Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to the Blacks and Technology bit tech Talk podcast,
Speaker 1: a show where we talk to black people who are engineers, innovators, educators, invenors,
Speaker 1: change makers, and entrepreneurs doing amazing things in the world
Speaker 1: of technology. The bit tech Talk podcast is where they
Speaker 1: show how they are stomping the divide by sharing their stories, ideas,
Speaker 1: knowledge and perspective on tech with the big community.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. Dennis, glad to have him.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. Greg, glad to be here. I'm and excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent, excellent. Yeah, It's been a minute since I've
Speaker 2: done these podcasts, so I'm excited to jump back into it.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of where you're from, and give us a little bit
Speaker 2: of that background.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: So recently. I'm from Saint Louis, Missouri. I grew up
Speaker 4: in Saint Louis, lived there to about two thousand and eight.
Speaker 4: I had a really just different childhood growing up in
Speaker 4: the city like Saint Louis. It was not always as
Speaker 4: much opportunity as I would like in the take industry
Speaker 4: when I was growing up.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, I kind of.
Speaker 4: Svered into a pathway that was a little bit different
Speaker 4: than most of the people that were my peers at
Speaker 4: that time period. Eventually, after high school, I moved to Atlanta.
Speaker 4: I studied electrical computer engineering down to Georgia Tech, and
Speaker 4: then from Georgia Tech, I had the opportunity to start
Speaker 4: in the power industry, but eventually got into computing and
Speaker 4: hardware and software and things of that nature, shifting in
Speaker 4: shifting my gears later in my college career to really
Speaker 4: locking in on computing, and then ultimately it's really amazing
Speaker 4: opportunities out of Atlanta, which originally I was intended on
Speaker 4: moving to California right after I got out of Georgia Tech,
Speaker 4: but just opportunity kind of presented themselves out there that
Speaker 4: allowed me to want to stay in Atlanta for a
Speaker 4: little bit longer, and I basically grew myself professionally and
Speaker 4: my network, my experience and that stuff in Atlanta and
Speaker 4: eventually moved out here to California to the top of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Nice. Nice. So I'm curious about, you know, your time
Speaker 2: in Saint Louis. By the way, we're kind of neighbors,
Speaker 2: like I'm in Cincinnati, while so you know, that's what
Speaker 2: five hours west.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're mid West brothers.
Speaker 2: Midwest.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So tell me a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 2: your early interest in tech, Like how did you you know,
Speaker 2: you said you didn't wearing a lot of your peers
Speaker 2: that were in attack. How did you get into it? All?
Speaker 3: Right? For sure?
Speaker 4: So my age, I'm thirty five. So when I was
Speaker 4: growing up, and I want to say, the Internet started
Speaker 4: to pop around maybe six or seventh grade for me,
Speaker 4: like commercial side of the Internet started to come out more,
Speaker 4: so you know, you get stuff like AOL and all
Speaker 4: these different things that were kind of popping up a lot.
Speaker 4: So around like middle school, early high school, I really
Speaker 4: started to get intrigued by the Internet. We had like
Speaker 4: dialog for a while, but I used to literally walk
Speaker 4: to the library in my neighborhood to go get on
Speaker 4: the internet when I was like I could vividly remember
Speaker 4: these times when I'm like eleven twelve years old, like
Speaker 4: walking to the library to use the Internet and just
Speaker 4: accessing a lot more information. So for me, I always
Speaker 4: had a fascination with it once I got exposed to it.
Speaker 4: Once I got into high school, there was some things
Speaker 4: they kind of peaked my interest even more so I
Speaker 4: had chosen pathway. Wanted to be in technology in middle school.
Speaker 4: I wanted to kind of focus in on technology, specifically
Speaker 4: from a business perspective. So I was always an entrepreneur,
Speaker 4: even before I was actually passionate about technology, Like I
Speaker 4: actually started out more like my first job wasn't even
Speaker 4: a job. I was actually an entrepreneur cutting grass in
Speaker 4: my neighborhood. I literally the moment my dad gave me
Speaker 4: an line more, I literally walked around my whole neighborhood
Speaker 4: trying to find people, trying to get myself out of
Speaker 4: ten people that I can cut their grass on the
Speaker 4: regular basis. So I was an entrepreneur first, but I
Speaker 4: knew that I needed a pathway that would kind of
Speaker 4: allow me to unlock more economic opportunity. Given that I
Speaker 4: was coming from a city like Saint Louis. It wasn't
Speaker 4: like there was just overflowing amounts of resources in the
Speaker 4: environment that I grew up in.
Speaker 3: I did have access and we did, we were blessed.
Speaker 3: But I just.
Speaker 4: Knew that there was a difference from some of the
Speaker 4: other things that I had saw. Given just being a student,
Speaker 4: like I was a very active student, like I could
Speaker 4: I was like always doing really really good on standardized tests,
Speaker 4: and I always had really really good grades. So I
Speaker 4: was a student a certain kind of way. But eventually,
Speaker 4: when I got to middle school and I chose that
Speaker 4: pathway of technology and business. In high school, the thing
Speaker 4: that really peaked my interest in the direction I wanted
Speaker 4: to go in was Facebook. Facebook came out when I
Speaker 4: was in high school. Excuse me, when I was in
Speaker 4: high school two thousand and four, two.
Speaker 3: Thousand and three, something like that.
Speaker 4: And when I was in high school, Facebook wasn't even
Speaker 4: for a high school students yet.
Speaker 3: It was literally only a college platform.
Speaker 4: But the high school that I went to was called
Speaker 4: Cartner Rid or College Prep, and given that college was
Speaker 4: in our high school name, it honestly let our high
Speaker 4: school be one of the first high schools that had
Speaker 4: access to Facebook, because high.
Speaker 3: Schools were not on this platform.
Speaker 4: So there was like me and all the guys and
Speaker 4: people that were in my high school, we were on Facebook.
Speaker 4: My parents had no idea about it, the faculty and
Speaker 4: staff had no idea about it. It was just like
Speaker 4: this own little island that we had, and it kind
Speaker 4: of peaked my interest in So when I'm about fourteen
Speaker 4: to fifteen years old and.
Speaker 3: I'm seeing Facebook.
Speaker 4: The first thing I started thinking was, first of all,
Speaker 4: who made this? Then when I figured out who made it,
Speaker 4: and I was like, hold on, a guy in college
Speaker 4: made this.
Speaker 3: What college did you go to?
Speaker 4: Then I started going down that rabbit hole, the kind
Speaker 4: of und standing and stuff. This was stuff that I
Speaker 4: was interested in that like very few people were interested in.
Speaker 4: Everybody was just more interested in, like having conversations and
Speaker 4: talking about music and sports on Facebook. And I'm just like,
Speaker 4: hold on, man, somebody in college made this. What kind
Speaker 4: of college was?
Speaker 3: Yet? What made them?
Speaker 4: So then I started going down the rabbit hole and
Speaker 4: studying people and technology and stuff like that. Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 4: definitely inspired me to want to go in the pathway
Speaker 4: of technology, and then I just started studying all the
Speaker 4: other great So I started studying people like Bill Gates,
Speaker 4: which we all Microsoft and all this stuff, and all
Speaker 4: these things were already ever present during the nineties and
Speaker 4: the early two thousands, but I just wasn't infatuated with
Speaker 4: this stuff because I didn't see it as something that
Speaker 4: was like a pathway that made sense for me growing
Speaker 4: up in the way that I was growing up. But
Speaker 4: when I figured out a college kid made Facebook. I
Speaker 4: kind of felt like, this is something I probably could do,
Speaker 4: but I knew that, of course, coming from the background
Speaker 4: that I was coming from, it might not.
Speaker 3: Be as director of a pathway for me there.
Speaker 4: So I just was like, all right, what kind of
Speaker 4: school can I go to that would get me into
Speaker 4: an environment where I could kind of learn these kind
Speaker 4: of things. So that's what opened up my eyes to
Speaker 4: First I wanted to go to MIT, which I did
Speaker 4: apply to MIT. I had the opportunity to go to MIT,
Speaker 4: but I didn't think Boston would be the best place
Speaker 4: for me coming of kids straight out of the Midwest
Speaker 4: side of just the kind of environments and the communities
Speaker 4: that I was coming from. So I started looking and
Speaker 4: I started like, all right, what are the other schools
Speaker 4: that are kind of on this level that ultimately could
Speaker 4: give me the opportunity to get around this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: So then you know, I start going down the list,
Speaker 4: like Old Stanford, I go see Carnegie mailing, you see
Speaker 4: different schools, and then I see Georgia Tech is like
Speaker 4: in the top five. Then I realized that Georgia Tech
Speaker 4: is right in Atlanta, which is ultimately a cultural hotbed
Speaker 4: for African American people, so I ultimately like, I think
Speaker 4: Georgia Tech could be a good fit for me, And
Speaker 4: by my junior year in high school, I was just like,
Speaker 4: I want to go to Georgia Tech, and I started
Speaker 4: figuring out the pathways to get there. And then ultimately
Speaker 4: that's I did a lot of work. I tried to
Speaker 4: make my SAT scores as good as I.
Speaker 3: Could get them.
Speaker 4: I always had really good grades and things of that nature,
Speaker 4: did community service, and just did as much as I
Speaker 4: could to present myself as somebody that could be able
Speaker 4: to survive in an environment like that and thrive as well.
Speaker 3: But ultimately I had the opportunity to get the set.
Speaker 4: At the Georgia Tech my senior year of high school,
Speaker 4: and that's when I kind of started my real journey
Speaker 4: into the tech space, because most of what I was
Speaker 4: doing in Saint Louis was more just kind of dibbling
Speaker 4: and dabbling in different things, learning different stuff. But I
Speaker 4: didn't have enough access as I would have ideally wanted
Speaker 4: at that time, so I was just like, how can
Speaker 4: I get to the place where I can get some access,
Speaker 4: And that's what Georgia Tech open the doors up for me.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Nice, Yeah, that's a I kind of had that same mindset.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm older than you, but there was it
Speaker 2: always intrigued me when I when I seen like people
Speaker 2: depicted geniuses so to speak, or smart people. My my
Speaker 2: thing was War Games. There was an old school movie
Speaker 2: about a computer hacker hacking the Norarat uh kind of
Speaker 2: took control and was so that was kind of my
Speaker 2: my influence. And then I had a couple of people
Speaker 2: in my life as well that were that were kind
Speaker 2: of heavy into electronics and things like that that would
Speaker 2: show me things. Uh. But but seeing that on screen
Speaker 2: and just wondering, like, wow, man, if that person and
Speaker 2: in War Games, I'm not sure if you're if you're
Speaker 2: hit to the to the movie, but uh, it starred
Speaker 2: Matthew Broderick, uh and he was a teenager in high
Speaker 2: school and so he was he had an affinity for
Speaker 2: computers and so like he had a modem, like an
Speaker 2: old school modem of the modem where you set the
Speaker 2: phone actually uh, and he was connecting into his his
Speaker 2: high school and changing grades and things like that. And
Speaker 2: then you know, so he was doing that kind of
Speaker 2: hacking and then he hacked into uh, the Defense Department
Speaker 2: Nor at and I thought that. I was like, man,
Speaker 2: that's that's pretty cool. So that's kind of like where
Speaker 2: the spark of technology started with me. And then like
Speaker 2: along along the way, like you start seeing like like
Speaker 2: you said, like Marcus Zuckerberg, and started seeing people like
Speaker 2: Bill Gates and uh, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and
Speaker 2: cats like that, uh, and just being more intrigued about
Speaker 2: like how did they get to where they are? Like
Speaker 2: how did they obtain, you know, the knowledge that they had.
Speaker 2: I started seeing they like, you know, like Steve Wisney
Speaker 2: act was going to all these computer club groups and
Speaker 2: things like that, so that that intrigued me as well.
Speaker 2: But I relate to you on that level where you know,
Speaker 2: you kind of see these folks that are in this space.
Speaker 2: The sad part about it is is that none of
Speaker 2: these folks were black people exactly, at least not my
Speaker 2: early exposure. Of course, now I know a ton of
Speaker 2: black people intact. But at the time, you know, growing
Speaker 2: up to anybody, of course, it was kind of that,
Speaker 2: you know, it was a good thing, and at the
Speaker 2: same time it was you know, I kind of wish
Speaker 2: there were it was more representation.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I definitely had to deal with that, like, and
Speaker 4: I just want to spend a little bit off there,
Speaker 4: because you just kind of triggered the thing for me,
Speaker 4: because realistically, being as young as I was and wanting
Speaker 4: to go in those directions and coming from the community
Speaker 4: that we're coming from, it seems like most people that
Speaker 4: are successful from our communities come from different backgrounds, whether
Speaker 4: it's in the entertainment fields or sports.
Speaker 3: Things of that nature.
Speaker 4: And for me, I realized that given that there weren't
Speaker 4: role models. And the crazy thing about it is I
Speaker 4: had no idea about it. I don't know if you
Speaker 4: know about David Stewart, that the CEO Worldwide Technology. Worldwide
Speaker 4: Technology is like, he's actually a billionaire. It's one of
Speaker 4: the biggest tech companies. It's a tech service providing company.
Speaker 4: But ultimately it's a guy named David Stewart. He actually
Speaker 4: runs one of the largest tech companies in the world,
Speaker 4: and it's a black guy, and it's actually based in
Speaker 4: Saint Louis. It's actually based in the Saint Louis area.
Speaker 4: And I literally had no idea about this company the
Speaker 4: whole time I was growing up in Saint Louis, and
Speaker 4: I had no access, no exposure, but I was extremely
Speaker 4: passionate about technology. So for me, I learned out. I
Speaker 4: figured out.
Speaker 3: I learned about him later on in my career, But.
