Founder to Funder: She Sold to Amazon | Jewel Burks Solomon

Brandon (00:19) I am super excited for this conversation with my homie Jewel Burks Solomon. I would call her, I will put her in a living legend category because not only is she a fellow Howard University alum, but she has really been opening doors and kind of breaking down barriers the entire time I've known her. And I feel like she's just getting started. she is representing Launch Day. She is someone special because she has been on both sides of the table. We're gonna go deep into the journey.

Of how she started off her career, somehow built a a company, a tech company, a frontier tech company while working full time, then exited that company, started her own venture fund, which manages a lot of capital, and she's doing it from Atlanta. So a lot of what she's about is reflective of things that we can relate to and identify with. And so I thought it was really important to bring Jewel on to the Owner Mode Summit and share her story. Jewel.

Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Owner Mode Summit. Thank you for having me and thank you for that very generous introduction. I appreciate it. Look, I didn't even throw the flexes out there. I didn't throw out the Fortune 40 under f I look, we can we can get into all that, but not really. Like what was how were you was entrepreneurship so embedded in in your bones you know, from the earliest stages of your career?

Yeah, thank you for starting there because I love to give all due credit to my family. I feel like I was super blessed to be born into the family I was born into for a number of reasons, but really because values, faith, you know, commitment to family, those are all things that were really important with my family growing up. And also entrepreneurship was kind of all I saw growing up. Both my parents are entrepreneurs.

I saw them building really from the ground up on my dad's side. I saw what family business looked like. My dad took on the businesses that my grandfather had started. So saw what that whole dynamic was about. And then with my mom, she started an insurance agency when I was really young. And I saw her grow that, go from literally go from the bottom to becoming one of the most successful agents in in.

in Tennessee. So really, you know, it was a gift to be able to work in family businesses from an early age and just see what that was all about. and then, you know, also have farm roots. So I always talk about my grandfather. on my mom's side, he he actually had businesses as well, but, you know, he was he's a farmer. So I got a chance to see what that type of business looked like as well and kind of from all sides. So that was a big blessing for me.

So, you know, kind of entrepreneurship was something that was generational in your family. I wonder how that showed up though, in terms of how you thought about your career, because some of it is I have an idea of what I want to do, but some of it is like confronting the reality of, you know, I'm graduating, I need to pay my bills, I need to quote unquote get some experience under my belt. How did you think about risk? How did you think about your career path when you first started? And then how did that kind of morph into what we ended up seeing, which was you moving into tech?

You then launching a company. Just kind of curious how you were applying, at least in your mind at the earliest stages, this idea of incorporating entrepreneurship and when. Yeah. I mean, I think I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I think I saw the the pros and the cons, the good and the bad of entrepreneurship. But what I what I appreciated about it was the fact that, like with my mom, she had flexibility. So

I don't think she ever missed a basketball game or, you know, a debate tournament or anything that I participated in, because she owned her business and she owned her schedule. And that to me was really appealing. and when I thought about my life and the type of woman I wanted to become, I knew that I want to have a family and I want to be able to show up for my kids and all of that. So that was something that I kind of put a marker on of like, okay, that's something that entrepreneurship can potentially give you.

I also saw, you know, the ups and downs of what financial freedom could look like. I think that my parents, you know, both had relative success in the businesses that they that they started or or ran. but they also had struggles in it. And so a lot of my upbringing was like watching my mom try to make ends meet, try to figure it out. and so I also wanted to

figure out, okay, what can I do that's going to make it so that I don't ever have to cry over the kitchen table trying to make the bills work. and so I think that kind of formed the type of entrepreneurship that I w went into. And as I went to school and like got more exposure to technology, and realized that there's a type of entrepreneurship where you don't have to

Be at a certain place from nine to five because you have customers that are coming to see you. You can build something that is always on using technology that you don't necessarily have to be present for. That's when I started to craft my plan toward tech entrepreneurship versus, you know, having an insurance agency that I had to show up to every day.

