News — Black entrepreneurs

Coviello Salinès’ father, Freddie Francisco Salinès, introduced him to cooking and winemaking at a young age although his dad wanted him to become a neurosurgeon.

“He wanted me to be like the early Ben Carson, so he would bring home large brain books for me to study,” Coviello told Soul Vision Magazine. “They were 1,000 pages long, breaking down analysis and all this different stuff with him,” according to Travel Noire.

Coviello’s parents migrated to Southern Bronx from the Caribbean. His father was a serviceman while his mother was a nurse. Cooking was his father’s big hobby and he would often pair different wines and beers and things that match with the food that he made, Coviello recalled.

After completing a university in Ohio where he studied biochemistry and minored in petroleum engineering, Coviello worked in the engineering field for a while before he was discouraged from the field by the wide-scale land destruction, racism, and nepotism.

It was at this point that he decided to venture into winemaking, after all, he had been introduced to it in his formative years when his father was alive. He traveled to Geneva to meet his friends. While in Geneva, he learned about the unethical practice of wine coloring. Coviello got to work on a scientific blueprint.

“I started writing out the formula of not only the derivative of grape skins but the anthocyanin compound that is in multiple fruits and vegetables,” he told TravelNoitre. “I also wrote the analysis of spectrum when it came down to the acidic to pH scalability of these different types of skins that allowed the molecular breakdown of that compound to sustain another color.” 

“So at that point, I started researching it, I figured out a formula that I was comfortable with, and I brought it to a few of the researchers and a few of the people that I was close with. And we started to find different areas that we can start sourcing these products,” he said.

He also traveled to Italy, known for producing some of the finest wines in the world, to learn more about preparing wine. He finally managed to come out with a product he so desired.

“It broke down every single avenue of the color spectrum of blue,” he said of the final result. “So when you look at the bottle, it has every single hue of blue attached to it, which I wanted to achieve but I didn’t think it was possible.”

After successful trials, he launched Amour Genève, the world’s first FDA, TTB, and EU-approved natural blue. His blue wine is now making waves in several countries, including the United States. “People are loving it. They’re loving the story. They’re loving the journey and the shape of the business. It’s just, it’s just all beautiful.”

Also, the wine is linked to his father as the wine’s trademark color of blue is his late dad’s favorite color.

By age 19, Moses Shepherd was working at Sunoco gas station in Detroit and eventually became a manager. While at Sunoco, he ran eight stores and made all of them profitable. Although his work was draining, for Shepherd, it was an opportunity to learn as much as possible.

“I worked 12 hours a day, six days a week for a salary of $375. But it really wasn’t the money at all, it was about what they taught me, so eventually, I could write my own paycheck,” he told Chains Detriot Business.

After nearly four years at Sunoco, Moses left to start a music distribution company where he supplied music to gas stations across Detroit and later, countrywide.

His business became profitable and he decided to expand it. “I had three record stores — one in Pontiac, one in Detroit, and one in Inkster. So, as the market turned, I decided to shutter the stores, and I had an idea to start selling music and electronics to prison inmates,” he said.

He started selling music to one prison in 1996 and by the year 2000, he was supplying 3,500 prisons across the country. “This was the product that I had manufactured in China and shipped over here. And they were transparent, so the inmate couldn’t hide any contraband,” he said.

Everything was going on well for Moses until he became vindictive. Wanting to put an ‘enemy’ out of business, he withheld investment in his profitable prison business and got back into the rack distribution business. “So it goes to show where my mindset was, right,” he said. “And when I did that, I went out of business. It was a flop. So, I lost that business, and I lost the prison distribution business.”

Shepherd lost almost everything he had labored for and he barely could afford anything. He started reading real estate books but couldn’t buy the books, so he had to sit in the bookstore and read them.

His credit was however marginal enough to be able to buy a house and fix it up. “…My books told me that I can buy this house for $50,000. My book said (list) the house for $65,000, and I can pull $15,000 back at the closing.”