Speaker 4: For me, it was always like I always looked at
Speaker 4: all the other guys that I studied at, like from
Speaker 4: Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, to Jeff Bezos to Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 4: I always had to like study them and also remember
Speaker 4: that everything with a caveat these guys are either in
Speaker 4: certain types of communities that ultimately kind of make it
Speaker 4: and their stories. They definitely had to deal with resistance
Speaker 4: to do the things that they did, but there were
Speaker 4: things that allowed them in their pathways to be able
Speaker 4: to kind of, you know, make it a little bit
Speaker 4: less less what do you call it, friction to get
Speaker 4: where they wanted to go. I knew that the process
Speaker 4: might have been a little bit more difficult for me,
Speaker 4: but coming from Saint Louis, I just always knew that
Speaker 4: I just have to be resilient if I want to
Speaker 4: do something, even though a lot of people didn't believe,
Speaker 4: Like I told people when I was twelve or thirteen
Speaker 4: years old living in Saint Louis, like I'm moving to California,
Speaker 4: one day I want to be in technology doing all
Speaker 4: of this stuff, and plenty of people told me things
Speaker 4: of the nature of and little Dennis, you sound crazy,
Speaker 4: Let Dennis, Oh, okay, all these different kind of things,
Speaker 4: And for me, it was always one of those things
Speaker 4: where I just knew that something was calling me in
Speaker 4: those directions and whatever it was going to take me
Speaker 4: to get there. I just stayed persistent, but definitely had
Speaker 4: to have a level of faith and belief to kind
Speaker 4: of be in the minority in this space early in
Speaker 4: the two thousands and stuff like that, to keep just
Speaker 4: staying dedicated to the process of really developing the skills
Speaker 4: and then ultimately building those relationships to get where I
Speaker 4: ultimately wanted to to any space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, it's super important, and that's why
Speaker 2: I'm glad, Like you know, this organization exists now because
Speaker 2: folks that are coming up now they have that, they
Speaker 2: have that support system, they have those images of positive
Speaker 2: images of people black people are tech that they can
Speaker 2: look towards and say, Okay, yeah, I can do it too.
Speaker 2: You know, we've got a whole community of people that
Speaker 2: are doing it. I can do it. So yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's definitely important. What's up everyone. We hope that you're
Speaker 2: enjoying this episode of the Blacks and Technology Big Tech
Speaker 2: Talk podcasts. Do you or someone you know have a
Speaker 2: dope story that they want to share with our big audience.
Speaker 2: Blocks and Technology is seeking guests to be on our podcast.
Speaker 2: We're looking to highlight the journeys and experiences of black
Speaker 2: women and men in the tech industry. So if you
Speaker 2: know of someone, send them our way, shoot us an
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Speaker 2: fill out our form. We're looking to hear from you.
Speaker 2: You talk about Georgia Tech and you went there for
Speaker 2: electrical engineering.
Speaker 4: Correct, that's playing computer So Georgia take the schools of
Speaker 4: electrical and computer engineering.
Speaker 3: That kind of like merged together. Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2: So I know because I took some electrical engineering courses
Speaker 2: when I was when I was in school, and I.
Speaker 4: Know I actually started on that pathway. So I literally
Speaker 4: started on the electrical pathway. I literally spent two and
Speaker 4: a half years doing government contracting in the energy space,
Speaker 4: so basically doing feasibility studies, power grid designs, forty to
Speaker 4: fifty year plans for military bases and small municipality.
Speaker 3: So I spent years. I spent literally.
Speaker 4: Two and a half almost three years working in the
Speaker 4: electrical space before I converge it over to computing and hardware.
Speaker 2: Wow, what was your experience like there in Georgia Tech?
Speaker 2: Tell us about like, you know, your your workload for
Speaker 2: class and just the experience of being at Georgia Tech.
Speaker 4: I mean, to be completely honest with you, Georgia Tech
Speaker 4: was the best way I can describe it. It was
Speaker 4: a place that pushed my mind to the brinks of
Speaker 4: what it was capable of. That was like the most
Speaker 4: positive way I can describe it. So the environment was
Speaker 4: definitely especially when you chose so you know, they have majors,
Speaker 4: so multiple different majors than all colleges. The pathway of
Speaker 4: electrical computer engineering at Georgia Tech is like the It's
Speaker 4: like one of the most elite pathways you can take
Speaker 4: inside of the school. So this environment has certain pathways, architecture,
Speaker 4: some of the other pathways that are really really highly
Speaker 4: intense that ultimately they figure out what you're made of
Speaker 4: really really quickly. So within the first semester of Georgia Tech,
Speaker 4: you're gonna figure out whether or not you're cut for
Speaker 4: this pathway or not really really quickly, And it pushed
Speaker 4: the bounds instantly when I got there, But ultimately I
Speaker 4: was still fresh out of Saint Louis and I'm in
Speaker 4: Atlanta for the first time, so I wanted it as
Speaker 4: adjusted to what that climate act the woods, but I
Speaker 4: knew my mind had the ability to adapt to it,
Speaker 4: but I also was still wanting to experience Atlanta. So understanding,
Speaker 4: Georgia Tech is an island in the middle of Atlanta.
Speaker 4: It's like Atlanta, it's this big, you know, it's a
Speaker 4: very i won't even say culture diverse. It's a very
Speaker 4: African American driven environment where black people are highly successful.
Speaker 4: They really run a lot of the things that go
Speaker 4: on in an environment, and it's one of those things
Speaker 4: where you see success in all different ways. Georgia Tech
Speaker 4: itself is like it's a huge thing in Atlanta, but
Speaker 4: it's ultimately like this island that kind of is separated
Speaker 4: from the actual culture of Atlanta in a certain kind
Speaker 4: of way. So for me being a part of the
Speaker 4: black community in Atlanta, I mean, in Georgia Tech, it
Speaker 4: was like, Okay, we're on this island. But for me
Speaker 4: I'm coming from Saint Louis in the community where I'm
Speaker 4: around all black people all the time. So I come
Speaker 4: to Georgia Tech and now I'm in it's bubble, and
Speaker 4: then it's bubble is a little bit different. So for me,
Speaker 4: I had to figure out how to find my cultural
Speaker 4: balance of Okay, I like being in this in this
Speaker 4: environment because it's doing stuff on my mind that I
Speaker 4: always wanted to do. It's helping present me the new
Speaker 4: perspective and all these different things. But there was things
Speaker 4: that I knew they were in the rest of Atlanta
Speaker 4: that I wanted to experience as well, which a lot
Speaker 4: of people at Georgia Tech don't step out of that
Speaker 4: bubble like's you could probably imagine there there are areas
Speaker 4: in Atlanta that some people that may come from certain backgrounds,
Speaker 4: they're not as comfortable in these types of environments. For me,
Speaker 4: it was actually more serving for me to go to
Speaker 4: Like I had one of my high school partners who graduated.
Speaker 4: We graduated at the same time. He went to Morehouse
Speaker 4: the same time I went to Georgia Tech. So I
Speaker 4: had the opportunity to go into the environment in the
Speaker 4: AUC in a very very comfortable fast and then what
Speaker 4: most people that Enjoorgia Tech at that time had the
Speaker 4: ability to do because without having people in the AUC,
Speaker 4: you really can't just go over there and kind of
Speaker 4: be in that environment. So for me, I had the
Speaker 4: opportunity you used to, but I didn't have a car,
Speaker 4: So I hop on the Marta, go to the West
Speaker 4: then get off at the West N station. I'm walking
Speaker 4: up through the Reil Atlanta and the Georgia Tech student
Speaker 4: and I'm just going through all this stuff and it's
Speaker 4: one of those things. For me, it was like very
Speaker 4: natural and organic because I'm coming from Saint Louis where
Speaker 4: I rolle up transportation in Saint Louis too, and it's
Speaker 4: like you can see different things in those environments.
Speaker 3: So for me, the comfort was.
Speaker 4: There with the city of Atlanta, but I had to
Speaker 4: figure out how to find my comfort in an environment
Speaker 4: at Georgia Tech.
Speaker 3: Eventually I found it.
Speaker 4: But the workload at Georgia Tech is intense, like it's
Speaker 4: not a regular it's not your tip, especially when you're
Speaker 4: in certain pathways like when you're in electrical and the
Speaker 4: computer engineering at Georgia Tech.
Speaker 3: It's extremely intense.
Speaker 4: I used to describe it as like having a full
Speaker 4: time job plus overtime. I'm like, maybe you gotta work
Speaker 4: at least fifty to sixty hours a week just to
Speaker 4: stay above water in this mouth. You want to be
Speaker 4: excelling in Georgia Tech, you might have to give it
Speaker 4: sixty five.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. It's just that real, especially
Speaker 3: in certain pathways.
Speaker 4: But the type of preparation that I got in that environment,
Speaker 4: I can never downplay what it is. Like it taught
Speaker 4: me how to be an innovative thinker and how to
Speaker 4: actually adapt to just almost anything that's thrown in front
Speaker 4: of me as an engineer, Like it hardened me to
Speaker 4: be the type of engineer than I am where I
Speaker 4: wanted to go in a certain pathway in engineering, and
Speaker 4: I knew that to be the type of engineer I
Speaker 4: wanted to be, I needed to be capable of adapting
Speaker 4: almost any problem throw in front of me. And that's
Speaker 4: what Georgia Tech really helped prepare me for. But at
Speaker 4: the highest level. So if prepared me from a perspective level,
Speaker 4: it prepared me from a network level. Like coming into
Speaker 4: this environment, it's multicultural. There's people from all over the
Speaker 4: world here, there's people that are now running all the
Speaker 4: different type of corporations and businesses all over the world,
Speaker 4: because it's preparing people to be just that, but it's
Speaker 4: about being able to network and building those environments, but
Speaker 4: also being able to perform because it's a performance based environment.
Speaker 3: So if you're not performing, you're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to survive here.
Speaker 4: So for me, I had to find a perfect balance
Speaker 4: because I still had to, like, I'm still living in Atlanta,
Speaker 4: and there's a cost that comes along with living here.
Speaker 4: So I had to given that I had some financial
Speaker 4: support going to Atlanta in Georgia tech, given I didn't
Speaker 4: have everything, So I had to figure out how to
Speaker 4: also work a job, work multiple different jobs, and also
Speaker 4: still do this sixty hours plus a week of course
Speaker 4: work and kind of maintain that.
Speaker 3: And that was always I had to find that balance.
Speaker 3: It was just one of those things where I had
Speaker 3: to create a balance, And yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was I don't even like to call it difficult.
Speaker 4: I just know it pushed me to the balance that
Speaker 4: allowed me to become hardened enough to be what I
Speaker 4: ultimately became as a professional. But I enjoyed my time there.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed the network that I had the opportunity to build.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed the experience and the knowledge that I gained,
Speaker 4: and I just enjoyed being able to grow in a
Speaker 4: city like Atlanta.
Speaker 2: What what type of support system did you have there? Uh,
Speaker 2: we're part of any groups, any any student union groups
Speaker 2: or anything like that. Like you know, when you described
Speaker 2: like the the the hours that you had to put
Speaker 2: in as far as like your workload and the intensity
Speaker 2: of the studies, there's obviously some things like you're not
Speaker 2: going to get you know, right off, Like you go
Speaker 2: into a class, you start seeing it looks like Greek.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh man, you know, what is this all about?
Speaker 2: But then you start searching for like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: I gotta I gotta get some people around me who
Speaker 2: knows this stuff or who's been through this before. Uh
Speaker 2: so maybe they can help me. Kind of what was
Speaker 2: that whole process like and what groups were you part of?
Speaker 3: I'll be transparent with you.
Speaker 4: When I first got to Georgia Tech, I did find
Speaker 4: myself in like what they call the BSO at Georgia Tech,
Speaker 4: the Black Student Organization. I spent some time in that
Speaker 4: environment for the early part. So like maybe the first
Speaker 4: semester a little bit of the second semester when I
Speaker 4: was at Georgia Tech, but I quickly learned that there
Speaker 4: was very few people in so like there's a lot
Speaker 4: of black people, what matter, let me say a lot.
Speaker 4: There was a decent amount of black people at Georgia Tech,
Speaker 4: but there was very small amount of black people that
Speaker 4: were on the same pathway that I was on. So
Speaker 4: there weren't like, like a decent amount of black people
Speaker 4: at Georgia Tech or the athletes or in those kind
Speaker 4: of environments. Some maybeing management or business and things of
Speaker 4: that nature, but when it comes to the engineering pathway,
Speaker 4: there are people inside of these pathways, but we're very
Speaker 4: few and far between. So inside of the electrical and
Speaker 4: computer engineering pathway, I had one of my closes to
Speaker 4: this day's one of my closest friends in name of
Speaker 4: Vanilla Woods.
Speaker 3: He's like, we've done amazing things and technology to gather.
Speaker 4: We had the opportunity to be, you know, some of
Speaker 4: our first companies together and things of that nature. But
Speaker 4: we literally were roommates from the whole from our sophomore
Speaker 4: year in Georgia Tech all the way throughout the whole
Speaker 4: time we were there. And I had somebody who was
Speaker 4: on a computer engineering pathway while I was on the
Speaker 4: electrical engineering pathway that ultimately was dealing with some of the.
Speaker 3: Same types of things.
Speaker 4: So we had a really really close brotherhood because I
Speaker 4: got to see the difficulties that he had to go
Speaker 4: through to survive and maintain in the environment. He got
Speaker 4: to see the same thing that I was going through
Speaker 4: to maintain, and we had a different pathway because ultimately,
Speaker 4: like well, my friend Brenew he was a full ride
Speaker 4: student in Georgia Tech, so he had the opportunity to
Speaker 4: get what they call the President's Scholarship, And I got
Speaker 4: to have a friend who had a different level of
Speaker 4: exposure to the environment of Georgia Tech, which ultimately allowed
Speaker 4: me to see some of the differences and how you
Speaker 4: have to operate to get to the highest level of
Speaker 4: the space. But ultimately I had some really good relationships.
Speaker 4: But I also had a student, a I mean a
Speaker 4: student what do you call this a work study job
Speaker 4: that was in the financial aid officer Georgia Tech, which
Speaker 4: kind of helped me a decent amount.
Speaker 3: And then from it.
Speaker 4: There was also other organists that I was in, so
Speaker 4: there was another organization called the music production I played.
Speaker 4: This was a group of guys that just liked making
Speaker 4: music and beats, and this was something that was more
Speaker 4: of a everybody in there was in different majors and
Speaker 4: things of that nature. But it actually gave me like
Speaker 4: a community that allowed us to kind of have something
Speaker 4: to breathe and relaxing while we were inside of Georgia Tech.
Speaker 4: And we all liked making music and talking about music
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. So that was kind of like
Speaker 4: a release space for me inside of the Georgia Tech environment.
Speaker 4: And then luckily I had my friend from Saint Louis
Speaker 4: who went to a moralhouse, which I had some amazing
Speaker 4: relationships with the guys that he kicked.
Speaker 3: It with over there.
