Morgan DeBaun, Your Startup Survival Kit for VC Funding and Leadership | Entrepreneurship | YAPClassic

23:29And then from there, in 2014, in January of 2014, I was starting on Blavity. We launched our first version of the product in the spring, the first version of the website in July of 2014. Mike Brown was killed in August. And if he hadn't been murdered, I wouldn't have, I think, felt the urgency to quit. Like, I think I would have stayed on the side hustle, main hustle dance for another year. But at that point, I said, okay, I have to figure out my finances to be able to quit. So by October, I was fully out of the business at Intuit. And I took on more side hustles, actually, once I quit because I still had a downtown apartment in downtown San Francisco and I was financing, I was bootstrapping the company.

24:21So I was paying for the engineers, the bloggers, the site maintenance and everything. So I took on a consulting job. I arbitraged an apartment so that I could, you know, I rented out an apartment and then rented it out to somebody else for a higher price. I mean, I was literally just hustling, trying to make ends meet so that as much of my discretionary income as possible could go into the business. So I have no experience with fundraising. I started my companies totally bootstrapped. I think a lot of people don't have the experience that I had. It was like a slow organic experience. And then I got really huge retainers as soon as I started my companies.

24:59So let's talk about fundraising because you have a lot of experience with it. Talk to us about the steps that we have to take to get VC money. What are the things we need to prepare, things we need to create? How do we go out and find people to pitch to? Just walk us through that whole process. You know, if I could have stayed bootstrapping, I would have. I think it's the better option for most people. And in my scenario, the reason why I ultimately decided to fundraise is because I couldn't, we were growing so fast, I couldn't self-finance the growth and we were leaving a lot of money on the table.

25:33And I also felt a responsibility to convert people who were working as contractors or bloggers into a more sustainable like living baseline wage. I mean, it was still startup wages, but something is better than nothing. So it was about the summer after Blavity launched 2015 when I went out to try to fundraise. Now, Again, Black girl, San Francisco, 2014, not really in vogue. There's a lot of new conversations around equity in VC. And I love that. It's beautiful. There's funds dedicated to minorities raising money. But none of that existed when I was out there. So the first thing is identifying why you're fundraising and making a decision on if your business is venture backable or not.

26:21And at the time, there was a lot of media companies that were raising money. You had Vice, you had BuzzFeed, you had Upworthy, Attention, so many media companies. Mike, for example, some of them exist now, some of them don't. But I had enough data that showed, yes, this is a category that people will spend and invest in. Then the second thing is, do you want to be a venture-backed founder? because there's another set of responsibilities that comes from taking outside money. You dilute yourself and give away a piece of your company and therefore you're giving power away. And the more money you raise, the less power you have and the more people who become your bosses, right?

27:03The irony of entrepreneurship. And then the last thing is, if I take this money, am I gonna be able to give it back at a really high return at the speed at which this industry requires me to do so? So typically in the venture capital world, they're looking for a five to seven year return timeframe, which means within five to seven years, you need to sell your company or you need to have an IPO, which is a public sale. So am I, as the founder, willing to commit to a five to seven year timeframe? At the time, I was. So all of those things were true for me. I went out to raise money and I was really militant and really strict at the time.

27:44And so what did I do? I said, I want all Black investors. I want an all Black board. And this is a Black media company. So the people who own this need to be a reflection of our community, right? Well, all the Black people said no. So that was a strike. And they were friendly about it. And I know all these people now, and I love them now. But it hurt. I mean, I was like on the floor crying. I mean, it was terrible. I felt like if they don't get me, then how could somebody else? And like, if they don't want to put the money behind this problem that impacts them and their children and their children's children and all the things, then why would Jenny from around the block do it?

28:26So I had to sit for a couple of weeks and lick my wounds. And then, you know, I was talking to some people in my network and they said, well, have you considered social impact investors? And I had never heard of social impact investors. I was like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And a social impact investor is someone or a fund who wants to make investments in venture backable startups and enterprise investments, not investing in nonprofits, but they do have a strong fiduciary responsibility to invest in companies that are going to do good. So their set of criteria, while they still want money back, they're not looking for as much money back.