With time, he started buying more houses and ended up with a couple of hundred houses over in between the University District, Bagley, and Grandmont-Rosedale Park. He had so many houses that he actually controlled what the rents were, he said. By 2008, he had started buying the entire neighborhood.

After making it big in the real estate sector, Shepherd decided to invest in the fuel business. He launched Ace Petroleum in 2017, starting one of the nation’s largest minority-owned fuel suppliers. In 2020, ACE Petroleum obtained a $27 million contract with Detroit to supply fuel services for the city’s police cars, emergency medical vehicles, fire trucks, buses, and other transportation units. It is a contract for five years.

A Black businesswoman has accused a Connecticut bank of racism after officials there allegedly refused to allow her to withdraw her money. Gwen Samuel said she felt humiliated by the alleged incident that took place at the Southington-based branch of TD Bank.

According to her, officials of the bank did not offer any explanation why they refused to give her the money. She later used the ATM of the bank’s other branch to withdraw her money.

Samuel is a social activist and founder of the Connecticut Parents Union, a group advocating for equal educational opportunities for children in Connecticut. She said she has been a customer of the bank for 16 years and had gone to withdraw an amount of $1,000 from the bank to pay a vendor.

“I go inside, I had my TD Bank card and my license. They were cordial. I’m not even gonna say they were rude,” she told Fox61. According to her, the teller at the branch spent a lot of time going through her account before refusing the withdrawal.

“She hands me my license and she says, ‘I don’t feel comfortable giving you the money.’ So, I got confused, so I said, ‘You don’t feel comfortable giving me the money,'” she said. “Well, you just deposited the check yesterday.”

Even though Samuel told the teller that the check has been cleared and verified, the teller responded: “And she said ‘oh yeah it cleared. The money is available. I just don’t feel comfortable giving it to you,'” a speechless Samuel said. 

In a statement, TD Bank said it is proudly serving a diverse community and does not discriminate against its customers. The statement also described the incident as regrettable and noted that it was contacting the victim to address her concerns.

“At TD Bank, we proudly serve diverse communities and customers and do not discriminate in the services we provide or the products we offer,” the statement said. “The security of our customers’ accounts is a top priority and we regret that the specific reasons why the transaction could not be completed may not have been explained to Ms. Samuel at our Queen Street store in Southington.”

Flutterwave was not the first of its kind in Africa when it was started in 2016 by Nigerian technologists and former bankers. But perhaps, the point of its success can be attributed to the fact it was a financial tech platform that had a lot of input from those in finance.

Often, the process of technological innovation can seem like a developer’s license to play to the gallery. The app or whatever is developed could therefore lose its ergonomic utility. Flutterwave turned out differently and by 2018, it was a market leader in sub-Saharan Africa.

A digital payment app known for being seamless and secure, Flutterwave continues to be the choice for small to medium-scale enterprises (SMEs).

Founder and CEO, Olugbenga Agboola said via social media that plan was always to “build a payments technology infrastructure that connects Africa to the global economy by making local and international payments seamless.”

Flutterwave’s website says the app is available in 11 countries, however, it will soon be 20. This is thanks to a Series C funding that was announced on Wednesday to much funfair in Nigeria and across Africa.

The $170 million secured means in the third round of funding means that the fintech start-up is now a unicorn – a startup worth over $1 billion. This is the first time an indigenous African fintech is valued at that amount.

“We’re grateful for our People, Customers, Investors, Partners, Regulators, the people at @EndeavorNigeria and well-wishers. Through your support, we have empowered millions to start their journey to economic freedom, wherever they are, knowing that the world is their market,” Agboola continued in a series of tweets.

But signs show that this could only be the beginning of a lot of good for Flutterwave. Currently, the app hosts more than 1,000 African SMEs that sell their wares on the platform.

Apart from that, individual users of Flutterwave are in their hundreds of thousands but growing. There are now intentions to expand the company’s services to North Africa as well.

Victor Asemota, a Nigerian venture capitalist, believes the success of Flutterwaves will have a positive impact on other tech start-ups across the continent.