Speaker 4: So I kind of had like a good I had
Speaker 4: a healthy balance of the things that I needed to
Speaker 4: keep myself kind of balanced out. But ultimately, by the
Speaker 4: time my third second third year in Georgia Tech, when
Speaker 4: it came to my studies and just doing what I
Speaker 4: had to do to maintain in my major, I.
Speaker 3: Was in the library by myself, reading.
Speaker 4: I was doing my research in the library, locked in
Speaker 4: just figuring out what it took to make it makes
Speaker 4: sense for me because you learned really quickly at Georgia
Speaker 4: Tech that you do do a lot of group projects.
Speaker 4: You do do a lot of kind of group and
Speaker 4: collective work. But there are certain things that once you're
Speaker 4: in it, like you either you're going to man up,
Speaker 4: put the big boy breaches and boots on and kind
Speaker 4: of buckle down and do it, or you're going to
Speaker 4: figure out that this is in the place for you.
Speaker 4: So I just put on the boots and just kind
Speaker 4: of locked in after my second third year and just
Speaker 4: did what I had to do to continue to be
Speaker 4: in an environment drive and strive.
Speaker 2: Nice, nice, And that's that's a you know, I actually
Speaker 2: these type of questions, you know, more for not only
Speaker 2: to understand, you know, kind of your background and everything
Speaker 2: like that, but also for an audience, especially if there's
Speaker 2: younger people that are in college right now that might
Speaker 2: view these podcasts and are just like, you know, what
Speaker 2: if this person do in order to you know, get by.
Speaker 2: You know, some of them may feel isolated, uh, and
Speaker 2: they might not know you know, who to turn to,
Speaker 2: where to go, and things like that. So giving a
Speaker 2: little insight into how how you kind of navigate it,
Speaker 2: we'll get that information on you know and pass out
Speaker 2: on to people who are who are watching and listening
Speaker 2: to this podcast. So for sure, you've been around quite
Speaker 2: a few industries professionally, energy, government, and some others. Tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about kind of what led to
Speaker 2: led to you choosing those paths. Let's start with the
Speaker 2: energy and let's go into into government for.
Speaker 3: Sure, So we can start with the energy.
Speaker 4: So, like I said, that was a pathway that I
Speaker 4: took while I was still in college. So Georgia SEAK
Speaker 4: had a program was called the Cooperative Education Program. The
Speaker 4: Cooperative Education Program in Georgia SEAK. It gives you the
Speaker 4: opportunity to work a full time semester then go back
Speaker 4: to class for a full time smester. You have to
Speaker 4: get accepted into this program, and then you have to
Speaker 4: also get accepted into different basically different corporations that sponsor
Speaker 4: the program. They come in and it's not like just
Speaker 4: the traditional internship. It's more like you're actually a full
Speaker 4: time employee for this company and you start up like
Speaker 4: in a certain level. I came in as a project
Speaker 4: engineer and I literally like built up my rapport with
Speaker 4: the company.
Speaker 3: I worked with a.
Speaker 4: Company called Highline Engineering. So this is when I got
Speaker 4: the exposure to government contract Literally I got to work
Speaker 4: with some really amazing professional engineers. One of the guys
Speaker 4: who led the company that I worked with the company's
Speaker 4: called GDS, but I worked for the Highline subsidiary GDS,
Speaker 4: so Highline was ran by a guy named Kevin mar
Speaker 4: He literally was kind of like a mentor to me.
Speaker 4: Once I got into the cooperative vegucation program and I
Speaker 4: had the opportunity for my second third year at Georgia Tech,
Speaker 4: and going into my fourth year of Georgia Tech, I
Speaker 4: had the opportunity to work really four semesters full time
Speaker 4: at a full fledged engineering firm, and I started out
Speaker 4: helping write government contract proposals, eventually scaled up to start
Speaker 4: helping with different types of feasibility work and the research
Speaker 4: for those proposals, and then eventually I got to go
Speaker 4: into the field later on into my process and be
Speaker 4: a part of projects where we would go to military
Speaker 4: bases and they would take us into areas where we
Speaker 4: would get to survey they're doing different kind of projects
Speaker 4: to convert from overhead energy to underground and all this
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. I mean, I learned a lot in
Speaker 4: that time period. I learned about government contract proposal writing.
Speaker 4: I learned about success and men contracts. Also learned about
Speaker 4: the type of engineering that goes into the energy related projects,
Speaker 4: and I also learned a lot about that industry too.
Speaker 4: So the industry that I was in in power, which
Speaker 4: I saw some amazing opportunities in there, and I got
Speaker 4: to learn some amazing things. But for what I wanted
Speaker 4: to be as a professional, or at least what I
Speaker 4: saw myself becoming, I didn't think that that industry would
Speaker 4: lean heavily into the type of disruption I wanted to
Speaker 4: be able to do inside of technology. So when I
Speaker 4: was in the energy space, I kind of felt like
Speaker 4: I needed to make a pivot out of energy into
Speaker 4: something else that would allow me to spread my wings.
Speaker 4: Remember I told you I was intrigued by Mark Zuckerbray.
Speaker 4: When I'm thirteen or fourteen years old in the software space,
Speaker 4: I get to Georgia Tech and I realized that and
Speaker 4: the real thing that I learned about in electrical engineering,
Speaker 4: you know, when you do well, when you do what
Speaker 4: they call feasibility work for power design, they come in
Speaker 4: and they say this is the stuff that they do
Speaker 4: before they build cities. This is the stuff that they
Speaker 4: do when they're redesigning cities and municipalities and military bases,
Speaker 4: all this kind of stuff. They come in and say, Okay,
Speaker 4: how many people are going to potentially be in this area,
Speaker 4: or how many are already hear? How many generators do
Speaker 4: we need to feasibly kind of serve energy to all
Speaker 4: these people? Now many residential places are going to potentially
Speaker 4: be here, how many commercial places? All these different things,
Speaker 4: and you kind of survey things, and then they create
Speaker 4: what they call these They basically create the grids that
Speaker 4: ultimately allow the power to flow through these places. And
Speaker 4: when you do that stuff, you realize that hold on
Speaker 4: these same grids are the same grids that they run
Speaker 4: for roads, they run them for waterlines. But they also,
Speaker 4: outside of distributing energy, they're distributing the internet connectivity that
Speaker 4: allows us to have access to computers, phones and telephone
Speaker 4: lines and all that kind of other stuff. And I
Speaker 4: realized that this was the foundation of the stuff that
Speaker 4: allows computing to actually work. So this is how, this
Speaker 4: is how those towers that are put up that get
Speaker 4: you Internet connection and all this stuff. All of this
Speaker 4: stuff flows on very similar pipelines. But the people that
Speaker 4: do the energy design projects are the people that kind
Speaker 4: of lay the foundation for all of this stuff. And
Speaker 4: that's the thing that I really learned. I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: so this comes in and it lays the foundates for
Speaker 4: everything else. And then I realized that everything else kind
Speaker 4: of stacks on top of the accessibility of this stuff.
Speaker 3: So it opened my eyes up.
Speaker 4: But I knew that I kind of wanted to be
Speaker 4: in a different space, So I just learned a lot
Speaker 4: in that industry. But that was while I was still
Speaker 4: in college. That was even before I really took the
Speaker 4: like went really crazy as a professional and started doing
Speaker 4: the things that kind of have created who I am
Speaker 4: to this day in the computing and the software space.
Speaker 4: And once I kind of converted over, it was it
Speaker 4: was just kind of like a new world. I kind
Speaker 4: of saw opportunity from a totally different leans when I
Speaker 4: got into computing and all worn software.
Speaker 5: That is always focused on forming new partnerships and opportunities
Speaker 5: to assist the community and our members with their continued
Speaker 5: professional growth and development. If you'd like to partner with us,
Speaker 5: send an email in queries at blacks and Technology dot net.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a kind of a similar journey myself.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: I took computer network engineering in college. I went to
Speaker 2: a local community college. But engineering, the word engineering is
Speaker 2: the key, right. It's not the same as computer science. Uh,
Speaker 2: it's not the same as information systems. It's engineering, and
Speaker 2: engineering usually encompasses more low level. And I don't mean
Speaker 2: low level from the standpoint that it from.
Speaker 3: Talking about foundational level.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about foundational level. You know, computer chips and uh,
Speaker 2: integrated circuits, all that stuff, right, Like that's the level.
Speaker 2: When I say low level, I'm talking about integrated circuits
Speaker 2: and circuit boards and all that stuff. That's what you
Speaker 2: end up learning, you know, so you know, you know,
Speaker 2: with me, it was like a C circuits, DC circuits, electronics,
Speaker 2: all that stuff, how to how to how to wire
Speaker 2: up circuits, you know, using a breadboard and how that
Speaker 2: all that, you know, all the low level programming languages
Speaker 2: and everything like that. So I realized, although it was
Speaker 2: out I like learning that stuff, I realized like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to do this for
Speaker 2: the rest of my life. I don't know if I
Speaker 2: want to be replacing you know, integrated circuits or or
Speaker 2: testing them to see if they if they're working correctly
Speaker 2: and things like that, like I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: that's so that would you know, that's kind of what
Speaker 2: led me more into what I do now, which is
Speaker 2: more along the lines of DevOps engineering, computer administration, network administration,
Speaker 2: and engineering that type that type of thing. Uh So,
Speaker 2: it's it's interesting that you know that that's kind of
Speaker 2: like the same journey, like you found out quickly like
Speaker 2: oh this is this is different and this is at
Speaker 2: a more base foundational level and what I want to
Speaker 2: be at, and so making that pivot, Yeah, I definitely
Speaker 2: understand that.
Speaker 4: And then I would even I was just a little
Speaker 4: bit there because because the first thing when you talk
Speaker 4: when I say engineering, whenever I talk about engineers, I
Speaker 4: like to just tell people that engineers are system designers.
Speaker 4: So engineers do the designs for the systems that actually
Speaker 4: are the things that make most of the stuff that
Speaker 4: we actually interact with and work with every day, no
Speaker 4: matter what laying there in they design systems. And for me,
Speaker 4: in the power industry, for me, it wasn't even about
Speaker 4: it being because there was a lot of opportunity to
Speaker 4: do stuff. You know, there's so much innovation that happens
Speaker 4: in power but I also was, like, like I said before,
Speaker 4: I was an entrepreneur before I was an engineer. So
Speaker 4: when I came into this space, I wasn't just looking
Speaker 4: to be an engineer. I was actually looking to be
Speaker 4: more of an industry leader. And I realized that to
Speaker 4: be an industry leader in power is very unlikely for
Speaker 4: you to have the ability to disrupt enough to become
Speaker 4: a leader in the industry that's been here for so long.
Speaker 4: So I saw things like I even saw stuff about
Speaker 4: like you could see the energy like you could see
Speaker 4: solar energy coming when I was in the industry, like
Speaker 4: I saw the ways of solar energy coming, and I
Speaker 4: saw how it was being forced to rely on everything
Speaker 4: else that was there, and I realized that like for me,
Speaker 4: it was more of a business based decision why I
Speaker 4: left the energy space rather than just say because I
Speaker 4: saw it as this industry read that was so I
Speaker 4: don't want to use the wrong word to describe it,
Speaker 4: but it was an industry that like prevented people that
Speaker 4: wanted to disrupt the opportunity to disrupt enough to gain
Speaker 4: enough opportunity from it. So I was just like, yeah, no,
Speaker 4: I think I should go somewhere else. Where if I
Speaker 4: want to be disruptive and innovative, I could be able
Speaker 4: to really truly benefit from doing all of those things
Speaker 4: and the work that comes along with it. So that's
Speaker 4: kind of what took me into the computing space more
Speaker 4: in the software space for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes sense. I would say the energy I feeled
Speaker 2: is is a lot proper, you know, at the time
Speaker 2: was probably a lot I guess, more mature, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: less less likely to be disrupted with you know, we
Speaker 2: still have a lot of our you know here in America,
Speaker 2: a lot of our infrastructure is still based on a
Speaker 2: lot of the older technologies. Uh, it's harder to disrupt
Speaker 2: that when you when you know you have that that
Speaker 2: kind of traditional long standing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I used to say, it's kind it's called gray hair.
Speaker 4: They have like great leaders inside of the energy industry
Speaker 4: that they're not willing to bend in fold. They don't
Speaker 4: really like a lot of the stuff that's happening in
Speaker 4: the solar space right now. There's things and the reason
Speaker 4: why this stuff is all economicy driven though, So it's
Speaker 4: just kind of like telling somebody that's been generating so
Speaker 4: much for so long that this can be more efficient.
Speaker 4: But efficient at will cost it costing me losing billions
Speaker 4: of dollars a year. I don't know if I want
Speaker 4: that efficiency. That's that's kind of it's an interesting conversation
Speaker 4: that topic. You know what I'm saying, it's a tricky
Speaker 4: one for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've I've watched shows documentaries on Nikola, Tesla and
Speaker 2: and and he was kind of in that kind of
Speaker 2: in that situation where he was talking about, yeah, I
Speaker 2: have a way to generate free electricity, and Western House
Speaker 2: was just like nah nah free yeah.
Speaker 6: No no no no no no no no no no no,
Speaker 6: how how how how can we You're talking about being
Speaker 6: able to wire wirelessly transmit energy to you know, because
Speaker 6: he had all his starts of being able to utilize
Speaker 6: the earth to conduct it and send electricity and different
Speaker 6: advices and things like.
Speaker 3: That, He's going down the rabbit hole right.
Speaker 2: One of his backers were just like, yeah, so how
Speaker 2: do we how do we how do we? How do
Speaker 2: we generate revenue from that? How do we meter that?
Speaker 2: And he was just like meter it, No, this is
Speaker 2: going to be free. Yeah, so let me let me
Speaker 2: talk to you for a second.
Speaker 4: Nicolas exactly, rabbit hole right there, and he didn't just
Speaker 4: have theary A lot of this stuff was actually like
Speaker 4: he had the real like there. But I mean there's
Speaker 4: people that actually do a lot of this stuff that
Speaker 4: he's talking that he talked about this is this is
Speaker 4: a deep rabbit hole though, So I don't want to
Speaker 4: get too deep into that one, like it'll take us
Speaker 4: off course, you.
Speaker 3: Know, to take us off course in the conversation. So
Speaker 3: that's a deep one for sure.