And try to avoid the the points that I did not think were so positive. as I was thinking about the type of entrepreneur I wanted to become, just as I was exposed to where opportunities might be. when I went to school, I went you said I went to Howard, obviously always shouting out bison. But of course. but one of the I would say the the benefits of going to Howard was just the exposure to new industries. And so when I went to school,

Everybody was talking about going on Wall Street. So I was like, okay, well, that must be the thing to do. so freshman year I interned at Goldman, but this was 2008. So that was a tough time to be trying to, you know, figure out a career on Wall Street. so the next summer I went to Google and that really that was like the perfect time for me to go into Silicon Valley and kind of see what was happening out there.

And so when I saw that and got exposed to the fact that you can build great businesses around technology, that's when I was like, okay, this is how I want to do entrepreneurship. So that's how I take, you know, what I learned growing up to what I was exposed to when I was in school and sort of build a career around that. Love that. So what was your major in undergrad? so I was in the school of B, business major, marketing concentration. Okay. And so you did an internship.

In Silicon Valley first and then Triple. Goldman Sachs was first, then Google. and then I fell in love with Google so much so that I decided to graduate early and go back after after junior. I mean, I finished school, but I just did three years. Wow, I didn't know that, Jewel. That's that's another little fun factoid I wasn't aware of. So the timing was impeccable, right? So you landed in Silicon Valley at

I would I would argue the the top company in Silicon Valley at the time, right? And you're seeing and being exposed to you had entrepreneurship your bones, but a different form of entrepreneurship, right? And it felt future forward, right? Yeah. And so what did the valley look like when you landed? What were the things that you you picked up on that you were like, wow, really opened up your eyes to like what entrepreneurship could be versus what you had seen growing up? Yeah. So it's crazy because

You know, this was two thousand and nine when I interned and two thousand ten when I went full time. And I feel like that was like peak time to be working in Silicon Valley. That's when you had the height of all the perks and you know, all the things the when they say at that time Google was like the best place to work because it just had everything. It was looking back at it now, it's it's crazy to think about what all you had access to.

but for me it was, you know, just opening my eyes to a fast paced, a a very much entrepreneurial spirit within the company where, you know, you had your twenty percent projects, you could work on something that you cared about. I worked on this big HBCU project and, you know, worked on projects that allowed me to get closer to different executives that would become huge champions during

throughout my career. so it was just like it was a really amazing place to start the my career and also to get exposure. Another thing I did while I was there that kind of tipped me off to this idea of like, I could build a business was I volunteered with New Me Accelerator. So whenever we were hosting like their demo days on Google's campus, I was the greeter. So I was the greeter. I was like helping out to get resources from Google to them. And so

That type of thing and and me seeing the entrepreneurs who had already kind of taken a step, a leap out, I was like, okay, I see what they're doing. That's something I could do too. so yeah, all of that as a young person, I feel like that was the perfect it was a perfect recipe for me to get some confidence around my ability, my skill set. and then just get ideas as t as far as the types of things that I could set out to do. And

you were willing to step out there, right? At that time, Silicon Valley, it was, it was very extremely, you know, early in the cycle of like, this is clearly the place to be. And, you know, like you said, it became apparent to a lot of people later, but you were early on. But the sacrifice was maybe you didn't have the diversity, right, that you could have had had you stayed in a New York or in Atlanta or whatever. Right. So there were some trade-offs. You were willing to put yourself in an environment and learn. And it sounds like you also went over and above to just get where the action was and just kind of sponge it up.

And then figure out what elements of that might apply to you. But you are open to just being kind of hanging around a hoop and then getting clarity as you went on what might make sense. Now, this is where the story gets crazy. This is when, you know, Jill kind of enters into my into my periphery. I'm at Google at the same time. Help us understand what your navigation in terms of just career path and Google was. When we start talking at Google, not only were you building a startup.

But it was a hard tech startup. You were doing, you know, literally computer vision technology, you know, hard engineering with PhDs, and you were building this while you were working. This blew my mind because I just the audacity, you know what I mean, to even to even try to build something hard tech computer vision while working at Google. It was just, I had never seen it before. So help us understand how we got there.