29:05while they want it fast, if it takes a little longer and you're doing good, it's okay. So their set of criteria was a bit different. And so my first set of investors actually wound up being social impact investors, people who cared deeply about diversity in media and democracy, people who care deeply about there being examples of companies run by women of color at scale that are profitable, that aren't charities, you know? And that is how I raised my first round of funding, which is around$500 ,000, which to me was everything. And for a lot of people, that's a lot of money to get started with.

29:43So talk to us about the behind the scenes of that. How did you find these social impact investors? How did you pitch them? Like, what was that like? What did you prepare? What was the meeting like? Because I think a lot of people don't hear this little like nitty gritty information in terms of fundraising. Yeah, so I had my deck that was a failure from the first round. And so I then, I knew that I shouldn't use those same materials because I needed to tell a different story, right? Because they're evaluating impacts. So they were going to want to know, how do you help people? How do you measure impact?

30:14So I needed to think, put myself in the mindset of these folks and understand what their criteria was. And I just did research. I mean, it wasn't glamorous. I sent literally just brute force, reading forums, reading things on Reddit, like just research because I didn't know anyone. And the second thing was I applied for a program that would give me a certain amount of funding. I think it was like 100K. And they were all a group of social impact investors that were financing the program. And as a part of that process, they gave you all of these templates to fill out, like a financial template, all these questions to answer.

30:53And so I signed up for that program. It was called New Media Ventures. They still exist today and still run this program. And through that process, I was able to put together my three-year projections, financial projections, which again felt insane to me. I'm like, I'm just making shit up. Like, I don't know what's going to happen in three years. How are you guys going to know? Do you know something I don't know? So I updated my pitch deck, which was pretty straightforward. Or like I said, I just updated some of the slides in terms of impact. I told the vision of Blavity Inc. and where I wanted to go differently.

31:28So I talked about hiring and financing the next generation of journalists. I talked about how the more that you see images in advertising that's a reflection of you, the more it changes your perception about what's possible. And that I talked more about the soft stuff. and then I won that first 100K. And then what I did next, and this is what I would recommend for anybody who's fundraising, I then asked the people who gave me money to help me finish raising the rest of my round. I tried to make it their responsibility now that they've said yes to me to make me successful. And I don't think enough people put the burden on others to help them be successful when actually it is their job and they want to.

32:18right? You say, thank you for the money and you move on. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you for the money. We're now married forever. How else can you help me? And I said, introduce me to people. I was introduced to people on their board. I was introduced to their financers. And that's how I filled out the rest of my round was actually all of the really, really wealthy people that were giving them money. And that kind of created this cover for our initial set of business because I had a really strong network of angel investors and funds who made this commitment to, you know what, we want to see Morgan and we want to see Blavity grow.

32:52And how did you decide how much equity you wanted to give away? I hated how much equity I had to give away in the early stages. I was shocked and shook at how much these VCs want to give away. So every round, they typically want 10 to 20 % of your business every time you raise. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that. So actually, that's one of the reasons I stopped fundraising. So I've raised$13 million in the last, you know, over the last six plus years. And I have not raised since 2018 because I do not want to continue to dilute my own ownership and the ownership of my employees and our existing investors.

33:34Because every time you do that, you go down 10 to 20%. Yeah. I only have given out equity to my executives, basically, who've been on my team because they're putting in sweat equity. They're deciding not to start their own companies to work on this company and so on. So you've given equity to some of your employees and team members? Yeah. Every employee at Blavity gets equity. Oh, wow. Yes. I know. I'm a crazy lady, but it was important to me. Talk to us about why. When you become an owner of something, you treat it differently. You treat it differently and you make decisions differently. I believe that.

34:11I also believe it's core to our mission. Although we're not a social impact company only, I mean, we're a for-profit enterprise, I do believe that it is my responsibility as a CEO to building more progressive version of what companies should look like. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious just to understand what does that look like? If somebody signs on, at what point do they get equity? Do they get distributions? Like, how does that work? We have salary bands based off of levels. And so our salary bands that are based off of levels also include a set of stock options. And those stock options are fair market value of the company.