“The panic this Flutterwave raise had created in certainly [sic] circles means that Africa was severely underrated both externally and internally. Look, we have done Telco payments all over Africa and this is the tip of the iceberg. Flutterwave will list [sic] and be a greater success,” Asemota said via Twitter.

For so many years, the agriculture sector has been the mainstay of Africa’s economy until it was recently overtaken by the services sector. Many development analysts have said agriculture is the surest way the continent can escape from extreme hunger and unemployment.

However, the challenge confronting many of the continent’s youth who want to go into farming is the lack of access to capital, logistical constraint and other incentives. For instance, in Europe and America, farmers enjoy subsidies from the government but the situation is not so in many African countries. 

Farmers are virtually on their own and what makes it worse is that they face competition from cheap imported frozen chicken, fish and other agricultural products from western capitals. 

Therefore, for one to venture into full-time farming in Africa, it takes not only courage but true love for the profession. That’s exactly how Ayodele Pamela felt when she wanted to start poultry farming in Nigeria. 

“I never had the tiniest of intentions of going into farming at all,” Pamela told thefounders. “In fact, I would have strongly disputed it if I had been told that I would ever be involved in farming.”

Her comments reflect the general lack of interest in farming among a new generation of African youth. Despite the lack of interest, the sector remains the second-largest employer and still attracts a considerable number of young people.

Pamela started her poultry business on the back of buying catfish and eggs. One day, she saw a vacant land, asked for the price, purchased it and commenced fish farming on the land. She later bought 100 Layer Chicks to start her poultry farm.

“Having nowhere to house the chicks, I begged someone to allow me keep the chicks with him, then I go to feed them,” Pamela said. “When the chicks started laying, I just used to dash it out.”

Her husband impressed on her to start selling the eggs since there is a market for them. This would not only let her earn some income, but it will help her recover the money she invested in feeding the chicks.

“Whenever the eggs reach 10 creates, I’ll sell them; I then noticed that this was a profitable venture, that’s when I now built a suitable housing for them, then I moved 100 birds there,” Pamela said. “After my husband supported me to get 500 birds to add to the existing ones,” she added.

According to her, she starting her fish farming and poultry business having no knowledge of it. “I practiced with my own chicks and fishes, no prior learning at all,” she said.

One of the recurring challenges confronting Pamela is the supply glut in the industry. She said due to excess supply, she is sometimes forced to drop her price in order to sell. She is, however, “still very much strong” in the business and has even expanded.

In his early twenties, Shaun “Lucky” Corbett was arrested on three different occasions. First, he was arrested for a concealed weapon, then he was caught for breaking and entering, and finally on drug charges, which was later dismissed because the search that led to the discovery of cocaine in his car was illegal.

However, it was his third arrest that led Corbett to turn over a new leaf. He wanted to live an honest life but no one was willing to hire someone with a criminal record. On one occasion when he applied for a job, he left blank the section seeking information on his criminal record.

When he was called for an interview, he confessed to serving time in jail and the managers of Value City hired him for his honesty. He worked there for more than two years and later enrolled in No Grease barber school. 

Finance almost became an impediment for him to train as a barber. So he took a job to serve pizza to keep the cashing coming in. It earned him the name Pizza Boy and Mr Pizza.

He graduated in 2016 as a certified barber and eventually managed to acquire his own barbering shop at North Tryon Street. He opened his first Lucky Spot barbershop in 2010 and later operated his shop in Walmart, making him the first Black businessperson to ever own and operate a barbershop in any Walmart.

“I want to open a Lucky Spot in every inner-city in America,” Corbett told. “I want it to be the standard of what community barbering is.”

Lucky Sport barbershop is not just a local shop where people go for a haircut but it has also become a place that promotes cooperation between African Americans and the police. Corbett has now gone from being a former felon to a community leader.

“You know, I’ve been building on the relationship and the community service that I had already done with Walmart. I started meeting and talking with certain people higher up on the food chain,” Corbett told.

Now 41, Corbett has opened three locations in Walmart, his latest location being in Gastonia amidst the pandemic. “Covid allowed me to map things out like I got the next 20 something stores laid out,” he said.