Yeah, it's funny, like when you explain it like that, it does sound crazy. But at the time, honestly, I was just trying to make things work. So I had I started my career at Google in Silicon Valley. I was there for a couple of years and then left because family stuff. I I just I needed to be closer to home. so moved to Atlanta, started working at a different company in the parts distribution space. Totally different culture, totally different it's

vibe everything was different. But at that company, that's where I got the idea for my startup. and I think that that was just got working because I don't think anyone ever in the history of ever has gone from Google to the company that I went to work for, McMaster-Carr. It's just that's not a career move that most people would make. That's it's just it's just not. So but the fact that I had my initial experience at Google

And then went into a business that was a huge business. I mean, industrial supply is is really big business, but they did not have anywhere near the type of technology that Google had. And so that marriage of like seeing what was possible on the tech side and then going into a space that needed a lot of innovation from a tech perspective, that was the perfect sort of marriage. and to give me the idea to to launch Partpic. however.

I had the idea, but I didn't have money necessarily. I saved up some before I quit my job, but not enough to carry me through all of what it would take to build, you know, a computer vision technology from scratch. So I was fortunate that I had built strong relationships at Google. And my someone who is very dear to me, my mentor, Christian Teal, you know, we were talking and still keeping in touch and I was telling what I was working on and

You know, I was like, I know this is gonna be something, but I'm not quite ready to raise money. I don't think I don't think it's ready to raise money. And I need I need a you know, I need a bridge pretty much. and so we talked about me going back into Google to be sort of like an entrepreneur in residence. It was completely not a title that existed, something that we pretty much made up. And luckily

he was supportive. I was able to get the support of another leader on a sales team. And we kind of just created this hybrid role where I was going around and teaching people how to use Google Tools in their business. and I it was a full time job. However, from Atlanta, yeah. it was full time, but most of my work was like nights and weekends because I was going to conferences.

I was do hosting events. So like I would have a hundred people come to the Google office and do workshops for them for them. So I was able to work on my startup pretty much regular hours during the day and then do my Google work in the evenings and on the weekends and like travel to conference and and that type of thing. so it was a really great setup. I did that for three years of the four that I did.

Partpic. I was working at Google for three of those four years. and yeah, it was very fortunate that I had the support of my team. and I was able to deliver. Like I since I'd been at Google before, I knew I knew how Google worked. and I was able to do really well well in that role as well as build my company at the same time. This is this is like outrageous because and I would I would argue there's a few ingredients that that

you know, kind of reflecting back on this that come to mind for me. The first is you did what you had to do for personal reasons, but you kept your antennas up. So when you were in this new environment, you just had at this point this kind of Silicon Valley way of thinking, which is this could be done better. And maybe I can be the person to come up with something to do it better. Right. Which is maybe part of just your general openness, hanging around the hoop back in those days. Even when you left Silicon Valley, that mindset stayed with you. And you didn't know that this is going to be something that came back around, but then you found a problem.

That you thought you were uniquely positioned to solve. Okay, boom. Then you have someone who is a relationship that you have built a lot of capital with who was willing to basically bet on you, right? Bet that you would be able to execute in whatever role he was able to create for you. But more importantly, he realized you embodied what we needed more of. And he thought that you could actually achieve it. And so he put his money where his mouth was. He took some risk on you, right? And then ultimately executed. So you didn't just say, hey, I'm gonna do

Some marketing tech. You said, I'm gonna do hardcore computer vision. You are a marketing major, come from Howard University. Yeah, you had been to Google, but this is a hard technical problem. Tell us what that journey is like for a shoestring budget, big idea, super technical, working two full-time jobs. How do you get that from a concept to something that actually gets acquired by Amazon? How does this work?

I'm just tripping because it's like it is we play it back like this. It does it's it sounds funny. But okay, so how do you get something that's a really, really difficult technical idea to life? Like how do you get it from idea to production and then further, how do you get it to g you know, gain the attention of a company like Amazon? All right, so I s I discovered the problem when I was sitting at my desk at McMaster-Carr.

and hearing the complaints of customers. So this was me being tuned into my work, but also trying to find a way out because I hated my job. It was awful. And so I was like, my initial path out was going to be to go get my MBA. So I was in MLT at the time. And I think that is an important part of the story because I was very reflective. Like if for anyone that's been in MLT, you know you gotta write practice essays, you gotta have meetings with your coach.