34:52We have a third party that prices the company one to two times a year. And they can buy those stock options if they so choose, which is a heavily discounted rate. Yeah. And it's a private company. It's a private company. It's not like you can sell it. we can buy it back from you, but you cannot sell it on the open market. So based off of your level, you get a certain amount of shares and you can buy those shares while you're here. Or if you ever quit and or get fired, you have a window in which you could buy those shares. So things don't work out, fine. The standard for our company is a four-year cycle of vesting with a one-year cliff, meaning you have to be with us for at least a year to get your first 25 % of that allocation of shares.

35:34Got it. And so this also is good for you because it helps you retain your employees. Is that right? Absolutely. I definitely know when people start exercising their shares, I'm always like, hold up. Are you happy? Are you about to leave? Are you okay? I love what's going on. But generally, we see people exercise their shares. You know, if they've transitioned, we see that take place after the fact. People don't generally exercise during the time that they're at the company because there's really no reason to. But in the event that we sell the company, that means that everybody who has shares gets a check, even if you were part of our vision and mission four years ago.

36:12And I think that's beautiful. That is awesome. I want to look into that. It sounds really cool. So talk to us about how Blavity has evolved over the years because it started as a newsletter and I went on your website and I was like, wow, there's a lot going on here. So what are the types of things that you do today? What's your business model? Yeah, so Blavity today, we have about 200 employees. We're fully remote all over the country. We have two divisions. So really two separate groups of leaders. One is our Blavity Media Group. Blavity Media Group is the original mission of Blavity. We create brands and media brands that speak to our communities.

36:48And then we work with advertisers who want to authentically reach those communities. We have big clients, Walmart, MasterCard, Toyota, et cetera, that advertise with us. And we have online content and all the good things. We also have a publisher network where we work with multicultural publishers that are independent or smaller than us who don't have the same sales team or ad infrastructure, who want to work with the McDonald's or Toyota or other really incredible partners and run their ad operations and monetization for them. Amazing. Sounds like we're doing really some similar stuff. We are.

37:27And then our second business, which is called AfroTech and Talent Infusion, is really focused on talent acquisition and diversity in the tech space. And it's separate from media because ultimately what we're trying to do is increase the speed in which people of color are able to get jobs and increase the pipeline of talent that stays in tech and stays at these big companies. And so we have a huge conference called Afrotech, typically in November, and we have memberships and communities as well as a SaaS product behind the scenes that is for corporations to get access to those talent pools year round.

38:08So let's stick on this topic of diversity. You say diversity must be a true company value. How do you make sure that you have a diverse workplace? What are some of the things that you do? A couple of things. One is first you have to have higher people that are diverse. And when I say diverse, I don't just mean Black people. I mean truly a diverse set of people across interest groups, religions, political interests, particularly if you're building a product that is for a diverse set of consumers. The reason for this, and there's a million studies on it, but basically diverse groups come up with better answers and diverse groups come up with better profits.

38:50And that's where We're in business. That's where we are business people. We want profits. So once you hire people, then you have to retain them, which is really, really hard for a lot of companies. They spend all this money to get you. And then when you get there, you're like, I don't want to work here. This is not what you sold me because there's no diversity at the top. And so decisions that are passed through are inconsistent with what they talked about versus how it's actually applied through the workforce, whether that's pay equity, whether that's access to opportunities and mentorship, whether that's even feedback.

39:20I recently just read a research study that showed that if you're a woman or a person of color, the type of feedback, the vocabulary of feedback that you get is very generic versus if you're a male or a white or Asian male, you get very specific feedback, which allows you to get better. So we're just widening the gaps. So diversity has to, and inclusion and equity have to be looked at at every single part of your company along the way. And then ultimately, I do think it's important that at the top of these companies, your board, your investors, the people who are really making the big decisions need to have inclusion and diversity as a part of their own values.

