In Honor of MLK Day 2023

Keeping the American Dream Alive

Published in

Start-up Society

4 min readJan 16, 2023

Welcome to the 109th edition of Start-up Society! This blog highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.

Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! This beautiful bronze sculpture called “The Embrace” was just unveiled in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King in the Freedom Plaza of the Boston Common! The art piece depicts an embrace between the two and also seems to give a heart shape when viewed from this angle. If modern art is not your thing, fear not! We have a very interesting start-up we will be covering today.

The Network State

A bit of context here. In 2022, Balaji Srinivasan published his book, The Network State. A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory worldwide and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.

If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. — MLK Jr.

The idea of the network state seems highly aligned with this quote. As society changes over time, it is important for all of us to find our own communities and connect with them in any way that we can. With technology ranging from connecting people to decentralizing finance, it seems that more is possible now than ever before, especially in regard to community building. Afropolitan is an example of one network state. Let’s dive in and understand what this digital nation is up to!

Afropolitan

HQ: San Francisco, California

Founded: 2022

Employees: 13 (on LinkedIn)

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Afropolitan is creating a Digital Nation to enable all Africans to build abundant lives. The path is laid out into four different initiatives with the first centered around building up the actual network via an NFT launch to prove that you are a member of this network state (read more about the utility here).
The second phase is to launch the Afropolitan Super App which will create a central “location” for the network state to congregate, interact, govern, and transact.
Phases three and four are centered around establishing legitimacy and acquiring land to cement the network state in real life.
The company raised $2.1M in a series seed funding round in June of 2022 led by Shima Capital & Savannah Fund with participation from a variety of angel investors.

MEET THE TEAM

Eche Emole, Co-Founder

Previously, Eche earned his B.Sc. from San Jose State University and his Master’s from San Francisco State University, both degrees in Political Science. In 2018, he graduated from the University of California Hastings Law School with a J.D. in International Law and Legal studies.
After earning his degrees, he started his career at Flutterwave — a P2P payment product, as a Business Development Executive and moved to CloudTrucks as a content producer.
Afropolitan formally launched early last year although Eche has been building up to the launch for many years.

Chika Uwazie, Co-Founder

Previously, Chika earned her Master of Professional Studies (MPS) from Georgetown University in HR and Human Capital Management in 2015.
She was a member of the 19th Batch from 500 Startups and served as CEO for TalentBase HR, which was ultimately acquired by Venture Garden Group.
She spent the next two and a half years working as a Technical Recruiter for Hotjar, Pinterest & Protocol Labs until 2022 when she helped co-found and formally launch Afropolitan.

THE START-UP SOCIETY ASSESSMENT

The idea of launching a Network State is extremely fascinating. A new experiment in community building enabled by modern and current technologies is what people need.
The identities of individuals are increasingly fractured and are clearly separated from the traditional ways of viewing community. People are no longer bound to one neighborhood, one state, one nation, or one network; building an outlet focused on supporting the African Diaspora is a long-term attempt to build a new type of community.
NFTs to raise capital and build an initial community of builders, creators, and supporters is an excellent start. Phase two, which is focused on a super app, will be the most pivotal step. Similar to OneFeather (featured in Start-up Society #71), the idea of connecting communities so that they can freely communicate, govern, and transact is not uncommon and will become increasingly necessary.