And so I was thinking, I was just constantly thinking about like my future and what I wanted to do and what, you know, how am I gonna get out of this seat that I'm in right now. and so that thinking led to me realizing, I keep hearing customers say the exact same thing on calls. And they're saying, I'm getting the escalation, and they're saying, Hey, you guys sent me out the wrong product. I spoke with somebody last week and I I didn't have the part number, but I was describing it.

And then I go back and listen to the original call and I can hear their description and I can see like how our salesperson had a difficult time helping them find it. And on some of those calls, they would say, I have the thing I'm trying to replace. Can I just send you a picture of it? Cause I don't know what it's called. And I was like, dang, they should be able to send us a picture. That should be a way for them to search. and so I s and so I was like, I wonder, does that exist anywhere? Started looking into it.

Couldn't find any specific application for industrial parts. And then when I started to research it, I was I understood like, these parts are so specific, the differences are so minute. It would be difficult for someone to look at an image and be able to make a recommendation of this specific part. So all these all these thoughts come in my head, and I'm like, we sh I should make. This is literally like.

I was like, I should make a visual recognition tool so that people can just take a picture of the part that they're looking for and use that as the search. It came the idea came just as clear as that from listening to customer calls. and I sent my mom an email explaining, okay, this is my idea. And that was kind of the kickoff. And she gave me my mom is like a cheerleader for me. So she gave me all the pub, like, man, that's she don't even know what I'm talking about. She's like, that's an amazing idea, you know. and so

From there I just started researching what exists that's like this. And so what I came up, what I realized was like, this is kind of similar to you taking a picture of your check and it being able to be deposited from that. and then I thought about from the user experience, what is this like? And I was like, this is kind of similar to when you tap the button to try to find a song with Shazam. I wanted to be that magical experience where you just tap a button and get an answer.

So that led me to reach out to one of my friends who had worked at Google with me, who worked at Shazam at the time. And I started telling him about this is my idea. And then from there, I started to research, okay, what type what kind of technology is behind this? and I realized that it's computer vision technology, it's deep learning technology, it is artificial intelligence. so I started to understand like learn more about these concepts.

I enrolled myself in like one of these 101 courses, free courses that Stanford was offering at the time to understand more about the principles that I was trying to build. I was very naive. I thought, okay, I kinda understand the concepts broadly. Maybe I can just do a coding boot camp and try to build it. And so if you you could go deep in the archives of YouTube and find like a little video of me.

Talking about I want to go to a code and boot camp to build out this company. I quickly realized that's not gonna be possible. So then I started to also just look around. And at the time I had a friend who had given me his library card for Georgia Tech so that I could study for the G MAT. And when I was going to the library, I started to see signs for like entrepreneurship groups. So I started to go to the little meetups, act like I was a Georgia Tech student.

And and then that's where I started to meet people who eventually introduced me to the folks who helped me to build the real technology. So it's like one thing led to another. And all of it has to do with me being very open and keeping my attendance up all the time. and just like allowing myself to to go to the next step, go to the next step, go to the next step. And then once I had a great team in place, shout out to Dr. Nashley Steve, who was

the real technical brains behind Partpic. but once we started working together, we kind of got into a a rhythm. We were rocking and rolling, building out the technology. and then when we had technology that worked, then I felt comfortable raising money, raised the seat, round of funding. and yeah, I started getting customers. and then eventually

Got the attention of Amazon and sold the business. So we're gonna get to that in a second, but like, you know, for the audience, we just gotta we gotta give a virtual round of applause to this because I don't know if you unpacked everything you just heard, but this young lady was on the AI wave way before what we're hearing right now. That's number one. It was driven by like an authentic intellectual curiosity around a problem she personally saw existed.

had n no resources, nothing. She just took it step by step by step and again, hung around the hoop. And so I think what I want people to take away from it is, you know, you you mentioned reflective back, it sounds crazy because it is kind of crazy, but if you kind of look at the ingredients that went into it, it's something that's accessible to everybody. That's what I want people to take away from it, which is this intellectual curiosity applied to a problem that you understand. And then a lot of times you have people who are talented who are looking for problems and like,

conviction, you write, that you could apply your skill set to this thing. And so I imagine that was a big part of how you were able to bring people over and and kind of recruit people to your to your mission. But this thing is called both sides of the table. And you could argue is both sides are hard. You have seen fundraising from an entrepreneurial perspective. And then ultimately a after going through this journey, we'll we'll talk about that a second, you then raise funds as a venture capitalist.

