The Bassline of Entrepreneurship
How to unlock the potential of black entrepreneurs
Introduction
On November 4th, I attended an event titled “Conversations & Cocktails: What’s Next For Black Entrepreneurs” hosted by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR).1
One of the panelists - Kwame Boler - said something that stuck with me. I wanted to write about it here for a few reasons. One reason is that I needed to clarify my understanding of what he said. The second reason is because once I understand what he said, it’s my responsibility to share it. Ironically, sharing it underscores his message—very meta.
Okay, so let’s set the stage for why it resonated.
To start, the name of the panel. . .“What’s Next for Black Entrepreneurs”
I’m an entrepreneur. I also identify as a Black man, so I had a predisposition to receive the insights Kwame shared. On the other hand, his comments had nothing and everything to do with race. Why?
Let’s put aside being a black entrepreneur for a second. Being an entrepreneur, in general, requires having multiple types of access. This theme of access that Kwame and the other panelists spoke about was so rich with insights that in clarifying this article’s thesis, I run the risk of expanding its scope. This clarification is necessary, though.
Privilege
All entrepreneurs, regardless of their race, have privilege. Not many people talk about this fact while making the logical argument for not viewing black businesses as charity cases. Kwame did. Perhaps this was another way I was receptive to his message, because I was already thinking about the privileges I have been afforded in my entrepreneurship journey.
To give you some background, I lived with my parents during the early years of building my business. Over dinner one day, I told them that despite the challenges of building a business, I have the privilege of building one because they allowed me to live with them while doing it.
Now, the privilege to build a business is an entirely different story. And this is, I think, what makes entrepreneurship a compelling case study for inclusion.
While reflecting on Kwame’s comments, I concluded that we have to segment the concept of privilege into two buckets. There is the privilege of and the privilege to. Both concepts have multiple threads we can pull on. By pulling on these threads, we get insight into how privilege does and does not manifest for black entrepreneurs.
So, back to the theme that the panel discussed.
All entrepreneurs have privileges.
“You are promising people that you can turn nickels into quarters,” said Kwame “and in the ideal case, dollars.”
This means that whether you bootstrap a business or take outside investment, you’re still calling yourself an alchemist. Because you’re building value where there was none.
You’ve got to be pretty bold to think you can build a successful business. You’re saying you can print money. You’re saying you know something that the world doesn’t know now but will soon. And that knowledge is the framework that enables you to capture value (the delta between a nickel and a dollar). And so, when we talk about the privilege to build a business, we are talking about black entrepreneurs' access to the insights that inform their ventures.
You don’t even have to acknowledge out loud that you have the privilege to build a business. You only have to be taking the steps to do it. Your actions tell the world you think you have access to the insight you need. This access to insight is a privilege because if you know something no one else does, you have had experiences that other people who could build that business have not had.
This access is the essence of privilege, regardless of its form. So, the challenges that black entrepreneurs face are relative. Relative to other would-be black and non-black entrepreneurs. The reason that Kwame’s comments are crucial is because they place the emphasis where it needs to be: the privilege to transform those insights.
As he echoed, when the world catches a cold, black people catch pneumonia, which means that even though black founders may have the privilege to turn nickels into dollars, whether or not they have access to what they need to transform those insights is an entirely different story.
The way he talked about this privilege to transform those insights resonated with me, and the way he and the other panelists described how to do it made me feel as if I could run through a brick wall while walking out of the hotel.
Access
Before we talk about the other types of privilege, it’s worth noting that I say “could transform nickels into quarters” because our discussion assumes the insights all black entrepreneurs have access to are consistent in quality with the ones that their peers of all backgrounds have AND that those insights will pave the path toward capturing the total addressable market (TAM).
There are several types of access - as I alluded to earlier. One of those is what I just mentioned (access to an insight that could transform nickels into quarters). Other types of access include access to customers. Access to investors. Access to capital. Access to people who could help you. Access to people who could give you the right kinds of advice, which includes a group of other founders - that may be just a few small steps ahead of where you are on your journey. This is something you can curate for yourself by being intentional. Kwame talked about this as well.
