from friends, family and colleagues before we even went live, all while working so hard with Shopify’s recommended developers to make the launch happen. What a world of difference in our experience! The official Punch Street launch happened on my lucky numbers — 1/11 of this year.

Although there were so many other ups and downs that I have experienced in such a short time and we haven’t “made it” in any sense of the word, I am beyond happy to be working on my dream.  I truly believe I am exactly where I am supposed to be and I believe wholeheartedly Punch Street will continue to find its way through.

I end repeating something I heard in a lecture:

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
– Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

Follow us: Twitter: @punchstreet; Instagram: @punchstreet; Facebook: facebook.com/punchstreet and tell us Black Founders sent you.

Get $10 off your first order at Punch Street:
http://www.punchstreet.com/pages/special-offer

The post Punch Street Almost Didn’t Happen: My Interesting Entrepreneurial Journey appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

I really should title this blog post 1001 things I didn’t know about investors before I took the money but for brevity sake I’ll tackle the top 3.

Taking an investment is essentially a marriage but more like a shot gun wedding.

In the beginning everyone is excited and happy the woo’ing is heavy on both sides. They come in and look at your process, you go and check out their office, a few rounds of dinner and drinks. I like you, you like me, your numbers add up, term sheet looks good lets bring in the lawyers and get married However this is usually quick and not so quick process all at the same time. Honestly once you get to the paperwork it’s more like a painful prenuptial agreement where everyone is questioning trust and work ethic, trying to get their best interest on paper just incase everything goes wrong but somehow you should not really take it personal. You really need to take your time to ask the right questions about company culture and practices and realize that you will be in weekly if not daily contact with this person or company. If you are able to reach out to other companies they have invested in to get an idea of what it is like to really work with this company on a day to day long term basis. Just like dating everything they do is cute until you have to wake up to them day in and day out and notice their bad habits like cutting their toenails in the bed. In short do your research and don’t get blinded by the money.

There’s no such thing as a silent partner it’s more like loud whispers or yelling.

Ask yourself the honest question…How silent are you when you give someone money? Why would you expect someone that has given you thousands or even millions of dollars to not want to have some sort of say so about how their money is being spent. No matter if they have 1% equity or 51% they have given you their money and they may have a high level of expertise in your field they will want to have an input. Set and manage expectations in the very beginning. Be careful of how much you call your investor asking for advice and resources because you want to make sure that they feel confident about you, your team and your circle. Just like the overbearing helicopter parent that has just let their child extend their curfew don’t give them reason to feel like they need to cross every “T” and dot every “I” for you. Make sure your every move makes your investor feel confident that they have made the right decision and that they can let you run your business the way you want to run your business.

Define your exit plan before you sign, because they have

Just like Hollywood shot gun weddings the majority of investors are not looking to grow old with you. They see huge potential in your industry and of course a high ROI. The view of most investors is that there must be an identifiable exit route and an identifiable exit valuation before investing. Some of the best advice I received a few years ago was to determine if you are going to sell your business or keep it in the family for generations either way you need to treat your business like you are going to sell it because it gets you in a scaleable mindset from day one. When you take on investor money its a little different. Are you going to sell and everyone cash out, sell and stay on to run the business as an employee or make enough money to buy out your investor. Your investor is not a charity, they are looking to eventually cash out one way or another and have made that decision before extending a term sheet to you. You need to make sure you have your own exit plan decision before you get the term sheet.

Felecia Hatcher will be speaking at Ideas are Worthless – Austin on the panel After Funding: Managing the Investor Relationship. Sign up here for Ideas Are Worthless Austin: http://ideasareworthless-austin.eventbrite.com/

The post 3 Things I Didn’t Know About Investors Before I Took the Money appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

Don’t know how to code??? Come anyway. We understand not everyone is a hacker, so, we’ve brought in some amazing mentors to help you build out your idea.