and and were suc was successful on both fronts. Tell us a little bit around how hard it is to raise capital, particularly when you were raising for Partpic at you after you had kind of established that that working prototype or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, so I initially did pitch competitions as a way to raise funding because I didn't know any investors. Like I I I knew well let me take that back. I initially raised

Like a hundred K from quote unquote friends and family, but it was really one family friend and one of my mom's like longtime customers who had seen me grow up from a child and, you know, was excited that I was working on something and, you know, had a lot of money. So that was the initial that was the initial money that I raised. Prior to that, I had taken out a personal loan, which

I never talked about that, but that's one thing I did. And I also had saved up and put my own money from McMaster-Carr paid pretty well. So I like drastically reduced my lifestyle and put in probably the first, probably the first 50 to 75 K that I had saved. And that was just like to get to help me get something built from a prototype perspective. But when I was raising the actual seed round.

I I initially was doing pitch competitions. I probably won probably like about 250K in pitch competitions. and then pitch competitions was how I met investors. So a lot of times at that time, pitch competitions were judged by investors. So I would enter pitch competitions where investors who I wanted to know were the judges. So, like a good example of that is William Crowder. He was a at the time he was at Comcast Ventures.

And I I thought Comcast Ventures would be a good fit. We would be a good fit for them because they had a catalyst fund that was specific for underrepresented entrepreneurs. so I like basically looked up the people that I thought would be good fits, figured out where they were gonna be, entered myself into those competitions, and then won the competitions. That's kind of how I got to build a list of investors. And then like I had some lucky breaks. Like I was

I entered TechCrunch Disrupt, got to TechCrunch Disrupt, and that was a huge platform. from there, Alexis Ohanian's team saw me and they they were they had this web show at the time, and they did a feature on Partpic, which went pretty far. we got the attention, we did the Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, his competition, Rise of the Rest, won that.

He as a part of that got us to go to the White House for White House ML Day. So got to meet President Obama. So it was like, you know, again, one step after the other. Momentum. Momentum. Exactly. so all that stuff, what I just named happened within like a year. and that's what allowed us to raise the C round. Of course, like I said, we had built technology that actually worked. and I was able to get some get on some really good stages, get the right people's attention.

and that helped me to raise like two million dollars initially. So, you know, again, I'm kind of getting into the ingredients here. You glaze over this stuff, but you know, again, I I was joking with with Jewel that she has balls of steel, right? So she saved up all this money. She was all in. You know, she's working two gigs, she's putting the money she saved to hire engineers, get the tech going, right, to get this prototype. She's on the road, she's pitching, she's winning, right? But

She is all in. Her brand is wrapped up in this thing. Her savings are wrapped up in this thing. Her money that she's making is going into this thing. She was all in. And so one thing I want to talk about a little bit, you know, and in I think this is really important for this audience is how you thought about risk, right? So I think one thing unique about you was you're a little bit younger. So maybe there was this idea of like, look, I got time to like fail and come back. I I'm confident I could, you know, Chris Gentile already gave me this this opportunity. I could figure something out if I need to.

But what would you reflecting back on, you know, this is the pre exit period when things were really all in. How did you what is your reflection on risk for people that are, you know, exploring potentially stepping out and doing their own thing? Yeah. So I I mentioned this email I sent to my mom because that was an important piece of the puzzle. I needed in that email I basically, without explicitly asking, I basically asked her, like, do I have permission to go for this? And if it doesn't work out, can I come back home?