Speaker 2: So you you you have some experience or you have
Speaker 2: experience with geo fencing technology and tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about you know, explain to audience what geo fencing
Speaker 2: is and then tell us how you got into it
Speaker 2: and how that led to you founding your first company.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 4: So yeah, So late in my career Georgia Tech, my
Speaker 4: partner of vanill House talking about previously, he was knee
Speaker 4: deep into a lot of high level just research projects
Speaker 4: in computing and software. So I kind of started working
Speaker 4: with him and some of the guys that he were
Speaker 4: working within some of the research labs at Georgia Tech,
Speaker 4: and we're doing some really really dope stuff at that
Speaker 4: time at Georgia Tech, you know, we had access to
Speaker 4: a lot of just really really interesting research, and there
Speaker 4: was funding for different types of projects and things of
Speaker 4: that nature, so we had the opportunity to see some
Speaker 4: really cutting edge stuff before it was actually a market
Speaker 4: ready thing. Geo fencing was one of those things that
Speaker 4: we had the opportunity to kind of explore, along with
Speaker 4: some other security based stuff, but geo fencing was literally
Speaker 4: the thing that was the innovative backbone behind the first
Speaker 4: funded technology company I was a part of. So literally
Speaker 4: in our last seminster, Georgia Tech, we had the opportunity
Speaker 4: to partner with well really t I was the person
Speaker 4: that invested in our company, so we basically had this
Speaker 4: class form was called Yopima, and he ultimately invested a
Speaker 4: decent amount of money and supporting my partner from there,
Speaker 4: who's at the leader of the company at that time.
Speaker 4: But I was literally just more focused on making my
Speaker 4: transitioning to the software space. In the computing space, so
Speaker 4: we had done some stuff like hardware related, we built
Speaker 4: some supercomputers and all this kind of other stuff, but
Speaker 4: once we realized we wanted to create a halfway. We
Speaker 4: realized that software was probably going to be the way,
Speaker 4: so we wanted to figure out Okay, what can we
Speaker 4: do that's innovative in software that allows us to kind
Speaker 4: of differentiate the platform that we wanted to create. We
Speaker 4: were seeing social media. Remember we're still inspired by the
Speaker 4: social media eraror. So this is twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
Speaker 4: this is when Facebook is really starting to gain momentum.
Speaker 4: Companies like Facebook and Twitter, they're starting to balloon and
Speaker 4: blossom in different ways, and we're completely inspired by the
Speaker 4: social media transition and disruption into space. So we created
Speaker 4: a social platform called Yopima that basically was focused on
Speaker 4: letting people know we lived in Atlanta too, which is
Speaker 4: the mecca like clubs and parties and entertainment and all
Speaker 4: this stuff. So this, the platform that we built, was
Speaker 4: literally focused on letting people know how many girls and
Speaker 4: guys were at a club or a show or an
Speaker 4: event before you go there, so you could look at
Speaker 4: your PEMA and kind of check what's the temperature at
Speaker 4: the place before I go. So it was just kind
Speaker 4: of this thing that was kind of a cool you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying. The cool implementation of some the
Speaker 4: geo fencing technology that we used was basically, you have
Speaker 4: our app on your phone when you get here. I
Speaker 4: don't know if you remember some of those early aps
Speaker 4: that you used to like do check in when you
Speaker 4: go to places and stuff like that. Our app was
Speaker 4: like one of those first that was like a silent
Speaker 4: check in, So you get to a club, or you
Speaker 4: get to a music show or a bar or something
Speaker 4: of that nature. If you have our app on your phone,
Speaker 4: it basically with the technology that we created, it would
Speaker 4: basically just let people know there's another guy here, there's
Speaker 4: another girl here.
Speaker 3: There was other components to a.
Speaker 4: Social components that we built into the application, but that's
Speaker 4: what allowed the entertainment industry want us to support us
Speaker 4: in that application. We ultimately did some really high impact stuff,
Speaker 4: but that technology was there was a lot of things
Speaker 4: that we had to learn from a business respective.
Speaker 3: We were really good engineers.
Speaker 4: We were really good at finding innovative things and creating
Speaker 4: an native stuff and working with high level technology to
Speaker 4: do stop stuff, but there was things in business that
Speaker 4: given it we were starting in Atlanta, there was things
Speaker 4: that we didn't understand completely about the scalability of an
Speaker 4: infrastructure of innovative technology like geo fencing when the infrastructure
Speaker 4: wasn't designed for us yet, like this.
Speaker 3: Was still very early. There weren't geo fence bubbles.
Speaker 4: All over the place like they are now, So we
Speaker 4: were doing this stuff very early, and we were literally
Speaker 4: had we went on tour with Tip two Chains and Wane,
Speaker 4: and we were like literally going to different cities creating
Speaker 4: geo fences at clubs and bars and doing them in
Speaker 4: shows and stuff like that, and physically making geofences that
Speaker 4: would ultimately be at certain locations that would activate.
Speaker 3: For our apps.
Speaker 4: And we did that for quite some time, and we
Speaker 4: had the opportunity to build, but ultimately the cost of
Speaker 4: the business started to be like the cloud infrastructure costs
Speaker 4: for that business, given that we were maintaining and managing
Speaker 4: these geo fences ourselves on our own data infrastructure, it
Speaker 4: started costing a hefty amount. And that was ultimately the
Speaker 4: thing that kind of one of a few different things,
Speaker 4: but ultimately that thing was kind of the biggest thing
Speaker 4: that ballooned the business into a way where it was
Speaker 4: almost not manageable for us to operate with that innovative technology,
Speaker 4: given that the rest of the landscape of technology wasn't
Speaker 4: ready for what we was doing at the time, so
Speaker 4: we had to pivot.
Speaker 3: Out of that, but ultimately we still had the patent.
Speaker 4: We got patents for creating for comparative methods around geo finhing,
Speaker 4: So basically anything that kind of tells you how many.
Speaker 3: People are at a specific location.
Speaker 4: This is the same data they use in different apps
Speaker 4: and advertisings and things of that nature. Right now, that
Speaker 4: ultimately that pattern kind of is just extremely relevant in
Speaker 4: today's time currently based off of the way that people
Speaker 4: use geo fencers to do things. But yeah, that was
Speaker 4: kind of my introduction and technology as a software developer
Speaker 4: and things of that nature, and we did some amazing stuff,
Speaker 4: but ultimately we kind of pivoted out of that and
Speaker 4: then started just doing other things after. But it was
Speaker 4: definitely a great introduction to the industry and inted us
Speaker 4: to introduced us to entertainment. It introduced us to high
Speaker 4: level tech business and a number of different things.
Speaker 3: So that was a great start. Nice.
Speaker 2: Nice Did you all just end up shutting the company down?
Speaker 2: Did you exit or.
Speaker 4: Like how we definitely could shut the company down, So
Speaker 4: the company basically phased, But ultimately, since we had the patent,
Speaker 4: the company still basically has some intellectual property that has
Speaker 4: extreme value. So while the software platform costs a lot
Speaker 4: of money. Maintaining that entity, with that infant, with that
Speaker 4: with that IP ultimately is something that kind of has
Speaker 4: permeating in a number of different ventures that we've created
Speaker 4: since then. But ultimately, given that we were some of
Speaker 4: the first people to kind of do some innovative working
Speaker 4: in jail fensis space, it always kind of creates different
Speaker 4: opportunities for us to kind of bring that padding up
Speaker 4: in different type of things over time. So it's always
Speaker 4: been something that's been relevant, but that business we did
Speaker 4: phase it out and started focusing on gotcha.
Speaker 2: And I think that's even just a good nugget right there,
Speaker 2: just when people are thinking about creating companies and understanding
Speaker 2: their intellectual property, whether it's a patent, whether it's a trademark,
Speaker 2: whether it's a copyright or like whatever, it's important, right
Speaker 2: you do something, you have a logo, you have a brand,
Speaker 2: or what you know, do the legal stuff. You know, people,
Speaker 2: I remember a friend of mine told me when I've
Speaker 2: started blacks and Technology, you know, you know, for me,
Speaker 2: blacks and Technology has always been like, you know, the
Speaker 2: safe space for uh technologists engineers could come that we
Speaker 2: can you know, create this community. So I was just hardcore,
Speaker 2: you know, engineer, engineer technology, technology, and this person told
Speaker 2: me that you need to get you a marketing person
Speaker 2: and you need to get your lawyer. It's one of
Speaker 2: the first two things that you should get. And I
Speaker 2: didn't early on, I didn't listen, and I've gotten burned
Speaker 2: by that. But it's you know, since then, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's uh, you know, I've gotten those things and everything
Speaker 2: like that. But for all the people who are talking
Speaker 2: about starting a business or pursuing a business venture or
Speaker 2: anything like that, legal is important because they are going
Speaker 2: to protect that intellectual property that you have. You know,
Speaker 2: and I know the patent process is not an easy
Speaker 2: process at all.
Speaker 3: And we were blessed, We were really blessed at Georgia Tech.
Speaker 3: We got some.
Speaker 4: So we had a law firm called Folly and Lardner
Speaker 4: that was a former Georgia Tech alumni who had worked
Speaker 4: on a lot of different patent work and for different companies,
Speaker 4: you name them.
Speaker 3: They worked on stuff with them.
Speaker 4: So we ultimately had the opportunity to work with Foley
Speaker 4: and Lardener to pursue our patents. They were still working
Speaker 4: and they ultimately helped us get through the full process,
Speaker 4: and that was some of the best support that we
Speaker 4: could have had because they helped us get that IP
Speaker 4: that helped us differentiate the company.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that marketing.
Speaker 4: Luckily we had the entertainment industry that helped us a
Speaker 4: lot too when we had a celebrity coming.
Speaker 3: And invested in our company.
Speaker 4: So there was a lot of things that kind of
Speaker 4: benefited us early in our career as engineers that were
Speaker 4: very focused on being businessmen. We just knew that we
Speaker 4: had engineering skills, we needed to do the other things
Speaker 4: that could help politize as businessmen and people that kind
Speaker 4: of understood the balance. Like I always was focused on
Speaker 4: the balance, Like it was never about me just being
Speaker 4: an engineer and not understanding what my output was actually
Speaker 4: creating what it could create for myself and just really
Speaker 4: allow my gifts to kind of open the different doors
Speaker 4: for me and always being aware of that. So yeah,
Speaker 4: legally and marketing and branding, these are things that are
Speaker 4: critical no matter even if you're just an engineer yourself,
Speaker 4: Like you still want to properly brand yourself because there's
Speaker 4: a time they could come a time if you're working
Speaker 4: for another corporation or something of that nature, and if
Speaker 4: you're not properly branding yourself as who you are, there
Speaker 4: could be a chance where your experience and knowledge that
Speaker 4: they actually taught me that in the engineering front, and
Speaker 4: I work with too, they always told me make sure
Speaker 4: that you anything that you do, you document it properly
Speaker 4: and make sure that it's a part of the narrative
Speaker 4: of who you are as a professional. Don't downplay the
Speaker 4: value of your resume, don't downplay the value of your
Speaker 4: networking experience, because those things actually create more of a
Speaker 4: way for you than even just having a certain amount
Speaker 4: of knowledge at certain times, because that validation is the
Speaker 4: thing that makes your experience. Your experience brings stuff that
Speaker 4: just knowing something that happening a degree can't validate.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, that's one hundred percent, man, I definitely
Speaker 2: share that. You know, so you start your first company,
Speaker 2: you know, I know there was a lot of lessons
Speaker 2: learned and a lot of bruises, pumps and bruises, and
Speaker 2: then tell us a couple of like lessons that you learned,
Speaker 2: a couple of the successes and failures that you.
Speaker 4: Have for sure, man, so Yo Pima, like I said,
Speaker 4: we did have to pivot out of it. Because we
Speaker 4: scared like it just skilled and when the infrastructure was
Speaker 4: prepared for That was probably one of the first really
Speaker 4: hard lessons that we learned in technology, or that I
Speaker 4: learned primarily. So then eventually like I wanted to immerse
Speaker 4: myself in more experiences that could because understanding that I
Speaker 4: didn't even go back to college to get the NBA
Speaker 4: or get any of the other stuff. I focused in
Speaker 4: college on developing innovative engineering skill sets, and I knew
Speaker 4: that for me, as somebody who was always an entrepreneur,
Speaker 4: I knew that the best way for me to get
Speaker 4: business knowledge was to just keep dumping myself into business
Speaker 4: experiences and using my knowledge to kind of get access
Speaker 4: to more the stuff that I felt like would allow
Speaker 4: me to be a more polished business person.
Speaker 3: So I would say, just over the.
Speaker 4: Whole ration of me working in Atlanta, probably later on
Speaker 4: in our career, I started in my career, I started
Speaker 4: that I was a part of starting a mobile phone company.
Speaker 3: It was called Mulai.
Speaker 4: We started a phone company and we built out some
Speaker 4: software that allowed phones to kind of be monetized. So
Speaker 4: basically there was an ad system that we built in
Speaker 4: the mobile devices. We started this in twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 4: there was a lot of stuff that we learned when
Speaker 4: we started that company that ultimately let me know that
Speaker 4: some industries are much more difficult to mainonstrate than others.
Speaker 4: And the war stories that come along with trying to
Speaker 4: get into the telecom industry from a technology perspective or countless.
Speaker 4: Literally the company that we started was just recently like
Speaker 4: we like, it's just crazy things that come along with it,
Speaker 4: but we get other partners that come in and they're
Speaker 4: intended on one way and we're focused on innovating, and
Speaker 4: things just kind of don't always align properly. And these
Speaker 4: were things that me and my partners that were building
Speaker 4: those companies had to deal with consistently. And we started
Speaker 4: that in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: And those war stories and wars still come to this day.
Speaker 4: Like we're literally that company Moulah that we started as
Speaker 4: a mobile company that my partner ver now he took
Speaker 4: it into the telecom industry completely and started selling phone.
Speaker 3: Service and all these different things and devices.
Speaker 4: There's just a lot of difficult things that come with
Speaker 4: navigating industries like telecom that you just have to be
Speaker 4: resilient to stay in those industries because the resilience that
Speaker 4: comes along, like the amount of resistance that you get,
Speaker 4: the amount of people that want to either take.
Speaker 3: What you have or reshape what you've created to make
Speaker 3: it their own thing.