40:04Because it does make a difference. I mean, I'm in these boardrooms. I advise big companies. I advise PepsiCo. I advise American Airlines. These decisions are made in the boardrooms. So you've got to have that. And I know that to attract better talent, you say that you celebrate success. And this is a great way for you to attract diverse talent. Can you tell us what you mean by that? Yeah. So at our own company, we really try to showcase the incredible success of our employees. So if you look at our corporate branding, you look at our corporate social media profiles, you're not going to see a picture of me every five seconds.

40:39It's not called Morgan DeBond Company. It is a corporation, and I want to make sure that the work of the people who are working at this company are acknowledged. That's another piece of data that we see often is that women and people of color in the workplace feel underappreciated. And underappreciated, certainly financially, of course, but also just generally they feel like they do a lot of invisible labor that's not acknowledged. And so we try to encourage companies and even within our own company, create programs like quarterly programs where we acknowledge employees who are doing really good work.

41:15We have peer recognition programs so that you can acknowledge, you know, someone you enjoyed working on a project with and they really solved a great thing that happened with a client and they were quick and they were awesome and they had a great attitude. You know, so we try to create all these different moments for verbal and financial affirmations of people's success. And I think companies have started to do that. You start to hear about employee engagement. You start to see these teams, you know, chief culture officers. I mean, there's all these different titles in the tech world. But ultimately, it's about engagement.

41:47How engaged is your diverse workforce? Mm-hmm. And I know you're also a proponent of anonymous employee surveys. Blue child, yes. Because, and I wasn't, used to be not like terrified of them. I used to be terrified of anonymous surveys. I was like, I don't know if I want to know. what they have to say about us. But what I've learned is anonymous surveys, frequent anonymous surveys, and I think that's key. If you do one once a year, you're going to get a bunch of stuff. But if you do these often and it becomes a part of your culture, then people start to feel psychologically safe to share things and things that maybe would be difficult for them to tell their direct manager or boss, or they don't know how to talk about it.

42:27And you can identify trends much easier. And in larger corporations, I think creating safe pathways for communication for everyone is really important. And I say everyone because the other thing that we've noticed is that when you create systems and tools and cultures that benefit people of color, benefit women, the rest of the group also gets unintended benefits as well. It's just like maternity leave, right? When you had maternity leave, that was great. But parental leave, is better because it actually benefits the whole family unit and the birthing person or closed captions. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I'm like, I don't know what these people are saying.

43:10Let me turn on closed captions. Well, closed captions used to only be for people who could not hear, but now we all benefit from closed captions, right? So this idea that we got to go out of our way for diversity and all this stuff, I'm like, yeah, but it's going to make it better. That's such a good point. I love that. Okay, so let's talk about this corporate mission that you have, which is to advance Black happiness. How do you define Black happiness? And what do you feel like you've achieved already on that front? Yeah, we spend a lot of time on this mission. It's one that's really ambitious, which is important.

43:45When you think about happiness, it's hard to be happy when you don't have some fundamentals in place. Access to safe work environment, access to housing, access to information, quality of treatment, access to and safety in your community, right? There's all these different things that are a barrier to even being happy. And we wanted to start with the top and our work our way there. I think that you can find moments of joy and happiness in everything that you do. And we wanted to make sure that the work that we are doing every single day at our company is striving towards that. So when we're evaluating articles or social media posts, I ask the team, is this going to do harm?

44:32Is this going to be neutral? Or is this going to be a positive impact on happiness? And they have to think about that question. And sometimes the answer is like, I think it's just neutral. Then we don't really need to do it. You know, if it's going to have no impact, why are we wasting our time? I really encourage companies and entrepreneurs as they're building their missions and their values to be ambitious enough that as you get larger, as you become bigger than you ever thought you could be, and you've got all these people working for you, can they use and leverage your mission and values in their work every single day as just a gut check?

45:07We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.

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49:32So you grew this company. You've got over 200 employees, which is super impressive. And as a diverse minority woman, you probably didn't have many leadership experiences before you started your company. Same thing with me. Like, it's like every leadership position that I've ever had was like, I put myself in that. Nobody ever put me in a leadership position. It was like an organization I started or whatever. Right. So talk to us about some of the challenges you had as a leader over the years, just trying to be a good leader to this company without really much experience leading. Yeah. I mean, I made a bajillion mistakes.

