5 Lessons from 5 Years of Creating Economic Opportunity — Lesson Three: Find People Who Have Done It Before

National press for All Star Code’s very first event was a surprise.

Queries rained in from around the country and the world about expanding All Star Code to their city. Le Monde wanted to interview me. Reader, I declined them all.

Why? It was too early.

In a misguided attempt to be prudent with our funds, full-time employees hadn’t been hired yet. There were more opportunities being presented than bandwidth to accept them all. I was not in this alone — but help was needed.

LESSON THREE: FIND PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE IT BEFORE (AKA DON’T TRY TO DO EVERYTHING YOURSELF)

All Star Code started with volunteers. Our founding board chair, Tarrus Richardson, had founded the nonprofit Council of Urban Professionals (CUP). It’s a terrific organization that connects, empowers and mobilizes the next generation of diverse business and civic leaders. As a finance executive and entrepreneur, he has always been passionate about helping minority and women-owned businesses grow.

From a young age, Tarrus has been and still is a huge fan of my father. He credits my father’s book, Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? as his business bible. Tarrus was undoubtedly crucial to All Star Code’s founding.

On a Friday in early 2013, I asked him for his help in preparation for a big meeting lined up with the Bloomberg Administration. Two days later, we met at a restaurant during his son’s softball game and drew up a business plan on a legal pad. From that point, we began weekly phone calls as he advised on how to operationalize All Star Code. Basically, Tarrus was my boss for a year, and remains a mentor to this day.

With Tarrus involved separately, another friend, who was an executive at a music streaming company, was invited to be our third board member — and then we incorporated.

Even without money, you can put people into roles that when you have money you can fill later.

All Star Code’s first program manager was a total rock star volunteer named Saxonny Rich who Tarrus recruited. She was a CUP fellow and served as an early researcher/program manager. Tarrus had also loaned a few hours of time from his wonderful executive assistant, Maxine, who started doing our admin & finance.

Tarrus further advised the hiring of a management consultant (also through his network), who created a project plan and designed the job description for our first full-time hire in November of 2013 (note that this is after our public launch).

All Star Code’s first full-time hire was an experienced school and non-profit education organization professional named Robert Bonner. He created our first budget, designed an org chart and overall gave me the confidence to go out and raise more money.

Five years later, we now have a team of about 20 full-time and part-time.

On that note, here is a bonus lesson: Hire excellent lawyers and excellent accountants. Do not skimp on legal and accounting. As we incorporated, significant man hours were devoted to finding solid attorneys, ultimately landing us with an excellent team at Goodwin Procter led by fellow young mom, Alyssa Fitzgerald. And as much as it impacted the organization financially, at the outset of operationalizing, we hired a former CFO as our (part-time) Finance Director. At her urging, we also engaged a separate financial consulting firm, Kiwi Partners, a women-owned company that specializes in non-profit accounting.

During the startup phase, it’s common and easy to skimp and save on legal and accounting, but it’s a mistake. Some things are too complex and too high stakes to learn by failing. At least, not if you can help it.

Remember that as a founder, you need to position yourself to do a role you enjoy. It has been crucial to All Star Code (and my sanity) to bring in others to utilize their own strengths to push the mission forward.

If you’re considering doing something entrepreneurial or already have an entity that you want to grow, consider engaging other people to help you. Even if you don’t have money, you can find volunteers willing to invest in you. It’s worth the effort. It’s a cliché, but if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.

Or as we say at All Star Code: “Teamwork makes the dream work!”