That was pretty much what I was asking. And mind you, I was 23 at the time. So in my mind, I could go all in because I had no responsibilities, no major obligations. Like I I was fortunate to get scholarships in school. So I didn't have like student loans or anything like that. so it's pretty much a clean slate to go for it. And that is an important part to stress because I know that a lot of people watching this probably are not at that point.

in their career or at their, you know, their age or like if you have children already, I would make totally different decisions if I was in the seat that I'm in right now where you got a mortgage and you got kids, you know, all that. But at the time I I didn't have anything to lose. Like honestly, I mean, I had a nice apartment in Atlanta, but I knew like my mom's my mom has a a bedroom that I can go back to if if it all, you know, burns down. So

So that's a big part, I think, I think an important part to stress is that I was able to take the risk that I wanted to take. One, because I I think I was naive and I just believed in myself so much, like I just felt like I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna I'm gonna make it. and I also had the in the back of my mind, I felt like if this doesn't work, the the quote unquote worst case scenario is really not that bad.

and I and I also felt like I had put in enough good work. that there was always an open door policy with any employer that I had when I was at Google, when I was at McMaster-Carr. I had done enough good work where I always knew I could go back if I needed to. So fast forward a little bit, what made Amazon, this super technical company, say that they want your technology as part of their platform, right? And then how did it feel?

to have this, you know, kind of on the table. you know, ultimately at that point, I mean, you tell me how many black women had founded hard tech companies, built these things up, and had them exited to a top tech company. I mean, it was, it was at that time, I mean, again, we're talking about like breaking barriers. That that was a huge win, you know, for for the for the game, right? And so tell us a little bit around, you know, that, that little

you know, lead up to that and and ultimately why they decided this was something they need to have. Yeah. So I think this is like a lesson in manifestation because one thing that I did early on with Partpic was I wrote a list of the companies that I thought could acquire us, should acquire us, would acquire us, like very early on. And so it was about five companies that I had on the list. Amazon was top of the list because I knew that they had

a whole department that was focused on visual recognition and augmented reality. and I knew that they were trying to grow their parts distribution business. at the time it was called Amazon Supply. I'm not sure if that's what it's still called, but I knew that they had both sides of our equation in terms of what we did. So initially I pursued them to be a customer. And at the time we didn't have

enough coverage on their SKUs in order to win them as a customer, but they were still kind of like in the pipeline. But the way that we got on their radar for acquisition was when I was going after our Series A, it became clear to me that my positioning was off in the market because we were being evaluated up against enterprise SaaS companies. and and in investors were only looking at our revenue as a metric.

But I wanted them to evaluate us up against other computer vision companies, AI companies, and really deep technology companies. And what I realized was that since I was out front and my background is sales and marketing, they were they were misplacing Partpic. And I wanted them to see the technical side of Partpic first. So I made a decision.

I'm gonna take a step back in terms of like public image and I'm gonna push forward Dr. Nashley because she's the brains, she's the brilliance. I need them to understand, like, no, we're building something incredible over here. So I started reaching out to different conferences to get them to invite Nashley to be a speaker. And I use the at the time this was appropriate. I started to reach out and say, hey, I'm on your website. I see that you don't have any

female speakers. I have someone who would be amazing for your conference. And that worked. so was able to get her slotted at this deep learning conference in Boston. At she does her presentation at the conference. It's like a presentation on how we detect threads per inch in a screw, like something of the algorithms that we build around that. and Amazon Corporate Development was in the room during her presentation. So

They come up to her afterwards, love the presentation, would love to learn more. She gets their card, comes back to the office Monday morning, hands me a sack of cards. Like, here are the people I met. You know, if you want to follow up with them, feel free. I'm flipping through the cards. I see Amazon corporate development. I'm like, I gotta call them right away because I've been trying to land Amazon. and from that interaction, which was in May, the conference was in May, they're in our office, full team.

in our office in June, we have term sheet for acquisition in July. Deal closes October thirty first. so that's kinda like it was super fast timeline. I didn't even know from that first call that I was selling my business. I did not that's not what I was intending to do. I was trying to get a customer and maybe get them to invest. but that's just how it turns out

When you s launched it and when it was officially term sheet signed, how much time was that? just about four years. So I launched, I mean, I started seriously working on it in towards the end of twenty twelve and we were signed and closed towards the end of twenty sixteen. Got it.

So I just want the audience, did you hear the scrappiness there, right? She she was self aware enough to realize like we are being mispriced in the market and misperceived in the market. Let's re-jigger this thing. She had the humility to step back and let someone else step in front, which I I imagine some folks might have an issue with, right? And then ultimately like became an advocate, calling conferences, like that scrappiness of let's get let's get this person, you know, on stage and get our perception of being a hard tech company out there.