His next shop in Columbia, SC., is set to open in the spring while another shop is being planned in Atlanta. “We’re really just taking advantage of the opportunity, and it’s bigger than us, we’re about creating opportunities for others,” Corbett said.

Generational wealth and bridging the racial wealth gap have been topics discussed heavily throughout the past year as a result of the protests over racial injustice. Since then, numerous organizations have made new pledges to do their part to help the Black community create more wealth for their families. One Black woman used her finance background to create a platform to teach Black consumers how to generate wealth through the stock market.

Tiffany James is the founder of the Modern Black Girl, a digital platform designed to help newcomers learn to use the stock market and other resources on wealth-building and managing a stock portfolio. James says she was inspired to start her business after learning about stocks in her free time driven by her curiosity and sought to create a platform where users can learn the basics.

“The stock market is 80% psychology 20% technical,” said James in an email interview. “Not only do you learn wealth-building tips and how to manage your money but you also learn patience, confidence, critical thinking skills, and leadership.”

James has also been using the audio social app Clubhouse to help provide resources and engaging panels through the app that has helped her reach a new audience.

“When Clubhouse started I would join the guy’s stock rooms and in most cases be the only women in the conversation,” she said. “After a few rooms with the guys, a lot of women begged me to start my own platform back in November. Three months later, we are here with over 94,000 members [who are] primarily women of color.”

The platform also hosts a Teen University for younger people to learn the basics about the stock markets in addition to classes for adults.

Hart Wilson is a young, bustling entrepreneur at the tender age of 11. According to Because of Them We Can, the prepubescent tween launched his scented candle line, Candles From The Hart, to pay for his education at the school of his dreams- Howard University. 

Hart created the aromatic wax lights after going to the prestigious historically-black university at the age of six. The youngster fell in love with the school and earned money to pay for his tuition. 

The Texas tween implemented a plan and fundraised through selling his candles last year.

“I got on the internet and saw that people were making different things to sell and earn money, and I settled on candles,” Wilson told the publication. 

“My parents and I watched YouTube videos and started experimenting with making candles, and we figured it all out, and that’s when it all started,” he confessed.

Wilson created a store on Etsy and started selling his candles. 

Candles From The Hart offers a plethora of fragrances like Guava Fresca, Tranquil Sea and Cashmere Plum (a scent he created to honor Alzheimer’s Awareness Month.) He also has a line of wax melts and car fragrances.

Customers can find Wilson’s luminary delights in local stores in his hometown of Pearland, Texas, Chicago and Houston. 

Candles From The Hart even caught the eyes of some big-name celebrities including, the New Orleans Pelicans basketball team, Inda Craig-Galvan, a television writer for ABC’s “How To Get Away With Murder,” actress Keena Ferguson from Tyler Perry’s “Sistas” and “Queen Sugar” actress Tracey Bonner.

Although Wilson’s candle company is flourishing, his main objective is to pay for his education at Howard University.

At 29, Theo Baloyi has a made name for himself in South Africa as one of the thriving young entrepreneurs. His journey started when he met a French businessman with a shop at Durban Airport a few years ago. In a long conversation, the two of them talked about entrepreneurship and culture.

That was when the interest to go into entrepreneurship started for Baloyi. He told himself if he wanted to make an impact, he needed to take calculated risks. He then decided to venture into the footwear industry after noticing a market gap.

Through his research, he noticed that most of the sneakers on the continent were imported brands. And so he wanted to design something with an African touch. Initially, he wanted to import the sneakers from established brands but later decided against it.

In the process, Baloyi co-founded Bathu, a South African township slang for ‘shoes’, in 2015. His brand of sneakers is designed with a distinctive mesh fabric and thick white soles.

“I did 18 months of research and development, which included coming up with a proof of concept, quality testing and quality assurance,” Baloyi explained in an interview with Howwemadeitinafrica. Baloyi’s accounting experience helped in this regard. “I’ve been fortunate to have extensive experience with business and finance modelling in a corporate environment.”