Access to customers you need to figure out regardless of whether you get help or not. However, access to investors or people who could exponentially change your circumstances and help you realize the market potential of your startup is more random and less clear-cut than people who are not entrepreneurs would like to acknowledge.
I could spend hours discussing how this serendipity (as Kwame aptly named it) has paved the way for the founders of today’s most iconic brands. Bevel. AirBnB. The Marathon Store. The list goes on and on.
To return to the idea of being a Black entrepreneur, what’s interesting is that minority groups place a high premium on serendipity and access through advocacy (e.g., in the form of warm introductions) not because we want to cause friction in discourse, but because we recognize the role that serendipity plays; especially when a group of people with common backgrounds have not received access to something for generations. The potential energy locked up in a concept such as this one is almost unfathomable. The payoff is almost immeasurable.
The Baseline
Okay, so let’s talk about it. What did Kwame say that resonated with me?
I’m paraphrasing, but he said something like:
“You have to protect your network. Not necessarily vanguard. But you must minimize the amount of reputational risk that you expose them to. However, that does not give you permission to be a gatekeeper.
Myself and the other panelists do a lot of uplifting within our organizations. This uplifting is the baseline. You have to do this. Because none of us could have gotten into the positions that we are in if someone didn't support us.”
The phrase “baseline” stuck with me. His use of it seemed to illustrate that the concept has two interpretations:
As an adjective
As a noun
Uplifting is the baseline is an adjective in the same way that it is a metaphor. Think about the two words he negated to set up the punchline of his comments: “vanguard” and “gatekeeper.”
If you think about it, baseline, vanguard, and gatekeeper can each be used to describe the relationship of an object to another approaching object.
Vanguard (n): the foremost division or the front part of an army2
Gatekeeper (n): a person or thing that controls access3
In the case of vanguard, they are the first line of defense in combat.
In the case of a gatekeeper, they are the last line of defense, but from the standpoint of protecting what is behind the gate by preventing what comes through the gate.
Using the phrase “uplifting is the baseline” inverts the negative connotation of those concepts by bringing the focus of the discussion to the line instead of how the crossing of the line is policed. He uses it to create the metaphor, underscoring the use of the phrase the baseline as a noun.
When I say “the baseline” is also a noun, I mean that it is an imaginary line, standard of value, etc, by which things are measured or compared.
This is true for the uplifted but also the uplifters whose displacement is measured from this line. The amount of help the uplifter provides will define their performance, not just from the perspective of a performance review, but rather because the success of their endeavors depends on their ability to position others for success.
Failing to hire or empower people to do their best work, for example, means that executives and founders are never able to “give up to go up.”
The Bassline of Entrepreneurship
Let me riff on this topic for a second because that wasn’t the only phrase that resonated with me. In response to the third question, when asked how to address the challenge of not having a deep network or generational wealth, Kwame discussed how:
“…figuring out the ways you can hack a system through network, and leverage serendipity as a superpower is going to be your biggest unlock.
When he said that, it highlighted his comments about the baseline. So, I’d like to extend this idea one step further with my music production background.
The bassline of a song has always been my favorite. It grounds the piece and sits in the lowest frequency of the composition throughout space (the playback region of a song, visualized below) and throughout time (the duration of a song), which is also indicated in minutes on the song’s playback region.
So when I’m talking about the “bassline of entrepreneurship” or the bassline of a song, I’m talking about the instrument that everyone can feel when it’s missing and can feel when it’s there (physically and emotionally).
Conclusion
The implications of Kwame’s observations are highly relevant. To put it succinctly:
The ability to create and unlock the potential of black entrepreneurs is dependent upon the instruments these entrepreneurs use to create serendipity and support each other across space and time (the length of our journeys). Creating serendipity is entirely possible by using the internet and being intentional about attending conferences and making connections.
Appendix
P.S. Here’s one of my favorite bass players covering the song “What’s the Use” by Mac Miller…The legendary bass player Thundercat gave her props on Twitter.
Thanks for reading!
https://www.wsgr.com/email/Afrotech/Afrotech-WS-About_Speakers-23.htm
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/vanguard
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gatekeeper