And that literally led to the right person in the audience seeing the potential in their technology and ultimately you know kind of writing a term sheet. So, Jewel, we got a lot of ground we can cover. I know that you went to Amazon and you have a a Substack, which is the joyful exit where maybe you could talk about some of the elements of why the exit was sweet, but then the the the vesting period and kind of being part of a bigger platform, there's some ups and downs to that that we'll unpack in your in your substack. So everybody check that out.

Yes. but in that four year period, you learned a lot of stuff. You learned that the mispricing, maybe the misperception, you learned about the challenges for fundraising, you learned about, you know, what it's like to be a founder, what it's like to exit, and you decided that you were gonna launch your own fund, Collab Capital, which now has over $120 million assets under management, which again, we're talking about bar barriers being broken. There's not that many.

funds, particularly black female led funds, maybe the only one, or one of a a small handful, maybe Stacy or some other folks, that can say this, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's a few. There's a few, okay, which is which is worth applauding. But you did this because you knew you had a unique insight and you knew you had the ability to understand where there was opportunity that other folks are overlooking. Really quickly, tell us how your experience as a founder informed your thesis for Collab Capital.

And what is your vision for collab capital? Okay. Yes. So I didn't we didn't get into the hard parts of fundraising. I kind of skimmed through, you know, I I was able to do pitch competitions and met this person and whatever. But on the back side of that, I had I had pitched probably 200 plus investors while I was fundraising. and

I'm sorry, Brandon. Okay. and mostly got no's. So I mostly got no's and I also had a lot of like really awkward borderline, yeah, just bad experiences with investors. and and some crazy just like crazy stories that I'll say for the book, but just a lot of them crazy stories that I experienced with investors.

So much so that it it made the impression on me that like there's something broken in the venture capital space. And when I was building Partpic, I knew the next thing I'm gonna work on is trying to fix the things that are broken in in venture capital. That was like my next ambition. So when I sold Partpic and had, you know, some money, I started angel investing first.

And that really opened my eyes to like, okay, yes, for sure, there are bad things happening. And it wasn't just with me. It's happening with lots of entrepreneurs and broadly black entrepreneurs is happening across the board. So angel investing was kind of me dipping my toes in. And then once I felt comfortable kind of establishing a track record, and then I went back to Google to lead Google for startups.

so had even another kind of platform where I was able to see more startups at scale. I knew, okay, the next thing I really want to do is start a fund. I partnered up with a friend of mine who also had built a business and had an exit similar timeline as me, Barry Gibbons. And we decided that this is what we wanted to do as kind of our next act to

Right the wrongs that we saw on our on our journey as entrepreneurs. And I think our mentality going into building collab has been becoming the investors that we wish we had, showing up for the companies that we invest in in a way that the investors that we had did not show up for us. And really coming at it from the standpoint of we know what it is to build a business. So we can be helpful, not just with the check, but also.

you know, given the expertise that we have from from building our own businesses. So that's what we kind of bring to the table as investors at Collab. And I think that experience, our our own lessons, our, you know, hard knocks that we that we got while we were entrepreneurs, that is really helpful to the entrepreneurs that we back. so yeah, it's we're we're having a great time. We're now deploying out of our second fund.

And we're backing entrepreneurs with one in two million dollars typically seed round some Series A and trying to be sort of that first call for the entrepreneurs that we back. Out of Atlanta. So everyone, you know, there's so much ground to cover that Jewel can dive into. You know, again, she's raised a VC fund. She talked about some of these stories that she encountered some investors that let's just call it some unsavory interactions that she's not she's gonna unpack.

So make sure you check out the substack substack and you know maybe later a book where she'll break these stories down. But one thing I noticed you know, with you, Jewel is that you have a really unique insight where you have been in in in a blend of rooms that very few people can say they've been a part of, right? So Howard University, but Google, right? You know, Crown Fellowship, Forbes under 40, right? Atlanta, and it's like Amazon, right? As a as an

And so not many people can bring kind of male things together. And so that's why I'm so excited about what you're building because you have that perspective. One thing I'm also excited about is you hit me up and say, Hey, Brandon, I want to support what you're doing with Gravy Wealth, right? And the reality is you've also elevated to a level in the game where now you have a different set of issues, I guess you could say, or responsibilities. And I'm curious, like, you know, one of the things you mentioned was like there are questions and, you know, you're excited about the idea of connecting with people and talking about

just this idea of ownership, which is what the Owner Mode Summit is all about. And how do we kind of break through the access piece? As someone who's been through rooms and kind of connected with, you know, kind of the, the, the super wealthy and super successful, what in your mind is the gap that you feel still needs to kind of be closed from a wealth creation perspective, from whether it's a mindset front or just the playbooks. I'm just kind of curious to get your perspective on as we kind of close out here.