What to expect? Expect to learn, build, meet other people, and walk away with an app you’ve built yourself. This competition will last for 24 hours. But don’t worry, we’ll have amazing people there to keep you company and make this event one to remember for a lifetime.

What’s in it for you? Well, we personally think the pride of good ole app building speaks for itself. However, we have a few sponsors who’ve thrown in a few prizes for the best apps, including $250 cash prize, Windows Surface tablet, Xbox, and more. Our sponsors are also hiring for interns and full time positions. Come to the event, meet the startups working with us, and possibly land a position.

Food and prizes will be available throughout the event.

So, here are the deets:
Register for this event at http://startupsathbcus-atl.eventbrite.com/

Please bring all ideas and a laptop computer

Resources!!!
1. Codecademy: Tutorial
2. How to win a hackathon
3. More How to win a hackathon
4. Preparing for a hackathon
5. Why not to worry about someone’s going to steal my idea
6. Make Games With Us: Iphone App Tutorial
7. Integrate Texting into your app with SendHub

Sponsors:

Food Sponsors:

The post Calling All AUC Majors: Build an App, Win Cash, Surface Tablet, & more prizes 2/8 – 2/9 appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

After the dot-com crash, there was a glimmer of hope for us enterprise software folks. As consumer internet investing seemed to be going the way of the platypus, companies such as Salesforce.com, Successfactors, and NetSuite emerged with internet-delivered business software which served the needs of fast-moving young gazelle companies as well as maverick departments inside larger enterprises. These Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pioneers blended the best of the internet boom with the pragmatic problem solving required of enterprise solutions.

However, the re-emergence of the enterprise began to be overshadowed in 2003 by something new: Web 2.0 and social networks. All of a sudden, it seemed like the world took a great step backwards to 1999, as companies just needed to add a “-ster” or “-ly” to their name in order to raise capital and capture mindshare. Just type a few words into your Web 2.0 name generator and you were on your way: Web 2.0 Name Generator

Some of these companies were legit innovators and eventually market leaders. Many were not, but collectively they served to reinforce the notion that software had evolved away from being hard and difficult to build and deploy to being a gossamer, effortless use of a few open source libraries and some scripting. That the real purpose of software was to power consumer or small-medium sized business (SMB) interests and not cater to the needs of larger enterprises.

Many venture capital investors loudly proclaimed that the “Enterprise was Dead!” and they “wouldn’t invest in any company which required a business decision maker to be involved”. Any investable company had to be tailored to the needs of the SMB user, someone willing to swipe a credit card for a few dollars to bring your product into their sole proprietorship, or into their cubicle, bypassing the scrutiny of the CIO.

Things have changed, though. In the last six months, there has been a resurgence of interest in big company software, particularly around managing unstructured social data and customer experience management. It’s as if investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and even consumers have woken up and realized that there must be more to high tech than yet another photo-sharing social site which enables me to text my feelings to my followers and their puppies (or something like that).

What I’d like to highlight is that during this long nuclear winter for Enterprise Software, during these multiple head-fakes where it looked like the world would turn serious again, then blinked and went all consumer Web 2.0-y on us, that real enterprise software companies kept chugging along and building value. The SaaS upstarts previously mentioned continued to grow, and ultimately went public with market caps in the Billions. At the same time, a next wave of enterprise software companies emerged which resisted the urge to go consumer and are now poised to lead a new “golden generation” of business software. Jive, Marketo, Lithium, at the application layer, as well as others such as Vertica, Splunk, Cloudera and Couchbase pioneering Big Data.

Of all the new players though, the one that stands out in my opinion as epitomizing the “Rebirth of Enterprise Software” is Workday.

If there’s any proof that yes, you CAN go home again, it’s Workday. Workday provides cloud-based Human Capital Management (HCM) software for running payroll, recruiting, and general financial management. For those who don’t know, Workday is the reincarnation of PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft, which was acquired by Oracle for $10B in 2005 after a hostile takeover by Oracle, was known as one of the best companies to work for in software.

