Eyes on the Stars, Feet on the Ground
Don’t worry, NorthStar will continue to shine.
At Black & Brown Founders (BBF), we have always believed that creating impact — measurable, scalable impact — is a marathon, not a sprint. No matter the goal, we’re clear on one thing: there’s levels to this.
Since the inception of our nonprofit organization, the voices and needs of our community have been an important factor in our decision-making process. Every aspect of our work and the execution of our mission centers around one question: how do we best serve the needs of our community right now and in the future?
The answer to that question has evolved over time, thanks to a wide array of programming that provided opportunities for us to hear and collect data from Black and Latinx entrepreneurs trying to make their way in the tech industry.
This approach has enabled us to be both agile and effective in what we do, how we do it, and when we do it. This approach brought Project NorthStar to life — a 3-day tech conference produced in partnership with the City of Philadelphia that provided connections, education, and opportunities for current and aspiring tech entrepreneurs and professionals from the Black and Latinx community.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney lit the spark with his initial idea, and brought our team on board to breathe life into it. Getting to build NorthStar from scratch was a great honor, a lot of fun, and we are thrilled to continue our involvement in new ways.
The BBF team, the City of Philadelphia, our sponsors and our partners worked tirelessly to create an inimitable experience for a community that has waited far too long to be served effectively. Our message to Black and Latinx founders was, for the most part, simple yet powerful: Your Value is Undeniable.
Lots of amazing things happened at Project NorthStar (see the #receipts here — the Project NorthStar Wrap Up Report). The results were worth every single late night and early morning.
Once everything was said and done, and the BBF team finally got a chance to take a deep dive into the data (WE ❤️DATA!), that question resurfaced:
How do we best serve the needs of our community right now and in the future?
When it comes to curated events for Black and Latinx founders, we’ve had skin in the game for some time now. That approach has enabled us to make big strides in a really short period of time. Much like a long race, though, you’ve got to know when to adjust your stride in order to continue running (or in our case, serving) effectively.
The data and your feedback was telling us that we have to realign with the needs of our community. The biggest discovery was that ~ 55% of the founders in our community aren’t generating ANY revenue.
Now, events are great. We love producing workshops, pop-ups and conferences. We love the big warm hug of being in the same room with folks who look like us and are ready to level up. We love the partnerships we’ve forged along the way. But real impact — the kind of impact that changes the way Black and Latinx founders can provide for our families, build our legacies and create generational wealth — requires more than that. It’s hard out here in these tech streets; the sooner we can help our community get to the coins, the better we’ll all be.
It’s vital that Black & Brown Founders remains a good steward of the promise and trust we built around NorthStar. So our team knew that decisions about moving forward needed to be grounded in reason. We evaluated and analyzed the numbers, the labor, the resources — everything that it takes to make Project NorthStar possible. And we were able to conclude something that we’ve known all along.
The most impactful thing we can do for our community is to transform the framework we use to curate our events into in-depth training programs for Black and Latinx entrepreneurs.
We want to see MEASURABLE progress from our community. To us, that means more zeros in your bank account. Regardless of how we deliver our services, if our founders still can’t secure the bag, then why are we here?! 🧐
Black & Brown Founders is fortunate to be run by experienced entrepreneurs with sweeping knowledge about business, startups, tech, and social equity. But we haven’t been fully utilizing what we have to move the needle for our founders. Our events are incredibly valuable, but we now fully recognize the constraints of doing our work solely through this channel. We’ve always wanted to create more ways to deliver value to our community, and the time is now.
With that understanding, our team revisited our role in Project NorthStar with the City of Philadelphia from a different lens. One that’s making real moves to create tangible progress for Black and Latinx tech entrepreneurs AKA cash money in their pockets. We realized that our organization needs to double-down on activities that allow us to get more hands-on with founders.
While doing this collective and individual work, the picture became a lot clearer on both sides: NorthStar 2018 was a mile-marker in this marathon. And that makes sense, because we’ve always said that it’s not meant to be a final solution, but a prototyping step toward success.
Our team is thankful to the City to being open to restructuring the initiative in a way that allows it to remain focused on impact. So here’s what’s what:
- Project Northstar is more than a conference. It’s an ongoing initiative housing multiple projects to support tech entrepreneurship for people of color in Philadelphia, including the NorthStar tech conference.
- There will be another conference, but not this year. We hope to help the City bring back the flagship event in 2020.
- New programs have already launched because of Project NorthStar:
(1) StartupPHL Venture Program: the City is providing funding for tech or tech-enabled ventures that may not have access to traditional forms of capital and founder networks.
and
(2) Bootstrapping Bootcamp: the first phase of our new education programming, helping founders cross the chasm from idea to repeatable revenue.
- The City of Philadelphia is also open to new partnerships under the NorthStar umbrella, particularly with aligned organizations that can produce outcomes. Heads up: the City is actively looking for partners who are serving the unbanked and underbanked right now.
- BBF is thrilled to see new doors for open for other organizations who want to work on Project NorthStar. The more the merrier! We hope to work alongside you in creating a more equitable future for people of color. If you are an organization that’s creating new opportunities in Philadelphia for minority tech founders, get in touch with the City!
BBF’s partnership with the City of Philadelphia will always involve programming to empower Black and Latinx founders. We remain committed to the local community and look forward to announcing more facets of our reshaped partnership soon.
Black & Brown Founders is wrapping up our first cohort of entrepreneurs in our Bootstrapping Bootcamp and the City of Philadelphia is soon to announce the StartupPHL Venture Program grantees.
In 2020, we look forward to helping reconvene the conference. But at that time, as a celebration of the progress that 2019 is sure to bring for the unstoppable Black and Latinx entrepreneurs that we’re dedicated to serving.
So, here’s to a successful adjustment in our stride.
The marathon continues. Relive more Project NorthStar magic here: https://blackandbrownfounders.com/northstar-2018
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Want more? Check out the report from Project NorthStar, and learn more tactics for launching a startup as a Black or Latinx entrepreneur in our Bootstrapping Bootcamp. Join the waitlist for cohort two, launching in September 2019.
