News — Black Founders

Many desire to rent a place where they can have a good landlord. While the idea seems impossible, a Black founder has created a solution that allows renters to have a fair idea of the property they are moving into and its owner.

Ofo Ezeugwu had the idea during his days at Temple University when he was the VP of the student body. He heard horrific stories of students who lived on and outside campus about how they are being harassed by their landlords or living in infested apartments.

“I was running for the VP of Temple’s student body during my junior year (2012). At one of our late-night meetings, we were discussing ways to help students with off-campus living,” he told.

“I thought aloud, ‘what if students could rate their landlords, that way those coming in behind them would know what to expect before ever signing a lease?’ The students loved the idea and our team eventually won the campaign with, at the time, “Rate Your Landlord” on our platform,” he said.

Ezeugwu founded “WhoseYourLandlord”, which allows users to submit reviews of their landlords to help potential renters to avoid difficult and troublesome landlords. WhoseYourLandlord, a multipurpose online platform, is also aimed at increasing housing literacy in communities.

Since launching the platform, WhoseYourLandlord has raised $1.1 million and reviewed by some 22,000 landlords across over 250 cities in the United States. The ApartmentTherapy.com describes the platform as “The MVP of Landlord Review Sites.” Ezeugwu’s initial funding, about $25,000, was from family and friends and he secured an additional $20,000 from pitch competitions.

Ezeugwu has received many questions regarding the name of his company. But he explains that he chose the possessive form of the word “who” because he is giving renters ownership of the situation by putting housing in their hands.

“Here at WYL, we truly believe in the concept that knowledge is power. The ability to move word of mouth onto an online platform that can be of more use in highlighting positive people to work with and revealing negative situations prior to you finding yourself in one is tremendously needed,” he said.

The Philly native was recently recognized as a Disruptive and Innovative Entrepreneur by NBCUniversal and New York On Tech. In 2018, he was named the Young Professional of the Year by the African American Chamber of Commerce and also named as one of BET’s #30Under30.

He is also a model and actor who has been featured on the Today show, Philly Fashion Week and Brooklyn Fashion Week, BET reported.

Ezeugwu has been instrumental in the fight against Covid-19 in Philadelphia where almost half of residents are renters. The pandemic led to job losses and many struggling to renew their rent bills. He partnered up with Walmart to disburse $25,000 for rent relief to help 50 Philadelphia families amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to reports.

“With everything happening amidst COVID, in one of our meetings they were asking us to highlight issues that we’re seeing they could help us address,” said Ezeugwu. “And I was like ‘look my company is in the housing space. We have a non-profit that’s focused on the intersection between housing and mental health.”

Morgan Stanley has announced 11 startups for its fifth cohort of the Multicultural Innovation Lab, including seven companies run by Black founders.

The Lab is an accelerator program for technology and technology-enabled startups in the post-seed to Series B funding rounds.

Now in its fifth year with 43 participating companies, the program targets startups with a multicultural or woman founder, co‐founder, CTO, or other C-suite member developing innovative solutions across sectors.

“Our survey found that during 2020, progress was made in venture capitalists’ attitudes and actions regarding the importance of investing in women and multicultural entrepreneurs, but a lot more needs to be done to close the funding gap for this group,” stated Carla Harris, Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley and Head of the Multicultural Client Strategy Group.

“The goal of the Multicultural Innovation Lab is to provide diverse founders with much-needed access to investors—along with the tools, resources, and connections they need to grow and thrive—in order to transform the investing landscape.”

Simultaneously, Morgan Stanley reported it is expanding the Lab this year by adding a second summer cohort. The firm plans to keep leveraging its global reach, content, and connections to hasten the growth of these companies and address the funding gap for multicultural and women-led startups.

The 2021 winter cohort was selected from more than 700 applicants globally. Seven of the newest companies have Black founders. They include ABF Creative, Abode, Fashion Bomb Daily Shop, Kanarys, Second Keys, Lillii RNB, and Zirtue. The remaining founders in the cohort are women or from other racial groups. The companies are in sectors like fintech, edtech, e-commerce, social networking, medtech, retail tech, and enterprise software.

Alice Vilma, Managing Director and Co-Head of the Multicultural Innovation Lab, told Black Enterprise by email why the imitative is important. She says Morgan Stanley is committed to supporting women and multicultural entrepreneurs by addressing the funding gap they still face in today’s economy.

“Investors are missing an opportunity to prioritize strategies that diversify their portfolios, so I am pleased we are able to expand our reach to support additional founders who are not receiving adequate funding for their companies,” she says.

“We work hard to help identify, develop and execute commercial opportunities in the multicultural business segment with the mission of increasing access to capital for women and multicultural entrepreneurs. By highlighting these great companies with women and multicultural founders through the MCIL, we are, in effect, widening the lens and allowing investors to see a broader range of companies they can invest in.”

She also reflected on enlarging the program. “We are thrilled to be expanding our Lab, increasing the amount of talented, diverse entrepreneurs that we will support on their journey to success.”

The Multicultural Innovation Lab (MCIL) is an intensive five-month accelerator geared to help further develop and scale startup. Morgan Stanley reports it launched MCIL in 2017 to address inequities in funding of multicultural and women-led startups, which its research shows equals over $4 trillion in unrealized returns.