A message from Founder Gym’s CEO
Dear Founder Gym Community,
This message is from my heart to yours.
We are a Black team navigating a White space (Silicon Valley and the tech startup industry), and we serve a majority Black community. Our mission is simple and it has remained consistent throughout our 2.5 year existence: use entrepreneurship to create a more equitable world.
Who we are, what we represent, and the mission we have committed our lives to is our message to the world. A perfectly crafted PR statement in times of social and political unrest is not where we invest our resources. We invest our most valuable resources — our time, our talents, our network, and our money — in our community, every single day.
The COVID-19 pandemic did not create the systemic inequities we are witnessing in the Black community, but it did further expose them and tragically exacerbate them.
George Floyd’s murder by a White police officer did not spark the Black Lives Matter movement, but it was the final straw that activated many more people to take up the cause of dismantling institutionalized racism.
This moment is not the only chance we all get to make a positive difference, but this moment is an incredibly important one.
The original intention behind today’s #TheShowMustBePaused and #BlackoutTuesday (and the black squares you see being posted on social media) is not to take the day off. The intention is just the opposite. Today, you are being urged to STEP UP!
- STEP UP your education about American slavery and institutionalized racism
- STEP UP your investment in initiatives that help Black communities succeed, like providing FG scholarships to Black founders
- STEP UP your hiring of AND promotion of AND equal pay to Black people in your workplace
- STEP UP your funding of Black entrepreneurs, like the founders we train
- STEP UP your patronage of Black businesses, like the ones our graduates build
- STEP UP your acknowledgment of your own biases and privilege
- STEP UP your conversations with White people (and other disproportionately privileged individuals), using articles like this one and resources here
Whatever you do, STEP UP in alignment with the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
Just like with startups, momentum plays an incredibly important role in building a successful movement and enacting real change. The flywheel has started, and it is only through our individual and collective actions — yes, today, but also every single day of our lives and in all spaces we occupy — that the movement will pick up enough speed to finally knock down this deeply racist institution, once and for all.
No excuses. It’s time to step up.
Mandela SH Dixon
CEO of Founder Gym
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