Speaker 4: And it's just difficult to navigate different industries when you're
Speaker 4: coming from something like we're software experts. So me and
Speaker 4: miaf you were in the software in the computing space,
Speaker 4: we're in the We do dabble into the hardware space
Speaker 4: as well, Like we spent a lot of time in
Speaker 4: all these spaces. But knowing that the telecom industry is
Speaker 4: the thing that's like been here for even longer than
Speaker 4: the devices. Those mobile devices are here, but the industry
Speaker 4: has been here for so long that when these mobile
Speaker 4: devices come in and start disrupting, it's a certain way
Speaker 4: that they expect. Company like Apple and Samsung the interfacce
Speaker 4: with telecom reunuistry and they play a certain kind of way.
Speaker 4: And we happen to be in the mix of being
Speaker 4: one of those players that were like interfacing with telecom
Speaker 4: from a mobile technology and hardware projective And just like
Speaker 4: I don't like going down that rabbit hole and stuff
Speaker 4: is just crazy. But ultimately I would say that the
Speaker 4: experience that we gained. The experience I gained being in
Speaker 4: those spaces was just I can't put a dollar amount
Speaker 4: on it. I just know that I learned how to
Speaker 4: operate in manufacturing at the highest levels. I learned how
Speaker 4: to operate at software at the highest levels because I
Speaker 4: went from building one or two apps here and there
Speaker 4: and like doing different application projects to running a team
Speaker 4: or we're building seven building advantaging seven and eight apps
Speaker 4: at the same time that are a software suite that go.
Speaker 3: In the firmware system.
Speaker 4: That also if you can see behind me, these are
Speaker 4: some of the devices that I created, Like I created
Speaker 4: multiple tablets in twenty twenty three, so I built three tablets,
Speaker 4: two mobile phones, and led a team that we did
Speaker 4: all of that stuff. So that was something that it
Speaker 4: was a journey to get to the place, but it
Speaker 4: ultimately taught me so much about business in a way
Speaker 4: that I'm like, there's not a dollar sign that you
Speaker 4: can put on it.
Speaker 3: So I would say the experience that comes along.
Speaker 4: With those war stories are the things that I choose
Speaker 4: to dwell on more now than anything, because now I'm
Speaker 4: in a totally different place than an executive, and there's
Speaker 4: an experience like developer, innovator, all of those kind of things.
Speaker 4: So now I just kind of focus on using the
Speaker 4: experience to really be more of a bestling the vehicle
Speaker 4: and also to do some of the things that I'm
Speaker 4: focused on doing into the future. Which yeah, man, it
Speaker 4: definitely comes with bumps and bruises, but I'm very rough
Speaker 4: and rugged from all of those kinds of experiences.
Speaker 3: To be completely honest.
Speaker 5: Do you have a product or service that you would
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Speaker 5: in helping us with stomping the divide. Start by sponsoring
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a friend that he is out of Austin, Texas.
Speaker 2: He he deals with like open source technologies. Uh, and
Speaker 2: he's he's told me some of the some of the
Speaker 2: stories that some of these telecom folks that he's involved with, right, Like,
Speaker 2: and I can't I can't recall exactly what he what
Speaker 2: he was doing, but it involved some of these telecom
Speaker 2: companies and like he always tells me how how how
Speaker 2: much like they are pissed at him, right like because
Speaker 2: he'll call them out on certain things on you know,
Speaker 2: they say they operate one way, and then you you
Speaker 2: kind of get into the nitty gritty of it and
Speaker 2: they don't actually operate like that, or they try to
Speaker 2: hold things back and things like that. So he's told
Speaker 2: me some stories where I'm just like, man, that's that's
Speaker 2: they cut through over there.
Speaker 3: Man, Yeah, it's shark and fisted waters for sure. Man,
Speaker 3: for sure, tell.
Speaker 2: Us about let's talk talk about on another world experience. Uh,
Speaker 2: that's your your XR company. Sure for one, you know,
Speaker 2: tell tell the people, tell the folks like what XR is,
Speaker 2: and then let's talk a little bit about like what
Speaker 2: what why you why you chose to go into the
Speaker 2: XR space.
Speaker 3: Sure. So first XR it stands for extended reality.
Speaker 4: It's the umbrother that includes what most people know about
Speaker 4: this augmented reality kind of those filters and all the
Speaker 4: layouts and stuff that you do in social media. Then
Speaker 4: the next lane is virtual reality, which is like, you know,
Speaker 4: like I got a few VR head sets back here.
Speaker 4: Those some of the prototypes that I have for the company,
Speaker 4: But ultimately there are VR head sets that are like Oculus, Medicut, Apple,
Speaker 4: Vision Pro, and then there's a version that's called mixed reality,
Speaker 4: which is that's kind of the next frontier.
Speaker 3: Apple Vision Pro is more of a mixed reality advice.
Speaker 4: And then the medicalest three they're mixed reality vices, but
Speaker 4: they actually lean heavily in the virtual reality. So all
Speaker 4: three of those are three different umbrothers that fall under
Speaker 4: the extended reality umbrella. And ultimately this this is basically
Speaker 4: the next frontier media. So if we want to be
Speaker 4: completely transparent about immersive media, it's the I like to
Speaker 4: like give a quick like historical timeline of what's happened
Speaker 4: in media. So you know, we started there was a
Speaker 4: it was just oral tradition in the beginning, like people
Speaker 4: just new communications and stuff around story.
Speaker 3: It was oral.
Speaker 4: Eventually they got to this form where they kind of
Speaker 4: got physical written stuff. You start carving stuff out in tabs.
Speaker 4: You got written languages and letters and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: Now you got stuff that you can kind of record stuff.
Speaker 4: Then we transition from written stuff to audio formats. They
Speaker 4: can kind of like take your audio and vocal stuff
Speaker 4: and kind of put it on radio transmissions and eight
Speaker 4: tracks and records and all of these different things, and
Speaker 4: thos all eventually, of all in the CDs and all
Speaker 4: this other stuff, we eventually got the visual stuff where
Speaker 4: you got TVs and all this other stuff. And now
Speaker 4: now we have digital stuff, so we got streaming that
Speaker 4: kind of has taken all of that video and audio
Speaker 4: stuff that was traditional and kind of put it in
Speaker 4: a more quick consumption format so you don't need the
Speaker 4: same physical.
Speaker 3: Apparatuses to access all of this stuff.
Speaker 4: But now we're in another custpane of transition to media
Speaker 4: that it really has been happening for a few years,
Speaker 4: really for a decent amount of years now, but it's
Speaker 4: a very slower transition because the other formats that we've
Speaker 4: been using for so long, people have just grown the
Speaker 4: custom to them. So right now, this transition from the
Speaker 4: more traditional digital media formats to now this immersive media
Speaker 4: format that will be mixed reality and virtual reality, this
Speaker 4: stuff is happening right now in front of us. So
Speaker 4: as somebody who's always been passionate about innovative technology and
Speaker 4: doing innova making innovative creation, so like being an innovative
Speaker 4: thinker and an innovative business mind, I saw the immersive
Speaker 4: media space like I've known about it for years, but
Speaker 4: I knew that, Like, one of the things I really
Speaker 4: learned with Yo Pima that I can probably bring into
Speaker 4: this now is that if you innovate too much, too fast,
Speaker 4: and the infrastructure a business isn't there for you while
Speaker 4: you're innovating, you end up in a very very tough
Speaker 4: space from a business perspective, because if you innovate five
Speaker 4: steps ahead of the market and you just did all
Speaker 4: this crazy innovation, then now the business and the rest
Speaker 4: of the market is not ready for all this stuff
Speaker 4: that you made, and now you're dealing with costs of
Speaker 4: trying to bring something that's innovative back to the market,
Speaker 4: which never serves anybody's business.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: So for me, what I learned in that experience is
Speaker 4: that while I've known about any immersive technology and mixed
Speaker 4: reality and virtual reality tech for quite some time, I
Speaker 4: knew that it wasn't the timing for me to take
Speaker 4: myself into that innovative space. So for me, I literally
Speaker 4: was like, all right, I think now is a much more.
Speaker 3: I think it's a good time.
Speaker 4: Like I was inspired to move into the immersive media
Speaker 4: space in twenty twenty three at the end of twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three, and really I kind of wanted to figure
Speaker 4: out what my ID in concept was. This was after
Speaker 4: I had worked in a company called okay Play when
Speaker 4: I moved out here to Cali, which ultimately was a
Speaker 4: it was a gaming company for children that ultimately I
Speaker 4: had the opportunity. They sold that company in like two years,
Speaker 4: so I was one of the first engineering hires on
Speaker 4: that team that company saw that I got to work
Speaker 4: in this other company called Dapper Labs, biggest one of
Speaker 4: the biggest NFT companies in the world. Working for those
Speaker 4: two companies gave me this insight that I didn't get
Speaker 4: the opportunity to get when I was living in Atlanta
Speaker 4: and working in technology when I.
Speaker 3: Moved here to California.
Speaker 4: I got to tell this story now because it's why
Speaker 4: I'm actually doing what I'm doing in the immersive media space.
Speaker 4: So those two companies were extremely critical for my growth
Speaker 4: and development as an executive. But it was really from
Speaker 4: an engineering perspective that I had the opportunity to learn
Speaker 4: your stuff. So with okay Play, I had the opportunity
Speaker 4: to work with some amazing people out here that were
Speaker 4: all Silicon Valley and California based tech executives and professionals
Speaker 4: that had done a lot of successful things and technology.
Speaker 4: They gave me the opportunity to come into the team
Speaker 4: and help them build out Android technologies. In the early
Speaker 4: process of them building an application. Me working with them,
Speaker 4: I got to learn some amazing things. I got to
Speaker 4: learn how to be successful as selling a technology company,
Speaker 4: but also how to build a culture that was conducive
Speaker 4: to building a team that could build a highly successful
Speaker 4: technology business. I also got to work with people that
Speaker 4: had already done it before. Everybody that I was working
Speaker 4: with ten to fifteen years my senior, maybe five to
Speaker 4: ten years my senior. But they ultimately had the opportunity
Speaker 4: to teach me things because I had engineering skills that
Speaker 4: can help what they were looking to get accomplished. But
Speaker 4: they also had knowledge and insight on what does it
Speaker 4: take to build a company, and what does it take
Speaker 4: to build a company and raise the capital to build it,
Speaker 4: What does it take to build a company and build
Speaker 4: a team and a culture that can Then we actually started.
Speaker 4: They started the company in twenty twenty, so the pandemic
Speaker 4: hit while the company was getting ready to launch. They
Speaker 4: still knew how to navigate the waters of a pandemic
Speaker 4: to build a mobile technology company, grow it, scale it,
Speaker 4: get over half a million kids on the platform during
Speaker 4: the pandemic, and then ultimately be able to sell the
Speaker 4: company to a billion dollar NFT company. So when I
Speaker 4: was a part of the process pre product launch and
Speaker 4: I got to see it all the way through exit
Speaker 4: and liquidation, and when I got to be a part
Speaker 4: of that full process and I saw the camaraderie of
Speaker 4: that team, I saw the culture of that company, and
Speaker 4: I saw the leadership that allowed me to see things
Speaker 4: that I did not have the opportunity to see. While
Speaker 4: I was doing business in Atlanta and working with them
Speaker 4: and selling to that billion dollar NFT company, I learned
Speaker 4: some really really interesting things as well. I've known about
Speaker 4: the blockchain space and the innovative in the crypto space
Speaker 4: for years as well. There was a reason why I
Speaker 4: didn't go direct into that industry because I knew that
Speaker 4: it was extremely volatile. Even though it was innovative, it
Speaker 4: was so volatile that it didn't make sense for me
Speaker 4: to dive deep into that based off of what I
Speaker 4: understood from a business perspective. But when I had the
Speaker 4: opportunity to work with that for Labs and I saw
Speaker 4: that there wasn't as much volatility working with a company
Speaker 4: who had a partnership with the NFL already, who had
Speaker 4: a partnership with the NBA, who was the licensed NFT
Speaker 4: provider for these companies, and a lot of other large
Speaker 4: scale entities. So it made it more comfortable for me
Speaker 4: to want to work with an NFT company. But they
Speaker 4: also let us come in and build out the first
Speaker 4: mobile technology for their whole company. So they had no
Speaker 4: mobile tech. Everything was web based and all of this stuff,
Speaker 4: and they brought our team in and we had built
Speaker 4: some really dope mobile tech and they brought us in
Speaker 4: and said, hey, we need to build mobile tech and
Speaker 4: we don't have any yet, and you all just made
Speaker 4: some mobile stuff. Can you all bring in your mobile
Speaker 4: So it was really an acquisition where they phased out
Speaker 4: maybe about eighty to ninety percent of the company and
Speaker 4: kept some of the executives as well as the guys
Speaker 4: who were building a technology, which was me and a
Speaker 4: group of about three other guys. We came in and
Speaker 4: became the lead more mobile team for Dapper Labs, and
Speaker 4: I had the opportunity to work on really high level
Speaker 4: projects for about sixty seven months before the NFT market
Speaker 4: took another dip and that company had to let some
Speaker 4: people go, and for me, I was already like I
Speaker 4: was already past wanting to be in that infrastructure, but
Speaker 4: I saw it as an opportunity to work on some
Speaker 4: really high level stuff. So I was like, okay, cool.
Speaker 4: So they gave us a servance and said, hey, we
Speaker 4: got a downsize and I was like, that's perfect. That
Speaker 4: was right before I was about to get married, so
Speaker 4: my wedding was a few months later, and I was like,
Speaker 4: all right, cool. That was the motivation that I needed
Speaker 4: to get back into the entrepreneurial space and get back
Speaker 4: focused on building something and innovating in a way that
Speaker 4: would allow me to use that experience in a more
Speaker 4: beneficial way. That ultimately took me back to the mobile
Speaker 4: company where I did all that stuff in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: three that I talked about and eventually gaining those hardware experiences.
Speaker 4: It kind of motivated me to want to get into
Speaker 4: the VR and next SA our space. That's how I
Speaker 4: got to the place of wanting to start a not
Speaker 4: just a million dollar VR company, but I wanted to
Speaker 4: build a billion dollar VR tech company that has the
Speaker 4: IP or potential that I feel like the insight that
Speaker 4: I got working at all these companies kind of leans
Speaker 4: heavily into and these are the things that I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Just you know, people can say a lot of things.