Founded by Ken Morris and David A. Duffield (“DAD”) in 1987, PeopleSoft came to the fore as an innovator for a number of reasons:

1. Culture: PeopleSoft had a unique culture for the software industry of the late ’80s. As opposed to what was then the slash-and-burn culture of many fast growth players of the time, where customers where left holding the bag on uncompleted products and employees churned at a high rate, PeopleSoft was extremely popular with both customers and employees. A lot of this came right down to the founder, who treated both constituencies like family.
2. Tools: PeopleSoft’s products were designed for HR management, but one of the keys to their success was their easy to use, web-based toolset which enabled end users to configure and change the look and feel of departmental applications. In this respect, PeopleSoft foresaw the movement towards more consumer-driven UI design vs. the tradition vendor-centric UI approach.
3. Location: By locating in the more bucolic settings of Pleasanton, in the SF East Bay’s 680 corridor, PeopleSoft was able to establish a virtual lock on recruiting from a number of talent pools: UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Lab to name a few. Basically, any strong technology person who preferred the East Bay to the Peninsula for family, lifestyle, or weather reasons would have considered PeopleSoft. This talent pool enabled PeopleSoft to compete head to head with Oracle, SAP and other much larger companies for years, and finally culminated in Oracle having to make a hostile bid in order to enter the HCM market.

When pushed out by Oracle after the acquisition of PeopleSoft, Duffield could have just put his heels up and relaxed. Already extremely wealthy and with nothing left to prove, he could have devoted the bulk of his time to his already considerable philanthropy efforts. Instead, he and former PeopleSoft executive Aneel Bhusri started Workday a scant two months after the acquisition of PeopleSoft. By timing their recruitment of their old team to the expiration of non-competes and non-solicitation agreements they were able to successfully “put the band back together”. And customers? Customers fell over themselves to do business with the new company taking HCM to the cloud. In a scant seven years, Workday grew from idea to IPO and market cap of over $8 Billion. Oh, and the deals they do? Straight up enterprise subscriptions with average sales price of over $400,000. Not something that would be put on a credit card. In fact, it smells like enterprise software to me, and that sort of growth and deal size is sexy as hell.

This post originally appeared on the Buzzient blog and is reprinted with permission.

The post Enterprise Software is Back and Sexy as Hell appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

Where are you from?

Inglewood, CA – Currently residing in Oakland, CA

What’s the name of your startup?

MindBlown Labs (facebook.com/mindblownlabs, @mindbllownlabs)

What does your startup do?

Mindblown Labs makes highly engaging mobile social games that empower young people with financial literacy and money management skills.

Tell us why/ how you became an entrepreneur.

I’ve always loved building things, helping people and making money. Being an entrepreneur allows me to do all of these things at once. When I was nine, I worked for Mr. Washington – a friend’s father – over the summer. Mr. Washington owned an auto repair shop and plumbing service. I became fascinated by the concept of entrepreneurship. I started my first venture when I returned to school that fall. I haven’t looked back since.

What has been your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur and how did you overcome it?

My biggest challenge has been to build to a high-performing team in the absence of significant funding. I have overcome this challenge by being very thoughtful in my recruiting process. I look for people who have the drive and who have the potential to perform at the highest level even if their resumes don’t quite show it. . In addition to looking for people who can grow into a role, I look for people who are genuinely passionate about our educational mission. This approach has served the company well. Mindblown Labs has attracted talented people from all over the country and has managed to field a full-time team on a shoestring budget.

What kind of impact are you hoping to see your game, Mindblown Life, have in teaching people financial literacy through gaming?

Financial illiteracy affects hundreds of millions of Americans. Mindblown Life will be the first solution capable of impacting the lives of millions of Americans(i.e. a scalable solution) to this problem. By playing our game, young people will gain the tools and knowledge they need to make wise financial decisions about everything from budgeting to investments to financing college.