According to him, he settled on the name Bathu because his business is about uniting people. “It doesn’t matter where you go, whether it’s a place filled with isiXhoa, isiZulu or Sepedi speaking people, South Africa know what it means. It unites us, and that’s what the business is about- uniting people,” he told news24.

Today, his shoe business makes a turnover of over $1 million. The company also has four cars, two stores at Gauteng, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth. 

South Africa is one of the unestablished markets for sneakers and so for most designs, manufacturing companies do not have the right equipment for it. And in some cases, the companies have to source the right equipment, by which time the designs submitted would have been outmoded.

“In South Africa, you need about eight months to manufacture a new shoe. In the East, this usually takes four weeks. While South African factories can buy expensive equipment to manufacture according to specific requirements, the trends and styles may no longer be current when the product is completed,” Baloyi told Howwemadeitinafrica.

Through his network, he found a manufacturer for his first 100 Bathu sneakers. “A colleague at PwC whose friend’s family owned a factory… So, I got to work,” he said. In 2017, he managed to release 1000 pairs of Mesh Edition sneakers through a collaboration with an incubation hub in Johannesburg.

Baloyi said his success even surprised him. “The rewards were are reaping now are pleasures I thought we’d only see a couple of years from now,” he said. “But through the hard work and perseverance of my team, we’ve come this far in just three years.”

According to the entrepreneur, he reinvested profit from his business in order to make it a sustainable venture. “Five years later, this is where we are: 15,000 pairs per month and it’s growing,” he said.

Currently, there are 12 Bathu retail outlets across the country, aside from the online store. The company employs 103 people.

The release of the Fenty fashion label made Rihanna the first Black woman to create a Luxury Brand with Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE (LVMH). Per WWD, the luxury fashion brand and the ‘Work’ singer are putting production on hold for her fashion line after barely two years of its launch in anticipation of better conditions.

It was the first time Chief Executive Officer of LVMH Bernard Arnault launched a brand under the parent company of Louis Vuitton from scratch since Christian Lacroix in 1987.

The luxury fashion industry was badly impacted by the coronavirus. However, the LVMH’s investment fund will continue to support the Savage x Fenty lingerie brand and the Fenty Beauty cosmetics line.

“LVMH and Rihanna reaffirm their ambition to concentrate on the growth and the long-term development of Fenty ecosystem focusing on cosmetics, skincare and lingerie,” the luxury goods company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Fashion analysts believe that the prices may have been too steep for consumers despite Rihanna’s huge following. “Celebrity-originated brands can be very popular very quickly, but their staying power is questionable,” Luca Solca, analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said. “The risk is that they end up being a flash in the pan.”

However, there is no other celebrity to make the Black Girl Magic spell more compelling than Robyn Rihanna Fenty who has dominated the entertainment and fashion industry for several years.

She was recently certified by Forbes as the richest female musician in the world.

Following her hit song “Work” in 2016, the famous musician has evolved into a serial entrepreneur. Her source of wealth, according to Forbes, comes from music, cosmetics and her clothing lines.

Rihanna has sold more than 60 million albums and 215 million digital tracks, according to her label, Roc Nation. This places her as the second best-selling digital artiste globally.

The Barbadian singer is regarded by Forbes as one of the most publicly charitable celebrities. She was named Harvard Humanitarian of the Year in 2017 for her work supporting education and health care in the Caribbean and developing countries.

She recently donated $5 million to various organizations assisting with coronavirus relief efforts. Other charitable works by her include giving $1 million to New York’s needy, $2.1 million to abuse victims in LA and $5 million to other charities through the Clara Lionel Foundation.

The stories of refugees pursuing economic ventures to contribute to the growth of their host country are replete in the literature. However, because of their status as refugees, their success stories are often not given attention in the media. In cases where stories of refugees are reported, they are often about their involvement in crimes and other social vices.

Despite the seeming lack of growing interest in the economic persuasion of refugees which leads to job creation, some of their success stories have attracted the world’s attention. One of such is Kanyi Maqubela, who migrated to the US with his family as refugees from South Africa.

