How A Black History Game Connected Two Entrepreneurs

I learned about entrepreneurship through one of my favorite childhood board games. This is the story of how I met the creator of that game 25 years later.

In Search of Identity

Last summer, I was in a texting conversation with my friend Crystal, who was looking to find a birthday gift for her 7 year-old niece. Immediately a feeling of nostalgia overwhelmed me as I started thinking back to the times when I was a 7- year old. My family played a black history board game called “In Search of Identity.” I remember loving it so much because the characters in the game were different from the black heroes we learned about in school. The game is where I first learned about Madame CJ Walker and her entrepreneurial success.

I sent Crystal a screenshot of the game and went on and on about the game, telling her how cool it was and how she should order it for her niece. Of course I texted her this without checking to see if it was still for sale on the internet, I googled the game to check. There were two postings on amazon, but I couldn’t find anything for purchase.

Crystal and I started joking around about how we should find the man who created it and help launch a Kickstarter campaign. “That would so be cool! Right?” The texts eventually died down and we went on about our day.

The next day, I decided to post the shot of the game on Instagram and Facebook for #TBT (Throwback Thursday). A couple friends started commenting about the game.

A Black History Lesson Gone Full Circle

It was still Thursday afternoon. Like many early-stage entrepreneurs, I was busy at my office, the coffee shop. My pitch deck was due for submission that afternoon for a demo-day presentation scheduled for the next week. I started to get a bit frustrated with building the decks, so I took a break to browse Facebook, and more people had commented on the picture. I got curious and decided to stop working for a few minutes and find the creator of the game. The search for him would change my life forever.

I found an article about the creator. HER name is Lucy Holifield. Like Madame CJ Walker, my favorite character in the board game, Lucy had a long career in entrepreneurship and small business development. As I continued to look for contact information from Lucy, I found it on a website for a company called Covize.

I could not believe it, Covize was a company that Lucy launched to help founders with their startup pitches. Not only was she the creator of the Identity game and the founder of Covize, she lived and worked right here in Atlanta, near my office, the coffee shop.

Tears began to roll down my face as I realized the true reason I had been led to find out who Lucy was that day:

The journey of entrepreneurship is deeply embedded into Black History. As founders, we have already been given a blueprint for grit, resilience, and tenacity. We just don’t embrace it as often as we should.

I was so concerned with all of the mechanics of the pitch deck, but I had not yet embraced my story as a founder. Perhaps I had not embraced my story, because I didn’t think my story was important. Madame CJ Walker had a story, Lucy Holifield has a story, and so do I. We have a long history of founders, inventors, and millionaires who have successfully created value for other people and made the world better with their products and services. These people faced a hell of a lot more challenges than we do today. They were using the Lean Startup Method long before it had a name. They didn’t really have a choice.

A Bond Between Two Generations

After having this aha moment, I reached out to Lucy through her Covize website to share the entire story with her. “You really should bring the game back! Maybe it really could be done through some type of crowdfunding campaign.” She replied to my email and we decided to meet up for coffee.

Initially, she was hesitant about working on any efforts to re-launch the game. At the time that Lucy ran her company, board games were costly to produce and video games had just come on the horizon. There was no e-commerce site such as a Squarespace, Etsy, or Shopify. You could not build landing pages and drive traffic to a product. You certainly couldn’t incentivize your customers to give you feedback. Most importantly, you had to store physical inventory due to minimum production quantities.

Fortunately, times have changed. Since our initial coffee meetup, Lucy and I have had some really great conversations about what it would look like to successfully re-launch the game and have friends and families playing together as they learn black history facts. We both came up with a few different ideas. I think she should sell the physical board game. As for her, she’d like to see technology incorporated into the board game experience.

Since Lucy and I are both very busy, we decided to take small steps to test the demand for a re-launch. We’re calling it the #BringTheGameBack campaign.

The #BringTheGameBack Campaign

We’ve launched www.bringthegameback.com to provide a central place for people learn a bit more about the game and stay updated on the journey towards a re-launch.

From now until early summer, we’ll be trying to learn more about who would want to order the game and what they would like for their experience to be with it. By late summer, we’ll launch a full crowd funding campaign and the In Search of Identity game will be ready just in time for the holidays.

Final Thoughts

As Black History month 2016 comes to an end, I hope this story leaves you with a flame in your heart that burns throughout the remainder of the year.

Never forget the importance of your history, it is a part of your story. Your ideas will change. Ventures will fail and succeed. When you get a little discouraged, go back to the blueprint. Not only do we have amazing creators, entrepreneurs, inventors, and scientists in our heritage, we have heroes like Lucy who are alive and well, ready to share their stories and wisdom with us.

Happy Black History Month!

-Kristen Daniel

Disclaimer: I wanted to share this story because it truly impacted my life. My work with Lucy is a volunteer effort. However, I do want to see In Search Of Identity relaunched! So please go follow: @TheIdentityGame on Twitter and https://www.facebook.com/TheIdentityGame. If you’d like to get involved with this project, let us know.