Speaker 4: I'm more like, no, I just got out of a
Speaker 4: billion dollar NFT company and they brought us in to
Speaker 4: build a department that ultimately built a new wing of
Speaker 4: their business. And then it showed me things that as
Speaker 4: a young, growing, innovative tech entrepreneur, that things that gave
Speaker 4: me insight that I feel like, I know what it
Speaker 4: takes to kind of do, and I know it's not
Speaker 4: an easy process, but I do know that right now.
Speaker 4: That insight let me want to go into this immersive
Speaker 4: tech space because I see it as the next frontier
Speaker 4: media and that's kind of what brought me to OAW
Speaker 4: and OAW. I guess I could talk a little bit
Speaker 4: about that now. Yeah, for sure, One Another World Experiences, Well,
Speaker 4: it's going to be one Another World Experiences in technology.
Speaker 4: It's a premium immersive entertainment company or entertainment and experiences company.
Speaker 4: So what we're doing is creating solutions that will allow
Speaker 4: people all around the world that either have commercial real estate,
Speaker 4: vehicles or or that have spaces that they want to
Speaker 4: provide immersive technology as a solution to make it more accessible,
Speaker 4: but also making it more.
Speaker 3: Private and safe for people.
Speaker 4: So the sweet science of one Another World is that
Speaker 4: while most of the other competitors in this space currently
Speaker 4: focused primarily on gaming, if you go to almost any
Speaker 4: VR entertainment space, it's more arcade based, like a sandbox
Speaker 4: or zero latency. These companies are very much so they
Speaker 4: are quite so much successful inan with things that they're doing,
Speaker 4: but they focus primarily on gaming based experiences, which I
Speaker 4: feel like limits what this frontier media actually can become.
Speaker 4: So our faces are meant to be something that allows
Speaker 4: people to explore it in a much more open fashion.
Speaker 4: You don't have to come in here and think that
Speaker 4: you just had the ability to play a zombie shooter
Speaker 4: and an escape room. You can do a number of
Speaker 4: different things in our verticals and it allows it will
Speaker 4: allow that accessibility and comfort and also make it more
Speaker 4: readily available. So our models are meant to make the
Speaker 4: technology much more accessible. I don't want to give too
Speaker 4: much about what that accessible means conversation, it's definitely that's
Speaker 4: the sweet science. Yeah, So that's the sweet science of it,
Speaker 4: so we're actually looking and we're in the process of
Speaker 4: starting our first capital raids.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: We spent all the twenty twenty four doing the building
Speaker 4: the foundation of it, so I got my manufacturing partnership
Speaker 4: and relationship. I started building some of the initial software
Speaker 4: we need for the software suite that we're building. We
Speaker 4: also did our first commercial real estate deal that's going
Speaker 4: to be for our first flagship pilot location that we'll
Speaker 4: be opening in Saint Louis later on this year. And ultimately, yeah,
Speaker 4: we build some of those initial partnerships. I built a
Speaker 4: founding team that I feel will aligned to the culture
Speaker 4: that we're looking to have on another world. I have
Speaker 4: one of my partners who's heavily in real estate and development,
Speaker 4: and I have a couple of other guys, one of
Speaker 4: my guys in education, one of my guys in the
Speaker 4: community engagement and development. So we ultimately have built a
Speaker 4: team that's kind of leaning very heavily into I have
Speaker 4: tech experience and knowledge, and my other kind of parts
Speaker 4: in this company who are all my.
Speaker 3: Friends of fifteen to twenty plus years. They just have
Speaker 3: experienced in different lanes.
Speaker 4: It allows us to kind of have a really really
Speaker 4: strong base of we need to take one another world
Speaker 4: to another world.
Speaker 3: Honestly.
Speaker 5: The BIT Foundation has established featured partnerships and programs with
Speaker 5: companies such as Amazon, at and t comp, Tia, tech Stars,
Speaker 5: and more to provide our members with the resources we
Speaker 5: want and need to thrive and succeed in this tech ecosystem.
Speaker 5: To learn more, visit Foundation dot blacks and Technology dot net.
Speaker 2: Nice man, I mean that sounds super exciting. All right,
Speaker 2: I'm ready. I'm ready to see it.
Speaker 3: Appreciate it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't see a ton of black people
Speaker 2: in that space from as creators like I see them
Speaker 2: utilizing you know, other platforms and doing things within that platform,
Speaker 2: but not actually creating a platform itself. So this is
Speaker 2: this is very I would say, monumental. Uh. And I
Speaker 2: would also say, like you're probably gonna get like once
Speaker 2: once this episode drops and people within the big community
Speaker 2: see this, they're gonna they're gonna want to holler at
Speaker 2: you because you know, we we need to be And
Speaker 2: I'm saying, like, you know, just saying from a standpoint
Speaker 2: of like you know, when when is this when is
Speaker 2: your your your platform gonna drop? How can we you
Speaker 2: know when it drops can contribute to it or what
Speaker 2: have you. Just I love seeing folks like within our
Speaker 2: community collaborate, uh and have outlets and spaces like this,
Speaker 2: uh where where they can you know, connect and make
Speaker 2: things happen. So uh, I know there's already folks that
Speaker 2: that are in the space, uh, in the community. And
Speaker 2: so you know, once this episode drops out, I love
Speaker 2: to see folks like connect with you and and and
Speaker 2: you know, share ideas and and see where this whole
Speaker 2: thing can go. But yeah, that's that's dope. So you
Speaker 2: know AI is a thing right now? How is that
Speaker 2: playing a role and what you all do all cool?
Speaker 4: So I mean AI like, So just to give another
Speaker 4: caveat the amazing thing about being in Georgia Tech, I
Speaker 4: got to learn about AI in twenty and ten, twenty eleven,
Speaker 4: Like I was doing research projects on AI. Like I
Speaker 4: literally have like PowerPoint presentations of projects that I was
Speaker 4: doing studying the history of AI in twenty ten.
Speaker 3: So I've been aware of AI for years.
Speaker 4: I knew that it was going to eventually become more
Speaker 4: commercialized with more the data infrastructure to empower it came
Speaker 4: to life, and more the hardware infrastructure required for it
Speaker 4: came to life, which now over time it has now
Speaker 4: got there. But for me, as somebody who's always been like,
Speaker 4: I'm a knowledge and information junkie. So like I literally,
Speaker 4: like I said, I walked to the library when I
Speaker 4: could get on the internet when I was a kid,
Speaker 4: I always was interested in having more access to information
Speaker 4: and wasn't constrained to like any one thing. That's if
Speaker 4: some beside my to me, I couldn't learn something, I
Speaker 4: know that there was probably a book or something out
Speaker 4: there to get.
Speaker 3: Access to it.
Speaker 4: So for me, AI has been like a It's almost
Speaker 4: like a supercharger for my brain. Like I use it
Speaker 4: and almost use it in so many different ways. I
Speaker 4: could talk about a million AI platforms that I use.
Speaker 4: Of course, I use chat, GPT, and I use I
Speaker 4: use a couple of like visual platforms like mid Journey
Speaker 4: and things of that nature.
Speaker 3: Like I kind of use it a little bit of everything.
Speaker 4: I use it for, Like so like I have platforms
Speaker 4: to create documents and like create frameworks for branding materials
Speaker 4: and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: So for me, AI it's just a supercharger tool.
Speaker 4: I look at this like a supertool for me, as
Speaker 4: it kind of integrates in almost the way that I
Speaker 4: operate and do everything as an executive, as an entrepreneur,
Speaker 4: as an innovator. It's just kind of like it's like
Speaker 4: that supertool that I use for It's almost like a
Speaker 4: Swiss army knife, and I just kind of pull it
Speaker 4: out when I feel like it's going to enhance what
Speaker 4: I'm trying to get accomplished.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 4: A lot of people ask me about AI and I
Speaker 4: just tell them, man like, learn about prompting and figure
Speaker 4: out how to make it make sense for something that
Speaker 4: you're already doing and spending a lot of time on.
Speaker 4: Because it's it's literally whatever you need it for, you
Speaker 4: can kind of figure out how to implement it. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of people are fearful of AI. They say
Speaker 4: it's like the leading jobs and stuff like that. It's
Speaker 4: not going to delete your job if you know how
Speaker 4: to use it, Like, if you know how to use
Speaker 4: it properly, always going to do is make you more
Speaker 4: efficient at doing something that like, it's an efficiency tool
Speaker 4: in my opinion, so I used to be more efficient honestly.
Speaker 2: Are you do you have any plans for integrating it
Speaker 2: into the XAR space?
Speaker 4: And yeah, of course, Like, so that's what I was
Speaker 4: talking about, the image generation stuff. There's so many components
Speaker 4: of AI that we're going to use to integrate. Like
Speaker 4: there's a component of creating VR worlds and creating VR
Speaker 4: experiences that can be highly influenced by AI. So now
Speaker 4: you can rapidly create immersive worlds, rapidly create immersive.
Speaker 3: Games and things of that nature.
Speaker 4: Not just games, but like there's education components, there's mental health,
Speaker 4: and like there's different types of components that AI lean
Speaker 4: heavily into. Then you can kind of take the VR
Speaker 4: in the immersive media space to frontiers. That definitely working
Speaker 4: to unlock a lot of those things right now. I'm
Speaker 4: actually building a few VR apps right now that lean
Speaker 4: heavily in and using AI for some of the generative
Speaker 4: stuff as well as components are just kind of like
Speaker 4: having the level of interaction that can help people kind
Speaker 4: of navigate stuff more effectively and learn more effectively.
Speaker 2: Nice. Nice, So I know you're part of a couple
Speaker 2: of other ventures. DNY Enterprise is Campfan. Tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about those two.
Speaker 3: All right for sure? So DNY, Yeah, I got your
Speaker 3: DNY Enterprise. That's my service vehicle.
Speaker 4: So I've had probably three consulting firms over my journey
Speaker 4: and check for the past fifteen years. DNY Enterprises, it
Speaker 4: literally is a family based.
Speaker 3: Business for me. So d is my name.
Speaker 4: Why is the first initial of my wife's name. We
Speaker 4: call it DNY Enterprises because I'm building it for the
Speaker 4: legacy of my family. And I really just figured out
Speaker 4: how to build systems to caps on all the experiences
Speaker 4: that I just talked to you about and make it
Speaker 4: in a way for me to make profit from having
Speaker 4: systems that help entrepreneurs business owners that want to be
Speaker 4: more effective at using technology as an asset for their business.
Speaker 3: I do is I help people all around the world.
Speaker 3: Like I have some clients out in.
Speaker 4: Africa, I have people all over America that I help
Speaker 4: and build things. But ultimately I come in and I
Speaker 4: take people through what I call a Vision Adventure service.
Speaker 4: It's like a four step process where I help people
Speaker 4: itemize and clear their vision out. After they clear out
Speaker 4: the vision and we go through the process, I help
Speaker 4: them really understand what is it going to take to
Speaker 4: build the technology that's going to help your business and
Speaker 4: how does it align with the goal of your business.
Speaker 3: So I got like this.
Speaker 4: Project planning service that we offer, and then I go
Speaker 4: into project management and development, Like I've developed so many
Speaker 4: things that I don't let people come to me and say,
Speaker 4: Like people can't pay me to develop an app in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five. It's not a hey, Dennis, can you
Speaker 4: develop all? Can you help me building app? I'm not
Speaker 4: in the business of building people's apps anymore. I'm in
Speaker 4: the building in the business of helping people be successful
Speaker 4: with technology business and typically most people don't know what
Speaker 4: they require. So my service is more of a coaching
Speaker 4: and consulting service. So I kind of consult and help
Speaker 4: people understand. First of all, you have to have a
Speaker 4: clear runway before you start building technology and just thinking
Speaker 4: it's just going to make sense.
Speaker 3: You got to build some then that'll actually allow their.
Speaker 4: Technology being an asset to a business, because technology is
Speaker 4: a health, it's not a business. Technology is a tool
Speaker 4: and the resource to a business. Now there's components to
Speaker 4: technology that you have to manage like a business, Like
Speaker 4: those costs that I was talking about in your pemas
Speaker 4: not understanding business properly enough. We got costs that balloon
Speaker 4: the technical infrastructure, and now this thing is burdening it
Speaker 4: down our whole business. So I spend a lot of
Speaker 4: time helping the people that I work with understand how
Speaker 4: to connect the dots between the technology and the business
Speaker 4: ideas and the problems that they're trying to solve. And
Speaker 4: then like the fourth step we go do, I say,
Speaker 4: we go do project management and development. So we offer
Speaker 4: a few different services there where we can bring in
Speaker 4: I have contractors that work with me all around the world.
Speaker 4: We help people build technology, hardware, software, websites, whatever you
Speaker 4: want to need to build that that you feel like
Speaker 4: aligns with the goals of your business. And then I
Speaker 4: help people kind of strategize on what is it going
Speaker 4: to take to make this sustainable, So whether you want
Speaker 4: to raise some capital, whether you want to boostrap and
Speaker 4: how you're going to strategize to make this bootstrapping process
Speaker 4: makes sense. But we take people do pilots to get
Speaker 4: them some data and then figure out what's going to
Speaker 4: make the most sense for how they want to grow
Speaker 4: the business in DNY enterprises.
Speaker 3: That's our core service.
Speaker 4: We also offer courses that I created that ultimately help
Speaker 4: bring youth as well as seniors and stuff like that
Speaker 4: into the tech space. So really introducing kids to technology
Speaker 4: and ways that make sense. We kind of introduce kids
Speaker 4: to technology via gaming and applications because that's kind of
Speaker 4: their first introduction to it. So we walk them from
Speaker 4: gaming and that and the core app that they like
Speaker 4: into how the business of all of it works. Because
Speaker 4: these kids, they're they're living in this digital economy where
Speaker 4: they know stuff about money that people in their age period.
Speaker 4: They probably you wouldn't understand how much they understand about
Speaker 4: economy until they ask their mom and dad for some
Speaker 4: robox books, are asked for some Minecraft cash or something
Speaker 4: like that, and once they start doing that stuff, you
Speaker 4: understand they understand economy. But I also walk them back
Speaker 4: to from that gaming and application all the way to
Speaker 4: how this is infused with math and science and artistic
Speaker 4: work and creativelopments and coupon And that's kind of how
Speaker 4: our course teaches kids how to stop looking at technology
Speaker 4: it's just something to consume, but also how to see
Speaker 4: it as a world of opportunity, specifically coming from our communities.
Speaker 4: Given that I live out here in California, I've learned
Speaker 4: a lot of things about the tech industry. Also learned
Speaker 4: that if we just look at the percentages of the
Speaker 4: biggest tech companies in the world, and how many people
Speaker 4: that come from communities that are predominantly minority driven.
