Where I grew up, most don’t make it out. As a kid, I lived in Baltimore’s Walbrook Junction, a place where a young Black man had only two choices: become a predator or become prey. Seeing the limited future ahead of me, my parents found a way to get us out despite minimal means. By my 13th birthday, we’d moved to the suburbs. But I had already seen so much — as an elementary student, I was stuck up at gunpoint for my sneakers. I had seen friends from the neighborhood hauled off to juvenile detention centers. I was hardened in many ways by those streets.
Before this hardness took me to the point of no return, I was given a new lease on life. My new environment opened my whole world to fresh possibilities. I now had a safe place where I could breathe freely and dream big. At our rented home in Randallstown, Maryland, predominantly a Jewish community, my friends were the kids of professionals and business owners. Being surrounded by a solidly middle-class lifestyle, I gained a new understanding of life. Here, it wasn’t about being “hard;” it was about being smart. By the time I turned 16, my priorities were firmly set on education and achieving financial success — I could see then that my path was entrepreneurship.
In high school, I was the kid handing out my business card to promote my startup before they were even called startups. In college at Johns Hopkins, I lobbied to replace my senior thesis research paper with a business plan. I was a student of entrepreneurship and the workings of Silicon Valley long before I had arrived there. I was a serial entrepreneur before those terms were used to describe me in The Washington Post and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Throughout my journey, I’ve had the great fortune to assemble remarkable talent and solve timely problems. Now the time has come for something bigger.
In this next chapter, it’s my absolute honor to join the incredible team at X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory (formerly known as Google X), as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR). Joining X is an honor not only because I’m an entrepreneur but because it represents an opportunity to do more. At this stage of my career, doing more is not just about building companies; it is about uplifting people and communities at scale.
Joining X marks the first time I’ve had a job that I didn’t create since I was a teenager. The Web came into existence around the time I finished college, and I was immediately hooked. In my mid-twenties, I co-founded ImageCafe.com, an Internet superstore of ready-made websites specifically for small businesses. It was acquired by Network Solutions and with the new scale of a public company, became the default instant website platform used by millions of domain name purchasers. From there, I founded CollectiveX (now Groupsite) and scaled it to over 50,000 customers.
In 2010, I left Maryland for Palo Alto. Notwithstanding my early success, in Silicon Valley, I felt the challenges of the lack of diversity first-hand. Only 2% of tech employees in Silicon Valley are Black, and less than 1% of venture capital goes to Black founders. Against these challenges, I co-founded and launched a string of startups — Arrived, VentureFund.io, and Progressly, which was acquired by Box (NYSE: BOX) in 2018.
The acquisition of Progressly should have been a joyous moment. It cemented my status as a twice successful entrepreneur, but I found it hard to celebrate. The fact that I was the only Black internet entrepreneur to have two successful exits to publicly traded tech companies was a wake-up call. I shouldn’t be an anomaly. For change to happen, we’d need to change the complexion of tech. This motivated me to co-found Revitalize and launch PitchBLCK, two organizations dedicated to bridging the funding gap faced by Black founders.
Reflecting on my journey, I realize that a lot had to go right for me to make it here. I understand that communities like Walbrook Junction are worlds away from the elite tech culture of Silicon Valley, and I’m grateful to have lived on both sides. I’ve experienced the challenges under-resourced, under-estimated communities face — those challenges won’t be solved without innovative solutions. While talent is equally distributed, opportunities are not. It’s time to use our resources for change, to leverage technology to provide everyone opportunities to prosper in place. This is exactly what I plan to do at X.
Joining X allows me to work with some of the brightest minds in tech. Together we can create solutions at scale, fueled by the reach and resources of Google. I am committed to utilizing this platform to develop moonshots that solve pressing problems at the intersection of profit and purpose. Starting with helping under-estimated communities achieve equity while generating outsized returns. I hope to see you on this journey because I believe we can create vital, positive change together. Stay tuned!