What place do you think gaming has in education? Do you see gaming taking on a larger role in how we learn things? 

According to the Kauffman Foundation, educational games are one of the fastest growing segment of the education industry. This is not surprising given that games are inherently educational. In fact, there are few learning systems as powerful as games. They can engage students over extended periods of time, and are also able to get people to do relatively tedious tasks over and over again until they’ve mastered a skill (e.g. dribbling a basket ball). Games are not a panacea and can never replace a great teacher. They are, however, a powerful tool in the hands of teachers and students alike.

You’re currently running a Kickstarter campaign. Why did you decide to use crowdfunding to raise capital for your startup? Do you think crowdfunding has inherent benefits for consumer companies?

We decided to use crowdfunding because it’s an excellent way to raise both funds and awareness. For consumer companies it’s also a great way to measure demand for your product. A successful campaign yields thousands of backers who are invested in the success of your product. With that said, please support our campaign by going to to www.mindblownlabs.com/ks and contributing.

If your life had a theme song, what would it be?

Can I choose two?: Man in the Mirror by Michael Jackson & Fantasy by Earth, Wind & Fire

The post Entrepreneur Spotlight: Jason Young, Mindblown Labs appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

We are a community of talented entrepreneurs and we know that you each have an important story to tell. In order to get out even more stories, we would like to showcase original content from members on the Black Founders blog. Topics can include your current business ventures, what you think it means to be a Black Founder, or any current trends/observations in the tech industry of interest to you. Let us know what you are thinking!

Interested in blogging for us? Please send an email with a link to your current blog to founders{at}blackfounders.com.

The post CALL TO ACTION: Write a Feature for the Black Founders Blog appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

Great things always come in pairs. Bacon and Eggs. Kenan and Kel. Ideas are Worthless and Tech Crunch Disrupt! This September will bring the two conferences to San Francisco and if that wasn’t enough good news, they are within days of each other.

Ideas are Worthless SF (on September 6) is the culmination of a nation-wide series launched this year by Black Founders. As a fresh addition to the technology conference scene, the day-long event will bring together emerging companies, investors, and a variety of experiences from within the industry from which proactive learning can take place. Whether you are looking for ways to perfect your pitch or need insight on what to do with the $60 million your company was acquired for (I’m looking at you, SocialCam), Ideas are Worthless SF will join the ranks of past Black Founders events in the ongoing quest to nurture an ecosystem that stimulates tech entrepreneurship and fosters economic growth in the community. Ideas are Worthless will take place Thursday, September 6, 2012 from 9am-6pm at Orrick LLP in San Francisco, CA. REGISTER HERE.

Ideas Are Worthless Speakers

Steve Blank	Charles Hudson	Mitch Kapor	Angela Benton
Craig Davis	Michael Seibel

And since you are already in San Francisco…

Tech Crunch Disrupt (from September 8-12) is an unparalleled opportunity to network, absorb, and access what is happening in technology at the moment. As one of the most anticipated conferences of the year, its return to San Francisco promises to reveal an all new slate of outstanding startups, influential speakers, guests, and more to the stage. Last year nearly 2,000 bright minds convened to Disrupt and 2012 looks to be similar in numbers. So why are we encouraging Ideas are Worthless attendees to go to TC Disrupt?

The Black Founders mission has always been to increase the number of successful black entrepreneurs in tech. As we continue to make strides within our professional pursuits as a community therein grows a need for collaboration and interaction. Why? To further challenge and redefine the conceptual parameters of what a founder looks like, comes from, and can do.

Conclusion

Bring your A-game to Ideas are Worthless and we will see you there. Stick around and enjoy all of the energy of Tech Crunch Disrupt. Since both are only days away from each other, you’ll get immersed in two of September’s best events for a tech entrepreneur.

The post Come for Ideas Are Worthless, Stay for Tech Crunch Disrupt appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

Ellias K. Fullmore, AppSynth Media

Where are you from?
Oakland via Atlanta GA

What is the name of your startup?

