AfroTech16- Entrepreneurship at its peak
Ama Marfo, Jessica O. Matthews, and Rodney Williams on entrepreneurship, team building, and success.
It’s no secret that two weeks ago, the air in San Francisco was a bit different. #AfroTech16 was trending on Twitter- conference participants along with contributors across the country yearning to attend amplified the conversation for the entire world to see. From Startup Survival, to Apps Without Code with Tara Reid, the larger panel topics fueled lasting connectivity and impact.
Blavity’s first annual AfroTech conference took San Francisco by storm. From Galvanize to the Westfield San Francisco Centre, November 11th and 12th San Francisco was home to 500 plus thought leaders and tech influencers seizing the opportunity to commune, inspire, and be inspired. We got a chance to interview AfroTech speakers Ama Marfo, Co-Founder and CEO, Airfordable, Rodney Willams, CEO, LISNR, and Jessica O. Matthews, CEO, Uncharted Play on using entrepreneurship as a vehicle to creating impact.
Ama Marfo, Co-Founder and CEO, Airfordable
What does “entrepreneurship” mean to you?
“Entrepreneurship is figuring out what you’re passionate about while solving a problem to have a huge impact on the world- bringing something into the world that changes lives for the better. Every day I get a story in my inbox of how Airfordable has made someone travel to somewhere to do something super amazing. It’s just what keeps us motivated.”
What advice do you have for fellow entrepreneurs about building and leading teams?
“It’s okay to delegate and let other people work on it if they’re good at it, and you trust that they’ll deliver what you want them to do. If you’re looking for a team you need to make sure that you can trust them from the beginning because this is going to be a long journey. You’re going to be working with them day in and day out so you want to be working with someone you can trust to be able to build the company the way you want to.”
What does successful business look like to you?
“We determine success when we’re changing someone’s life. Getting them from point A to point B. For example, when someone is able to book their flight and go see family they haven’t seen in 10 years. Things like that moves, encourage, and motivate us to continue building Airfordable.”
Jessica O. Matthews, CEO, Uncharted Play
What does “entrepreneurship” mean to you?
“Entrepreneurship is about thinking divergently, being okay with being uncomfortable and with the unknown. I believe that discomfort breeds innovation and innovation comes from thinking outside of the box. Entrepreneurship is about innovation and taking chances on things that other people may think are crazy, and sometimes that is uncomfortable.”- Jessica O. Matthews
What advice do you have for fellow entrepreneurs about building and leading teams?
“You are never really working alone. Even when you’re working within a company, you are constantly collaborating and bouncing ideas off of one another. Partners are essential to our business and any business. The diverse team of engineers, business experts, social scientists, and designers at Uncharted Play add many different perspectives to any product or project we are working on. Additionally, with an almost equal number of men and women and a diverse range of ethnicities and countries represented on our team, we are able to pull ideas from a variety of experiences. Ultimately, these diverse perspectives help us serve our global business customers and end users better, giving us a competitive edge over other companies that aren’t doing the same.”
What does successful business look like to you?
“I view business as a means to the end and not the end itself. It’s a system, a methodology and a way of thinking about sustainable, scalable impact. Sustainable, scalable invention. I think that’s what’s made it easier for me to make some of the hard decisions when you have to balance your soul with the business world.”
Rodney Willams, CEO, LISNR
What does “entrepreneurship” mean to you?
I don’t believe in the definition of work for yourself or like I wasn’t attracted to that part of entrepreneurship. I was attracted to the part of creating something new or creating something innovative that hasn’t been created before.”
What advice do you have for fellow entrepreneurs about building and leading teams?
“You can’t do great things by yourself, and you can’t be great at everything, and you have to give autonomy to people, succeed or fail. Naturally I’m not a great manager because looking at how I lead, I give you the autonomy to succeed. I don’t hire people that I have the expectation that I need to learn or help them grow.”
What does successful business look like to you?
“Success is doing a tad more ‘right’ things than the ‘wrong’ things. I think that the day that we’re doing everything right and we’ve built a billion-dollar company, we’ll be successful. Everyday I’m trying to do ten things right and work through nine things wrong. It’s a little bit more right every day.”
Jena Dominique is an international traveler, currently based out of the Bay Area as the Social Media Ninja for the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center.