The US remains one of the favorite destinations of refugees worldwide partly due to their refugee policies and their respect for human rights, although those were nearly wiped out during the Trump administration.

Kanyi arrived in the US at the height of the apartheid regime in South Africa. After living in debilitating conditions in his own country, he and his family felt migrating to the US will pay off for them. And as faith would have it, Kanyi has become a successful entrepreneur in the US and his parents got employed.

Kanyi co-founded Kindred Ventures with Steve Jang after successfully raising $56 million. Kindred Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund based in San Francisco, California. According to Shoppe Black, Kindred Ventures has invested in over 40 companies located in North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa. Previous Kindred Ventures investments count companies like Uber, Coinbase, and Virgin Hyperloop One.

Also, Kanyi recently raised $100 million in capital commitments from a mix of major university endowments, foundations, fund-of-funds, and strategic investors, according to Techcrunch.

Kanyi and Jang have served as founders, early employees, and advisors in several pioneering technology startups. Kanyi also served as a Partner at Collaborative Fund, where he was an early advisor to Tala and Walker & Co., and a board member at Buffer, Camino Financial, Spruce, and True Link, a post on Kindred Ventures’ website said.

In addition to co-founding Kindred Ventures, the Soweto born is also a co-founder of Heartbeat Health, a telehealth platform for cardiology that incorporates telemedicine, remote diagnostics, and digital heart health programs.

Indeed, Kanyi prides himself on founding the only virtual heart health app with video visits and at-home diagnostics. The app now has over 20,000 patients or subscribers as per its figures in 2019.

Despite making it in the US, Kanyi and his family’s story ‘in the land of freedom’ was not all rosy. They lived in a homeless shelter and were on food stamps until his mother got a job as an ESL teacher at Fashion Institute of Technology, and his father got a job as a cashier and coat checker at the Museum of Natural History, according to Shoppe Black.

Today, both parents are not only gainfully employed, but they are both accomplished educators while Kanyi did undergraduate and graduate studies at Stanford University, where he majored in Philosophy, and studied among others computer science, chemistry, physics, and mathematics.

He taught elementary and middle school math and science and claimed to have worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign team. “I really enjoyed being on the teaching team for Design Your Life, a class for undergraduates out of the Stanford Design Program,” he says on his website.

“We’re over-mentored and under-capitalized,” the venture capitalist told Bloomberg on why Black businesses need investment than activism. “I believe there’s an opportunity to use the acute national attention to catalyze structural change but it doesn’t happen on its own.”

Byron Allen, the chairman and CEO of the Allen Media Group and owner of the Weather Channel, has settled and withdrawn his $10 billion racial discrimination lawsuit against Charter Communications.

Both Allen and Charter Communications announced the settlement in a joint statement Wednesday. The settlement follows one between Allen and Comcast last summer in which Comcast agreed to carry several of Allen’s channels.

In 2015, the former Real People actor sued both Charter and Comcast for $20 billion alleging the companies weren’t carrying his TV channels due to racism. The suit made it to the Supreme Court, but the high court struck down his arguments in a 9-0 decision, saying it was not enough to assert that race was one of several factors in not picking up his channels, he had to show it was a critical factor in not picking up the channel.

With Charter and Allen settling, the suit is officially over. The terms between Allen and Charter have not been released, but if it’s anything close to his settlement with Comcast, Charter will pick up some of Allen’s channels.

The Allen Media Group owns 16 power four (ABC-NBC-CBS-FOX) affiliate broadcast stations and 10, 24-hour networks including the Weather Channel, Pets.TV, and Comedy.TV. The group also has active license agreements for stations in the Bahamas, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand.

The former stand-up comedian told the Hollywood Reporter last year that he wants to own CNN one day and he will.

“I’m close to the same age when Rupert Murdoch came here to America,” Allen told the Reporter in an interview published July 9. “He was in his 50s. I’m 59. What you see today will be 10,000 times bigger.”

When pressed on what would make the ultimate jewel in his crown, without hesitation, the media mogul replied, “I’d love to own CNN. But I have to buy AT&T to do that. And I will. Believe me, I think about it every day.”