AppSynth Media

What does your startup do? 

We are an Oakland based media consulting and app development firm that specializing in creating
alternative forms of music distribution, We are currently working on Kickstarter for an Ethiopian American
Hip Hop Space opera called Starbound by the group CopperWire. We are turning their album Earthbound
into a video game and interactive comic book that makes millions of customizable remixes using sonic
light curves: “the sound of stars” that we received from our collaborators at NASA. (that’s why we are
calling it Starbound) We are working with Senior TED Fellow Meklit Hadero and Nigerian American

Science Fiction Author Nnedi Okorafor. Our goal is to create new paradigm for interacting with music that
allows the listener to participate in the creating of the music. Our app will generate remixes using phone
numbers, tweets and the time of day. It will also generate remixes as part of an Augmented Reality flight
game played from the back of the CD.

Why/how did you become an entrepreneur?

I have always been an entrepreneur in some form or another. I have always been driven to put new
ideas in the world and being in charge of my own destiny. I like the thrill of failing or succeeding as the
result of my hard work and effort. I also love the feeling of watching a plan come together that utilizes a
broad spectrum of talents and skill sets. That is why I was driven to help create a synthesis of app/game
development and music distribution. AppSynth allows me to combine my interest in music, art and all
things tech ,

If your life had a theme song, what would it be?

As a musician app developer who specializes in algorithmically generated remixes I can
honestly say that I can’t wait to make a theme song for myself, that automatically responds to
the phenomenon around me like heart rate, pace of movement , temperature or something like
that!

The post Entrepreneur Spotlight: Ellias K. Fullmore, AppSynth Media appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

Where are you from?

Memphis, TN

What is the name of your startup?

Black Girls CODE

What does your startup do?

Black Girls CODE is a non-profit organization founded in 2011 to introduce girls of color from black, Latino, and Native American communities to skills in computer programming and digital
technology. Our goal is to give girls from underrepresented communities 21st century skills which will empower them to become the tech leaders and creators of tomorrow.

Why/how did you become an entrepreneur?

I have spent more than 15 years in various leadership roles in several Fortune 100 companies, but I have always had a strong desire to be my own boss and forge my own path as an entrepreneur. I actually come from a long line of entrepreneurs and started several small companies both during and after college. I was driven to create Black Girls CODE after identifying a significant need for an organization such as ours with a focus on girls and technology. We were the first organization specifically focused on training girls of color skills in computer programming. Helping to drive the increase of girls in the STEM pipeline and specifically technology is a passion and it is the motivating factor which drives me to continue to build and develop my business day to day.

If your life had a theme song, what would it be?

Today what rings true for me is the theme song for “Mission Impossible”. However our feel our goals as an organization are possible and achievable. Although there have been many challenges and hurdles on our journey to building Black Girls CODE into a thriving and sustainable organization, I am convinced with the continued support and dedication of like minded organizations and individuals in our community that we will exceed our goals.

The post Entrepreneur Spotlight: Kimberly Bryant, Black Girls CODE appeared first on Black Founders Blog.

BACC V will be an exciting day of learning, connecting, and hearing pitches from a group of entrepreneurs representative of the Bay Area, offering testimony from successful entrepreneurs through panel discussions, networking opportunities, and the chance to witness a live pitch session in front of potential investors

The Alliance for Community Development is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with the mission of increasing access to capital for companies with diverse leadership inclusive of minorities, women, and disabled veterans. All companies are welcome and companies with diverse leadership and an interest in building strong financial results while generating social benefits are encouraged to attend.

For more information, visit http://www.allianceforcommunitydevelopment.com/.

Register here  and enter the promotion code: BACCVspcl1

Fifth Annual Bay Area Capitol Connections Conference
MAY 10, 2012
8:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, 101 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
BART and MUNI accessible

The post Community Events: Bay Area Capital Connections Conference 2012 appeared first on Black Founders Blog.