A Collage of 2021 Black Grads, The OG Dave Chappelle Shows Black Creatives How to Use Their Power, Black Women Starting Businesses in Big Numbers

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What's up, fam?

In honor of graduation season, please enjoy this collage of a few of our favorite pics of Black graduates this year.

Congrats to the educated and melanated excellence. We love to see it.

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-Eric Abrego

Black Money on The Move

Your weekly roundup of Black excellence making moves in the world.

• CEO of the Year. Kenneth Frazier, the Chairman & CEO of American pharmaceutical giant, Merck, was named 'CEO of the Year' by Chief Executive Magazine. Frazier was chosen for the award by an independent committee of his peers for his "Jordan in 96" level run at Merck over the last 10 years. Imagine how many more stories like these we'd see if more Black folks were chosen for the top spot? I'm just saying...
• Young Hov and Serena Williams coming for that NFT bag. Non Fungible Token (NFT) platform Bitski recently announced that they raised $19 million in series A funding from big name VC firms and investors including Jay Z's Marcy Ventures, Serena Williams and Andreessen Horowitz. The company allows brands, creators and platforms to create, sell and purchase NFTs. NFT sales are moving out here. They're up 55% since 2020 from $250 million to $389 million.
• Black bubbly brand on the come up. Publicly traded beverage giant, Constellation Brands, recently announced that it bought a stake in Black-owned rosé brand La Fête du Rosé. The investment which was made through Constellation's venture capital arm is the first investment in an effort led by the company to invest $100M in minority-owned businesses by 2030. The financials of the deal were not disclosed, but we're just happy to see our people winning.

Black Girl Magic: Black Women Are Starting Businesses in Major Numbers

If you've been following this newsletter since its launch, you know we support everything Black and especially Black women. They show up and show out in everything they do from ensuring our collective right to vote to shattering glass ceilings everywhere we look. Another area where they've shown up with that same Black girl magic energy is entrepreneurship.

Numbers Don't Lie

In the United States, 17% of Black women are currently in the process of starting or running a business compared to 15% of white women and 10% of white men. The number of Black women-owned businesses has also increased 164% since 2007. Black women-owned businesses also represent 42% of all new women-owned businesses and 36% of all Black-owned employer businesses. We love to see the sisters showing out.

Even though the numbers show that the energy among Black women toward entrepreneurship is real, there's still a lot of work to be done to ensure that Black women-owned businesses thrive. Currently only 3% of Black women are running mature businesses, which means that a big number of them aren't making it to later stages. The Harvard Business Review (HBR) attributes a number of reasons to the drop off:

1. 61% of Black women-owned businesses are in retail/wholesale or the health, education, government or social services sectors which have low margins, are overly competitve and more difficult to keep going over the long term.
2. Access to capital is another barrier to success for Black women and their businesses. 61% of the businesses are self-funded.
3. Debt. Black women, who are the most educated demographic in the United States, tend to come from households with lower income (only 29% come from households making $75,000 or more) which means they take on bigger burdens in the form of loans to pay for college and have little collateral.

The impact of the pandemic on businesses has disproportionately impacted Black women businesses too. 41% of Black-owned businesses have shut down since the beginning of the pandemic compared to 17% of white businesses.

What Can We Do?

There are a few ways that we can help ensure the success of Black women-owned businesses according to HBR. These include financial institutions checking biases in their own lending practices and educational institutions offering more courses that help Black women prepare for a journey in entrepreneurship. I'd also add that more access to mentorship and education, particularly from VC firms and companies who have claimed to support the fight for racial equity, would be major.

Although the numbers show that there's a lot of work to be done to help Black women-owned businesses succeed, there are good examples out there as to what can happen when you give Black women a shot. One of them is Mielle Organics, a Black women-owned haircare brand, that secured $100 million in VC funding recently. Another example is Uncle Nearest, a Black woman-owned American whiskey brand, which also happens to be the fastest growing and most-awarded independent whiskey brand in American history. We know what Black women can do, we just need to remove the institutional barriers that prevent them from doing what they do best: show up and show out.

Dave Chappelle Shows How to Win Against The System

If you were a kid who grew up in the early 2000s, you were probably one of the many who walked around quoting lines from the Chappelle's Show or was that just me? What I'm trying to say is that the Chappelle's Show and its namesake Dave Chappelle was must-watch TV for everybody back in the day. The comedy legend, who walked away from his Comedy Central show at its peak and a $50 million bag, strutted back on the scene in 2016 when he signed a $20 million per-release deal with Netflix.

How Things Should Go

If you watched any of the comedy specials that Dave has recorded under his deal with Netflix, you'd know that the man hasn't missed a beat since he left the scene all those years ago. Like many of us, you probably felt that sense of nostalgia about the Chappelle's Show and missed the odee hilarious story-telling from the late Charlie Murphy. Like many of us and our streaming behaviors would dictate, you likely went searching for the show on Netflix as well. In November 2020, you were able to find the show on the streaming platform until you were not.

Do the right thing. The comedian who left the ViacomCBS-owned network, Comedy Central, on less than ideal terms in 2006, made it clear to everybody including the honchos at Netflix that he was not feeling the fact that his old show was streaming on the platform (it was also streaming on Comedy Central's website and app). Why? Because he wasn't getting paid for it. The reason was in part because of the fact that when Dave signed his contract in the early 2000s, streaming wasn't a thing yet. YouTube wouldn't be founded until 2005 and Netflix was still a DVD mail business. However, Netflix got it together quickly and pulled the show from their platform before the end of the month after Dave hit their line up directly to express his feelings about the situation.

Go to the people. While Dave's relationship with the streaming network and his discussion with them played a big role in leading them to stop airing the Chappelle's Show, I can't help but think that Chappelle going directly to his fans on social media and urging them to boycott the show probably played a part in it too.

Unlike in the early 2000s, social media apps are prevalent in our lives nowadays in way that they have never been before. This gives creatives and celebrities the opportunity to go directly to their fans with their message. In February, Dave Chappelle and ViacomCBS came to a resolution and according to the Grammy award winning comedian, ViacomCBS reached a new deal on streaming rights and paid him millions. With social media making it easier for celebrities, creatives and influencers to speak directly to their audience, this group has never had as much power as they do now. Dave Chappelle is just the latest example of how the landscape is shifting and the power dynamic between creator and company are rebalancing in a way we haven't seen before.

Tweet Of The Week

Black Twitter is uplifting, educational, entertaining and always on point. Enjoy our favorite Tweet this week below and make sure to take care of yourselves today and everyday, fam.

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I hope y'all enjoyed this week's edition of Black Inc. Feedback is a blessing. Be sure to share it in the comments section and subscribe here so you never miss us in your inbox.