50:08I'm sure I make mistakes every day now. I think what I've learned to accept and embrace is that I am on a journey where all I can do is control my ability to take input, feedback, and then address it. And address it head on, right? There were times in my life as the leader of this company where I was avoided, where I didn't address it head on. I made all these different excuses. This is sexist. These are expectations that they wouldn't have for a male CEO. My employees would never say this stuff to a male CEO. This wouldn't ever happen to a white man media company that had the same statistics that I have.

50:49These advertisers would never give us these prices, right? I mean, I made all these different excuses and all these different things. But at the end of the day, I'm still who I am, whether those things are true or not true. So it's not really, I learned, it's not really productive for me to spend any energy there and to very quickly move myself towards a place of where it's in my control, what's in my power, and how can I make an impact or improve the things are in my control and my power. So I took classes. I hired executive coaches and read a lot of books. I read tons of books. I listen to podcasts.

51:26I'm on a million and one newsletters. I mean, I've just made learning and learning how to be a better leader a part of my engine every single day. And I have really close advisors who can give me feedback and call me out and say, I don't care if you're black, green, tall, short, Morgan, that was a bad decision. that was a bad decision and this is how you need to fix it and just really having a tribe of people who I can go to and trust that are invested enough in me and invest enough in the company and that's my board those are my co-founders typically they're not strangers I meet off the street I mean it's like people who have really been with me a long time and understand the true vision of what I'm trying to accomplish.

52:12And that would be my advice to anyone is like, sometimes when people are looking for mentors or advisors, they make this list that's all the way up here. You know, I would love to have Sheryl Sandberg as my advisor, or I would love to have Elon Musk as my advisor. And I'm like, really? Like, you know, that's not really realistic. Yeah. Get real. Let's get real. But who has been rocking with you for a long time? Who is successful, maybe in a different industry, who you can have quarterly meetings with or quarterly lunches or dinners with. And that's how I've been able to accelerate, I think, my growth, my personal development, and also pay it forward to other people through my own advisorship or my own podcast so that along the way, I can be that for other people.

53:00Well, I have to ask you, I don't have a board. I always think about starting a board and then I just get too busy and I never start a board, right? I have like some people with their toes in, right? But don't have a formal board. If you have a formal board, how is it structured? I do have a formal board. When you take venture capital after a certain stage, you have to have a formal board because they take 10 to 20 % of their company and they want to watch you. They have the rights to information. I have a board meeting coming up soon. So it's the people who invested who are on the board? That's right.

53:33So it's the biggest investors take the seats. and it's typically an odd number. So my board is small. It's three people. Some boards are seven, some boards are nine. I mean, some boards are huge. And we vote on the most important thing. So if I want to do an acquisition, I have to get board approval. They set my salary, right? I mean, I work for the board. I am the chairperson of the board. I'm also CEO, which are really two separate roles. So, you know, there may be a time where we hire a CEO. The CEO reports to the board, right? The chairperson is the head of the board. So I have double roles, but at some point, probably won't see me as CEO.

54:13And I'll still control the board, but that will be a different phase of life for me. But basically, that's how it's set up. And I recommend that people consider, even if it's an informal board, you don't have to have one with voting rights and all these different things. Because learning to organize your information on a quarterly basis and key performance indicators for your company makes you a better leader. And it also helps your leaders become better leaders. So the people reporting into you know that you need to go and justify these decisions or these hires or these budgets every 90 days.

54:48And that has made us a better company. It has made us a better workplace. It has made us a more equitable workplace because everything is clear and written down. There's none of this like, just cause she wants to. like no yeah and I think that has been really helpful as to why we've been able to grow and mature so quickly my last question for you on entrepreneurship I know from me starting my own company as a side hustle and then it growing so fast you had a very similar experience my relationships really took a toll especially like the first four years of all of this talk to us about that. How much did you have to sacrifice personally?

