This week marked the opening of New Orleans entrepreneur "season". Each year it expands its reach in Louisiana. For 6 years it has been an underlying theme of my blog. The impact this network has had on venture/angel capital and debt capital in the city has been dominant in how the city has rebuilt since Hurricane Katrina.
6 years ago I had the fundamental misunderstanding that my journey would include fairness. It wasn't until reading Project Diane, auditioning for Shark Tank, and attending Walker's Legacy Women's Business Brunch it finally took root inside me that my business WAS a "real" business. I had sat on the side for 6 years watching entrepreneurs of all levels receiving funding, like Dinner Lab. But also successful enterprises that bring economic development. The last several New Orleans Entrepreneur Week's I have been critical about how venture capital is networked in the city and state, exclusion of minority entrepreneurs, it is basically a good ole boy's club. Many of the ventures funded have contributed to the city now being on par with Zambia in income inequality and other disparate results for minority and poor neighborhoods. Yet NOEW continues to drive entrepreneurs towards it. This is how I meet many of the other not included, brilliant entrepreneurs.
Yesterday I was told by one of the founders of this network that if I am not getting funding for my social business it is most likely because I am not "fundable".With just 0.02% of companies founded by black women funded through these networks, ability rarely is the deciding factor if someone like me gets funded. Last year was the first time in 5 years I was "qualified" to pitch in NOEW with LaunchNOLA. I won People's Choice, yet none of those people supported my crowdfund campaign to actually bring anyone safe water.
I predicted last year as NOEW rhetoric focused on "equity" that soon the very people who created the problem will now get more money saying they are solving the problem. Millions now will still flow through these gatekeepers and money won't reach entrepreneurs with ideas and businesses that are what these networks consider red-flags of investing. What the data says the red-flags are is minority owned businesses.
Steve Case told a group of eager listeners in one of the poorer of New Orleans' neighborhoods a few years ago that it took 10 years for AOL to "take off". Certainly no entrepreneur expects it to be easy. But shouldn't we hope it would be fair and equal?
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