Speaker 3: You'll see that there's still a very small percentage.
Speaker 4: While the number of the percentages are growing, it's still
Speaker 4: a smaller percentage of people from our communities in these industries.
Speaker 4: One of those things has to do with the visibility
Speaker 4: of people like ourselves being more in their face and
Speaker 4: allowing them to understand it as possible, but also really
Speaker 4: just knowing that they have to be taught the pathways
Speaker 4: to get into the technology industry, Like it's not a
Speaker 4: thing where you just can.
Speaker 3: Jump knee deep in here.
Speaker 4: You need to kind of like walk your way into
Speaker 4: understanding those value propositions and then also the work as
Speaker 4: you would know it takes. Like if you go into
Speaker 4: the tech industry without being driven properly, you need to
Speaker 4: have some type of purpose driven thing that allows you
Speaker 4: to have the persistence that's required to learn what it takes.
Speaker 4: Whether you even if you want to be a cold
Speaker 4: or developer, it takes a lot of persistence. But even
Speaker 4: if you want to be a salesperson in tech, or
Speaker 4: if you want to be a marketer in tech, or
Speaker 4: if you want to be a legal person in tech,
Speaker 4: there's things that you have to have a level of
Speaker 4: passion for and a purpose driven kind of motor for
Speaker 4: to develop those skills.
Speaker 3: But we have to help our community at the earlier phase.
Speaker 3: So that's what I built these courses for.
Speaker 4: Also built it to kind of help senior citizens that
Speaker 4: want to be more engaged in technology because that disconnect
Speaker 4: between the current use generation and the older generation that
Speaker 4: technology is building.
Speaker 3: The bridge needs to be closed.
Speaker 4: But if people like I said, or like yourself, don't
Speaker 4: kind of help bridge the gaps between the older generations
Speaker 4: and the next and the next generation that's already engraved
Speaker 4: in and stuff, it's just going to continue to build
Speaker 4: this thing that I don't think is healthy for our community.
Speaker 4: So that's why I built the courses to introduce and
Speaker 4: bring people into the community of technology, but also to
Speaker 4: help kind of close that gap. And then the other
Speaker 4: thing I do offer is public public speaking services. So
Speaker 4: I do public speaking. I kind of I'm looking to
Speaker 4: scale my public speaking into twenty twenty five and kind
Speaker 4: of being more focused on just kind of being more
Speaker 4: vocal about some of the things that we're discussing here.
Speaker 3: So that's d and Y Enterprise in the Nuts Sale.
Speaker 4: It's literally meant to be like a Swiss army knife
Speaker 4: of me taking my experience, knowledge and networking tech and
Speaker 4: really just helping serve all businesses.
Speaker 3: But I really love helping under.
Speaker 4: Resource and under just people that come from communities that
Speaker 4: don't typically have access to this stuff. And I really
Speaker 4: want to help people that have either professional experience in
Speaker 4: other industry figure out how to take advantage of technology
Speaker 4: when it comes to scaling and growing their business. The
Speaker 4: other business Camp Fam Productions. That's a family based organization
Speaker 4: as well. That's something that I bualt with my immediate family,
Speaker 4: my brothers and my parents. We built out this thing.
Speaker 4: It's going to be a media company basically that's to
Speaker 4: do a number of different things. So I have an
Speaker 4: animated series that we're producing that's going to kind of
Speaker 4: tell the story of a futuristic world that kind of
Speaker 4: brings up it's borderline and sci fi, but it's going
Speaker 4: to be much more relatable to our community. It's almost
Speaker 4: imagine like a fusion of I'm gonna say it now,
Speaker 4: but people are going to be inspired by this idea,
Speaker 4: but imagine the fusion of the Boondocks and the Jetsons.
Speaker 4: Imagine that type of fusion, but something that's totally yeah,
Speaker 4: that's meant to really.
Speaker 3: Inspire and make it more relatable. A lot of stuff
Speaker 3: that we're talking about.
Speaker 4: The characters of the show are based loosely around me
Speaker 4: and my brother's personas because we're all very different, but
Speaker 4: we all have a tie that brings us together.
Speaker 3: So it's really a family based show.
Speaker 4: But there's a number of other things we're doing under
Speaker 4: that umbrella, just like from a creative component, like as
Speaker 4: you can say, like I can talk about technology all day,
Speaker 4: but there's creative things that I feel like I need
Speaker 4: to do to make sure that I'm making my story
Speaker 4: more relatable and accessible to people in our community. So
Speaker 4: I create music that ultimately kind of paints a very
Speaker 4: clear picture of just who I am authentically. My brother
Speaker 4: he does spoken words, so we kind of put all
Speaker 4: of our creative things. And he's also an educator too,
Speaker 4: So my brother's an educated but he spoken words. I'm
Speaker 4: a tech executive and innovative, but also make hip hop music.
Speaker 4: I mean, we kind of create this umbrella camp fan
Speaker 4: production that kind of allow us to put our creations
Speaker 4: in that thing to ultimately bring some some life to
Speaker 4: our family long after we'll be here.
Speaker 3: So that that's kind of the plan of what camp
Speaker 3: Fan production is focused on.
Speaker 2: Man, you are the epitome of giving back. You reach
Speaker 2: back and man putting the family on Like, that's that's incredible,
Speaker 2: that appreciated, incredibly inspiring man. And I love that you
Speaker 2: touched on because I used to. I used to do music, right,
Speaker 2: hip hop music. Okay, so I've seen the Wu tang
Speaker 2: in the back. Yeah, yeah, you know, wo tanks for
Speaker 2: the children. But you know, so there was an early
Speaker 2: two thousands of a pretty robust hip hop scene here
Speaker 2: in Cincinnati. You know, we've got you know, cuts like
Speaker 2: high Tech producer and him and you know Quality. Of
Speaker 2: course Quality is from New York, but he really got
Speaker 2: a lot of his huge his start here in Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: So like, you know, it was this huge group of
Speaker 2: people who kind of grew up in the hip hop
Speaker 2: team together and we all knew each other and everything
Speaker 2: like that. Man, And but you know, I had this
Speaker 2: other persona in tech, and the two didn't merge a
Speaker 2: long time. Like I wouldn't even tell folks like in
Speaker 2: my professional setting that I did music and it was
Speaker 2: It wasn't a thing of embarrassment. It was a thing
Speaker 2: of like, I want people to take me seriously when
Speaker 2: it comes to, you know, my engineering skills, Like I
Speaker 2: don't want people looking at me differently and things like that.
Speaker 2: But as I got older, I stopped caring. Like you know,
Speaker 2: it came a point where I just I realized, like
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not going to hide my who I am.
Speaker 2: I see so many of these, you know, other white
Speaker 2: people who have all these outside interests, and you you
Speaker 2: read about them, and they don't they don't don't care
Speaker 2: about touting what they do. Like you know, one of
Speaker 2: the one of the gentlemen. I always use him as
Speaker 2: an example, this this gentleman named Jeneral Bacon. He he
Speaker 2: was a community spokesperson or advocate for a boon to
Speaker 2: Buntu Linux right when it first came out. And this
Speaker 2: dude was part of like you know, so, you know,
Speaker 2: I used to go to a bunch of you know,
Speaker 2: open source Linux conferences and things like that, and he
Speaker 2: spoke at one of them one time, and then I
Speaker 2: read up on having this dude was part of like
Speaker 2: this thrash metal band right like so and then I.
Speaker 2: So I'm reading about him, I'm like, oh, it's part
Speaker 2: of a thrash metal band. Nobody cares like, nobody nobody
Speaker 2: judges him for that, right.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then I seen this, this one, this picture that
Speaker 2: was pretty profound for me.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: There were there were It was a picture of all
Speaker 2: these white hds like they had PhDs and uh, technology
Speaker 2: and computer science. And it was like a group of
Speaker 2: them just lined up side by side.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And they all had like shorts, flip flops, T shirts,
Speaker 2: just looking super normal, super regular and everything like that.
Speaker 2: And I started like, man, like, what we don't have
Speaker 2: to We don't have to put on a mask for conform.
Speaker 2: They don't need to conform, right like, we we can
Speaker 2: be who we are uh. And and and being who
Speaker 2: we are in this space and having this community. It's
Speaker 2: more of an inspiration than than if I was to
Speaker 2: you know, show up in a suit and tie all
Speaker 2: the time and acting as if you know, oh like
Speaker 2: no hip hop music and no, no sport, no man,
Speaker 2: I love sports. I love basketball, I love football, I
Speaker 2: love hip hop. I grew up on hip hop, So
Speaker 2: why wouldn't I want to show that side of me?
Speaker 2: And and and and keep young people from you know,
Speaker 2: one thing I used to always run into when I
Speaker 2: when I first started blacks and technologies, there used to
Speaker 2: be discussions around, yeah, we want to do is being
Speaker 2: in sports and hip hop and music and blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, you know, from older, older people at
Speaker 2: the time. And I used to think, like, what's wrong
Speaker 2: with that? Like what's wrong with us wanting to be
Speaker 2: in you know, and in those types of industries And
Speaker 2: they see that it's lucrative for one, you know, for
Speaker 2: some people who can make it, and two that shouldn't
Speaker 2: prohibit them from anything else, Like that's just a part
Speaker 2: of who they are growing up in the environment that
Speaker 2: they grew up. But what we need to do is
Speaker 2: we need to show them an image of that plus
Speaker 2: des you can do both.
Speaker 4: Man, Look, you're literally talking into my core. Like the
Speaker 4: reason why I didn't say anything about the music stuff
Speaker 4: if I didn't say it to the end, like I'm
Speaker 4: glad you asked me about camp fan productions at the end,
Speaker 4: because you you just talked to me for an hour
Speaker 4: about technology, and I can do it for three or
Speaker 4: five more hours about technology and it could just keep going.
Speaker 4: But when I talk about my culture and my community.
Speaker 3: I understand like hip hop is the most authentic way
Speaker 3: to express ourselves.
Speaker 4: Is we have to remember that the media conglomerates that
Speaker 4: marketed hip hop for years made it seem like there
Speaker 4: was only one way that you could be in hip hop,
Speaker 4: and there was only one demographic that they wanted to promote. Remember,
Speaker 4: hip hop started a certain kind of way, and it
Speaker 4: eventically in the nineties evolved into something else because they
Speaker 4: wanted a certain image to be portrayed from hip hop artists.
Speaker 4: And then remember in the early two thousands that moment
Speaker 4: when Kanye West and fifty Cent had that head to
Speaker 4: head thing, and it was like hold on because like
Speaker 4: you were just talking about Kwali, there was artists like
Speaker 4: Kwaliti and Common and all these guys, and there was
Speaker 4: until the moment when Kanye said, hey, you can be
Speaker 4: something different than.
Speaker 3: Hip hop and put his head up against what he
Speaker 3: was one.
Speaker 4: Of my favorite rappers, like literally one of my favorite artists, businessmen,
Speaker 4: he's one of my favorites. But when they put Kanye
Speaker 4: against fifty cent, you understand that Kanye inspired a whole
Speaker 4: generation of other artists who didn't want to portray that
Speaker 4: same image that was downplaying what are what the narrative
Speaker 4: of hip hop was being painted as in the nineties,
Speaker 4: it was like there was this thing that was in
Speaker 4: our community that was only portraying a certain thing that
Speaker 4: makes hip hop seem like it was just this negative thing.
Speaker 4: But hip hop was never just this negative thing, and
Speaker 4: most people that listen to hip hop know it was
Speaker 4: never just that. That's just what became mainstream publicized. For me,
Speaker 4: hip hop always was this place where I could hear
Speaker 4: the most authentic stories from my community, and it was
Speaker 4: a relatable way to do that. I spent years recording
Speaker 4: music before I ever talked about it, Like I literally
Speaker 4: like when I lived in Atlanta, it was like in Atlanta,
Speaker 4: it was hip hop was just like playing basketball.
Speaker 3: It was just like going to the boy.
Speaker 4: It's just like going to the club. Everybody just goes
Speaker 4: to studios and it's like a regular thing that people
Speaker 4: do in that community. Because it's one of the most
Speaker 4: effective expressing b hippos that.
Speaker 3: We have in our community.
Speaker 4: Now it's on people like now because my monitor and
Speaker 4: hip hop, Like I literally was moved just last year
Speaker 4: to actually create an album, Like I've been recording music
Speaker 4: for ten plus years. Like probably the whole time I
Speaker 4: was in Atlanta, I never was like, I want to.
Speaker 3: Release this music.
Speaker 4: It was always just a place where and I spent
Speaker 4: years like we had a studio in our house, Like
Speaker 4: I literally to record all the time. But the thing
Speaker 4: about me not wanting to put it out was very
Speaker 4: much so aligned with the thing that you were talking about.
Speaker 4: I didn't want people to get distracted from the fact
Speaker 4: that I liked making hip hop when I was trying
Speaker 4: to build my perfect Now it don't matter if I
Speaker 4: talk about my hip hop, because you can't discredit everything
Speaker 4: else that I've done. Now I can talk about all
Speaker 4: of this stuff and I can be free about it.
Speaker 4: But now I feel a level of freedom that I
Speaker 4: didn't have before. And in twenty twenty four, I started
Speaker 4: recording more music because I stopped the whole time I
Speaker 4: lived in California. When I moved to California, I stopped recording.
Speaker 4: It wasn't the same type of energy that I had.
Speaker 4: But the top of tween twenty four into twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: I got inspired to start writing stuff again, and then
Speaker 4: I mentally wrote more records, and then eventually I got
Speaker 4: inspired with an album A name for an album. I
Speaker 4: created a whole album that I'm still in the process
Speaker 4: of post production for. But all of this stuff came
Speaker 4: at the time period when now it's like, I'm perfectly
Speaker 4: fine being the artist that I wanted to because I
Speaker 4: was inspired by artists like Jay Z and Rick Ross
Speaker 4: and fifty seven. These guys aren't just rappers, like, these
Speaker 4: guys are business mobiles. They actually chose to say, yeah, rap,
Speaker 4: I can tell my story, I can tell where I
Speaker 4: came from, but I also can go run this multimillion dollar,
Speaker 4: billion dollar company as well doctor Dre's and like, you
Speaker 4: see what these guys are doing, so they have the
Speaker 4: capability of doing all this other stuff. It's just hip
Speaker 4: hop's just happened to be the thing that allowed them
Speaker 4: to get in the industry. But for me, like my
Speaker 4: monitoring hip hop is mister buzin Tech because that's who
Speaker 4: I want to be. That's who I am. Actually, Like
Speaker 4: it's like, more, take me serious. I'm gonna put mister
Speaker 4: in front of it, so you can take this serious.