55:31And then now that you've got your feet on the ground, how do you prioritize your life with entrepreneurship? I mean, you know, like I really do feel like we were living parallel universes. It's brutal. I was single for a long time or I had terrible situationships and just I wasn't a great partner. There's no way. I mean, I'm working 12, 16-hour days. I don't have capacity for your stuff. I barely have capacity for my stuff. And then the type of people that I was dating or in relationship with, then you wind up dating people who also have a bunch of stuff going on because that's the only way that you feel okay.

56:10Yeah. Right? So I had a lot of tragic situations, but I think eventually I had to make a decision on, do you ever want to have a partner in life? Do you ever want to be healthy and not have to meditate for an hour to work because you've got so much going on? I used to wake up in the middle of the night with my laptop and just turn over and just, just, just. So that was not sustainable for me. That was not the life that I wanted when I looked into the future. And it took a lot of hard work and intentionality and behavior shifts to get me to the place where I am now. I physically left LA. I live in Nashville, Tennessee, because part of it was the physical environment was one that was really hard for me to say no to all the things that were coming my way.

57:03I wanted to be closer with my family. You know, I wanted to have Sunday more normal. And I wanted to put myself potentially in a position to find a partner. And if I wanted a family at some point to be able to have a community and a culture in which that family was going to wind up not with my 12-year-old doing drugs in LA, but somebody who'd be like, oh, yes, I don't even know what kind of this is. I mean, I don't think that's really the reality for these kids these days, but like just a little bit more innocent than the things going on in New York and LA. Yeah. You see a lot in these spaces and it wasn't easy.

57:43People thought I was nuts when I left LA. I mean, it's like, how can you be so successful and have all these things and all these employees and stuff that you live in like, Tennessee? It's making sense. But it does make sense to me and it's worked out. Yeah. And nowadays as an entrepreneur, you can be just online crushing it. You don't need to be in physical spaces, at least all the time anymore. So you have a book coming out. Tell us about this book. What is it called? What is it going to be about? When does it come out? Yeah, so I'm finishing writing it now. The book comes out next year, next fall.

58:16And it's all about helping other ambitious people define life and their success for themselves. And even if you're good, if you're like, I'm good, I'm not great. I want to get to the point where I'm living every week in my purpose. and that might mean I'm a stay-at-home mom and I'm doing pick up and drop off and I'm investing in my hobbies and I'm living a beautiful life. That's great. It could mean I'm starting a media company and I'm growing this thing and I'm trying to figure out how to navigate all these choices I need to make. But the real person that it is for is somebody who aspires to have a vision of the life that they want to live and then they're willing to make some tough temporary choices like you and I have to get there.

59:01and basically showing them how. Well, awesome. I can't wait to have you back on to talk about that book. So we'll have you back on in six months or so when you're done and the book is coming out. Thank you so much. I end my show with two questions that I ask everyone. So the first one, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Invest in yourself, whether that's books, Audible, whether that is investing in the stock market So you have some safety net, whatever it may be, invest in yourself. You're going to get paid so much more dividends if you invest in yourself before material things.

59:41I totally agree. Getting as many skills as possible is so key, especially in 2023 and beyond. And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business, beyond financial, beyond the topic of today's episode. The key to profiting in life is so many things. I think that my core key to profiting in life is to be happy and joyful and in peace in my every day. To be totally fully like I love today. Not always wishing and wanting for more. Yes, putting in the work during the day to get to my more, but being totally satisfied. If I ran this day back every day, I'm good. Yeah. It's so true.

1:00:29Satisfaction is so important to happiness. And then we're just like always chasing something else and never being happy. So I really liked that you said that. Morgan, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? You can listen to my podcast, The Journey Podcast, where I talk about all the things, all my challenges, all the things I fuck up on all the time. And then all my fun friends along way. You can follow me on TikTok if you want the crazy weird me. And you can follow me on Instagram, of course, if you want the more curated version, such as Instagram is these days. Awesome.

1:01:04Well, I'll stick all those links in the show notes. I'll make sure that everybody follows you. Morgan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

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