Speaker 3: This is not a joke rap. This is serious music.
Speaker 3: I'm not making just party music and kicking music. Now,
Speaker 3: this is the stuff.
Speaker 4: My album is called you can't unsee this because once
Speaker 4: you hear it, it's one of those things where, just
Speaker 4: like this conversation, where people hear it, you've got a
Speaker 4: number of different ways you can process me. I know
Speaker 4: that it can push some people one way, it can
Speaker 4: push other people another way. But I do know that
Speaker 4: it's just gonna be authentically who I am at all times.
Speaker 4: And the music itself is just a true embodiment of
Speaker 4: of that, and it's meant to like make me more
Speaker 4: like bring a more relatable way of my narrative. Because
Speaker 4: I could write a book, I'm like, I don't want
Speaker 4: to write my book till LIE finish a couple of
Speaker 4: other things and business like, I need to get over
Speaker 4: a couple more I want to do it, Like there's
Speaker 4: some other accomplishments that need to happen as an executive
Speaker 4: and a business owner that I want to accomplished before
Speaker 4: I get to.
Speaker 3: Write in a book.
Speaker 4: But when it comes to this music, this thing is
Speaker 4: like probably the closest thing that somebody will get to
Speaker 4: my truest narrative. So I'm probably gonna let it out
Speaker 4: sometime later on this year. But it's not the thing
Speaker 4: that's like the top of my priority list is like
Speaker 4: I'm raising cappling to what I want to be a
Speaker 4: billion dollar immersing technology company right now and serving people
Speaker 4: all around with my consulting firm. And really my I
Speaker 4: tell people I'm a technology rock star, like I have
Speaker 4: traveled the world on technology. I have had the opportunity
Speaker 4: to do all different types of things in this space.
Speaker 4: And my personna as a rapper is this guy who
Speaker 4: took technology to a place that I feel like that,
Speaker 4: like I'm in a selective group of people that come
Speaker 4: from our community that have done these types of things.
Speaker 4: And now I'm just more forthrighting about about what that
Speaker 4: story narrative is.
Speaker 2: Man's super I'm glad. I'm glad we talked about this.
Speaker 4: I'm glad playing on getting into that bad but you
Speaker 4: had me boy Camps fans, so I had to, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm glad. I'm glad you did.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Like we we ran this series and it's it's it
Speaker 2: was called a cusc yourself, and it was around the
Speaker 2: non technical things that make us who we are, right
Speaker 2: like you know, black technology, like oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: we've got people that are software engineers, CEOs, entrepreneurs. They
Speaker 2: got you know, DevOps engineers, database engineers, But what do
Speaker 2: you what else? What else do you do? You know,
Speaker 2: that's not the totality of who you are. That's just
Speaker 2: a part of it, right, So what else do you do?
Speaker 2: So my whole thing was cus see yourself. Was is
Speaker 2: promoting us to folks who are looking at technology and
Speaker 2: as as maybe a career path and they're unsure. They
Speaker 2: might be unsure, like, man, I don't know if I
Speaker 2: fit in. I don't know if I can do that.
Speaker 2: I don't know, because they you know, I like to
Speaker 2: do this, so I don't do I have to give this. No,
Speaker 2: you don't need to give that, Like this is this
Speaker 2: is who you are, and you bring that your full
Speaker 2: self to the table and share that with other people
Speaker 2: so you can help inspire other people. That's that's really
Speaker 2: what it's all about.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: So I'm glad you mentioned that, and I like to.
Speaker 2: I mentioned that all the time when I'm doing talks
Speaker 2: and everything like that. I mentioned he I used to wrap,
Speaker 2: and folks are like what you used to rap?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to get down and I still can
Speaker 2: if I felt like I still drop off. But it's
Speaker 2: just something like you know, so folks can see themselves
Speaker 2: and that's alienating us.
Speaker 3: Like because it's a thing where I grew up.
Speaker 4: I grew up extremely alien when I talked about the
Speaker 4: first part of my story and I said I wanted
Speaker 4: to get in check when I was thirteen fourteen, And
Speaker 4: do you know how many people I just had to
Speaker 4: stop talking about that passion. I had to stop talking
Speaker 4: to my community about it because I could feel it
Speaker 4: alienated me. I already knew that I was somewhere alienated
Speaker 4: because of how my was already operating and how much
Speaker 4: I desired more knowledge than maybe everybody else that I
Speaker 4: I don't want to say everybody, but like I was
Speaker 4: in the pursuit of knowledge in the way that I
Speaker 4: didn't see as many people actively pursuing it, so I
Speaker 4: could feel there was something different there. But I also
Speaker 4: knew that it kind of used to put me on
Speaker 4: this island. So I would have to do not even unattended,
Speaker 4: like I just used to do stuff that would make
Speaker 4: sure that my family my friends like know that like I'm.
Speaker 3: Still us, but I might just nigga a little bit
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 4: And the thing that's very intentional about my music, it's
Speaker 4: meant to like take that alienation factor that people look
Speaker 4: at people like Bill Gates. And the reason why I
Speaker 4: said those guys' names in the beginning not just because
Speaker 4: I'm trying to do a name drop. It's like, I
Speaker 4: know how people used to look at Mark Zuckerberg and
Speaker 4: Bill Gates and.
Speaker 3: Steve Jobs, and Steve Jobs.
Speaker 4: He didn't have it as bad as everybody else, but
Speaker 4: like a lot of these other guys were extremely alienated,
Speaker 4: Like you can see that people didn't humanize them in
Speaker 4: a certain kind of way. And Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff
Speaker 4: Bezos and Bill Gates, they've been spending years rehumanizing their
Speaker 4: else to the rest of the world because they, like
Speaker 4: everybody in the world is looking at these guys like
Speaker 4: they're alienated. They're in a whole different plateau. And Eli
Speaker 4: Musz he he he made sure that you know, like
Speaker 4: I'm a real human, but I'm just gonna keep doing
Speaker 4: crazy stuff. And he lets it be known in the
Speaker 4: most disruptive way. So it rubs a lot of people
Speaker 4: the wrong way. But you can't never confuse him for
Speaker 4: what Mark Zuckerberg used to be like five to maybe
Speaker 4: seven eight years ago, where people just used to look
Speaker 4: at him as like this thing that was like he's
Speaker 4: on his own little thing. Now it's like he in
Speaker 4: the mix of UFC. He's showing his family, his wife,
Speaker 4: He's showing like I'm a human just like everybody else,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying. And that's one of the things that
Speaker 3: I'm truly intentional about.
Speaker 4: Like I know that especially coming from our community, Like
Speaker 4: I know how you think about how alienated they are.
Speaker 4: You just think how alienated, like and I know you've
Speaker 4: had to deal with similar things being in these spaces
Speaker 4: where it's like, na, I'm still of the same Yo,
Speaker 4: I'm the still same little Dennis that grew up in
Speaker 4: Saint Lewis that had to figure out how to go
Speaker 4: cut grass everywhere else that ultimately had to I found
Speaker 4: things that I was passionate about that maybe it was
Speaker 4: different from the people in my community, but like, remember,
Speaker 4: I'm still the same dude. Like, it ain't nothing that's
Speaker 4: too much different other than the fact that I got
Speaker 4: some more knowledge and experience in the space that everybody
Speaker 4: wasn't looking at it as accessible.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think alien is like one of the
Speaker 3: biggest things that we have to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've unfortunately had to do that with family as well, Like,
Speaker 2: but I distinctly remember a situation back when I first
Speaker 2: went to college. There was a guy seeing there that,
Speaker 2: you know, I used to play a lot of outdoor
Speaker 2: basketball and I've seen this guy who I who I
Speaker 2: who used to play on the outdoor course with us,
Speaker 2: And so he was like, oh, I didn't know. You
Speaker 2: knew if you went to the score, it's like yeah.
Speaker 2: He was like, what are you taking? I was like,
Speaker 2: computer network engineering? Why are you taking that? That was
Speaker 2: his response. And I was looking at him like what
Speaker 2: do you What do you mean by that? Why am
Speaker 2: I taking that? Like it was just so foreign just
Speaker 2: for him to see me another black deal to be
Speaker 2: taking engineering. And I was just like, because it's the future,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? Why am I taking that?
Speaker 2: So yeah, I definitely I definitely understand that.
Speaker 4: That's so crazy that you say that, because I felt
Speaker 4: the same way when I told people I wanted to
Speaker 4: study computer science the whole time I was in.
Speaker 3: Atlant I mean in Saint Louis.
Speaker 4: The moment I got to Georgia check and I was
Speaker 4: telling people I'm studying elect computer engineering, they looked at
Speaker 4: me like it was almost like I was like you
Speaker 4: you get praised for being in that major in this environment,
Speaker 4: and it was just like a totally different world. It
Speaker 4: was like, oh my god, you're this, Oh you're doing that,
Speaker 4: and it was more like and I could just see
Speaker 4: the totally different. So that's when I understood the perspective
Speaker 4: is everything. Like I just realized that it's all about
Speaker 4: how you see the world and how you look at
Speaker 4: things because from one perspective you can see this it's
Speaker 4: something that's impossible. From another perspective, you see it's like
Speaker 4: some of the most admirable things you can do, and
Speaker 4: it's more about.
Speaker 3: Can you really complete the task? Can you really get
Speaker 3: it done.
Speaker 4: I'm like, you know, I definitely can get it done,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. But that was more h
Speaker 4: it's dope to understand that now, just to hear from
Speaker 4: somebody else too, because it's a real thing. But I
Speaker 4: I feel like now we're close to being able to
Speaker 4: close that gap up because it's.
Speaker 3: Time for it.
Speaker 2: For me, I agree, what's next for you?
Speaker 4: I mean, the next thing is really the next twelve months,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be locked in on raising capital, doing
Speaker 4: a preceding seed round for on another world.
Speaker 3: Experiences.
Speaker 4: The next thing also with my consulting firm, which I
Speaker 4: don't My consulting firm is not something that takes all
Speaker 4: of my time. I have a team that kind of
Speaker 4: runs and manages a lot of stuff there with me,
Speaker 4: but ultimately it's to scale that as well. So I
Speaker 4: want to get more active in the public speaking.
Speaker 3: I need to.
Speaker 4: I'm glad that I have the opportunity this podcast with you,
Speaker 4: but I know right now there's a level of visibility
Speaker 4: that I didn't have in the process and the journey
Speaker 4: of me developing my skills and experience that I know
Speaker 4: I need to flip the switch for the visibility that
Speaker 4: I need. So I'm actually focused on doing stuff to
Speaker 4: actually be more visible and being more accessible to my
Speaker 4: community in a more tangible way.
Speaker 3: So that's what the consulting company is a vehicle for.
Speaker 4: And really just locked in on taking my experience to
Speaker 4: the next trajectory and becoming a type of executive that
Speaker 4: can be mentioned in the name with the great subf
Speaker 4: of people that have done amazing things in the tech
Speaker 4: industry and really doing the work to get there.
Speaker 3: So that's the next thing for me, and just doing
Speaker 3: the work that comes along with that.
Speaker 2: That's super dope, man. And before we get out of here,
Speaker 2: how can folks if they want to reach out to you?
Speaker 2: You know websites, social media handles, Yeah, give us all
Speaker 2: all right?
Speaker 4: So on Instagram, that's probably the place I most frequent
Speaker 4: I have with My handle is mister b i z
Speaker 4: n tech t ch I mean tch, but mister busin
Speaker 4: and tech is my Instagram handle. You can find me
Speaker 4: on LinkedIn, Dennis Campbell, I'm all. LinkedIn is probably one
Speaker 4: of my most You can kind of see the rolls
Speaker 4: of decks, the things that I've been through as a professional.
Speaker 4: And then I have my consulting company, DNY Enterprises dot com.
Speaker 4: If you're interested in kind of engaging with anything there.
Speaker 4: We help entrepreneurs and business owners of all types with
Speaker 4: all different types of projects, so we can kind of
Speaker 4: help almost anybody there. I'm also looking at expanding public speaking,
Speaker 4: so if you want to reach out for me, public
Speaker 4: speaking courses also stuff there. And then on Another World,
Speaker 4: literally our website is on another dot World, so basically
Speaker 4: everything on another World will be there. We also have
Speaker 4: a members platform for on Another World right now, so
Speaker 4: you can literally go in there sign up for early
Speaker 4: actions and kind of standing loop and everything on another
Speaker 4: world related because we will be doing a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff over the next few months as we get ready
Speaker 4: to roll up for our space of our spot will
Speaker 4: be opening up sometime this summer.
Speaker 3: So we're just in the process of doing the build
Speaker 3: up for all of that right now.
Speaker 2: And I'll put all that, you know, all those links
Speaker 2: in the show notes as well. Uh so folks can
Speaker 2: just you know, we go to the episode and click
Speaker 2: on those links. Man Dinnis, this has been super dope,
Speaker 2: man Like, from from an inspirational standpoint, it's been a pleasure,
Speaker 2: and it's been a pleasure just to hear your journey,
Speaker 2: to see where you're going to see that, you know,
Speaker 2: hear about the things that you've done. I have no doubt.
Speaker 2: I mean you're already you're already going there. I have
Speaker 2: no doubt you're going to be at the top, man.
Speaker 2: And once folks check out this episode, like I said,
Speaker 2: folks are going to reach out because you have a
Speaker 2: lot to offer, not just in the term you know, intact,
Speaker 2: but just from a business stand point, uh as well, Man, So,
Speaker 2: I you know, I really really enjoyed this, this this episode,
Speaker 2: and I wish you like the Mother the best. I'll
Speaker 2: definitely be reaching out. We got bigcoin coming up in
Speaker 2: uh in October, uh, I mean so yeah yeah, So
Speaker 2: you know we're gonna need speakers and all that stuff
Speaker 2: as well, so, uh, we definitely want to put you
Speaker 2: on a list for that, So you know, we'll be
Speaker 2: reaching out to you for sure.
Speaker 3: I appreciate the time Greg got this interview. It was mutual,
Speaker 3: man h