Tell us a little bit around being a you know, a little bit on the other side of this thing, but still seeing opportunities for collaboration, you know, playbooks, et cetera. Like what tell us a little bit around what you see and what you feel. Yeah, I was gonna say collaboration, I feel like is the is the key that a lot of times w in our community we're missing. my exposure to other groups and rooms and that type of thing. What I've noticed is like they really

collaborate. They work together on a lot of things. They share deals. they share know how. They share service providers. and I don't know that we always do that. so that's one one reason like I love gravy, what you're building and what I've been exposed to so far since I've been a member is the fact that people are really open and and wanting to share. but yeah that that seems to me to be the biggest kind of gap to fill is

Once we learn something, telling our friends and not necessarily charging our friends to tell them, but not making the course out of it, no shade to anybody, but but really just being open and and yeah, just just saying, Here's what I've done, here's what I learned, here's the mistakes I made. and and just having that mindset across the board, I think.

If we could all commit to that, I feel like we'd be a lot further. And then the other thing is like not being afraid to stick your neck out. this is a lesson that I'm I'm learning, learning over and over again, especially as an investor, is like the value that I have is my network and it is the relationships that I've built. and so I oftentimes have to make endorsements and make introductions and

hope and pray that the person on the other side is going to do well by that introduction. and you say nine times out of ten, it works out that way. sometimes it doesn't. And I have to be comfortable with the fact that it's not always gonna be, it's not always gonna work out. but but I know that I've done enough. Hopefully I have enough goodwill out there that the times that it doesn't work out, no one's angry at me about it. but those types of things I think being

being willing to go the extra mile, being willing to make the introduction, being willing to stick your neck out, being willing to put some skin in the game and make and take some bets and make some risk. those are all things that I think Gravy is like perfect, perfect fit to help foster. and as the folks who are on on this event, hopefully they can kind of take that as a as a to do.

especially especially right now. I think this is like a really critical time to step out of what do I need and think about what does the community need? what is the collective need, and how can you show up for others and not necessarily always be waiting on what do you get back in return. That's so insightful, that piece around sticking your neck out. I I love that. I think that's that is a

really wise insight and challenge to to us. And I think you kind of represent what we want to see. So she's leading with collaboration. She's saying that's what the game needs. So to the audience, this is what it's all about. Okay. We got to wrap it up. Jewel, I want you to get your Socrates on, right? At the end of the day, sometimes it comes down to a simple philosophy. For example, I look at you, we don't know how long we have on this on this planet, right? I think Jewel can look back and say, I had a life well lived. If nothing else happened, she can say that, right?

and also a mom and and other things that we'd even touch on that she's been able to somehow incorporate into everything she's doing. But I think the other piece of it is, right, you were given some some opportunities and you maximize them. You didn't just say, I got the job at Google, I'm happy, let me ride this out into perpetuity, right? This wasn't your mindset. What's your philosophy? Like what would you, you know, this is the launch pathway. What would be your reflections, your philosophy that people can kind of lock into without overcomplicating what it really boils down to at the end of the day?

I think my philosophy is to spread the blessings. I feel like super, super blessed in my life. We started out talking about my family and and when I think about my family, I think it would be so selfish of me to take the lessons just for myself that my the f my family instilled in me. Like it's really important to me that those lessons be foundation for everything that I do for the work that I hope touches a lot of people. and and I hope that I'm doing it in such a way that it becomes embedded.

And the companies that I invest in and you know, the people that they touch, and it kind of spreads that way. So I I would say, yeah, spread the blessings. Love it, love it. All right, with that, I could talk to Jewel all day, but we have to wrap it up. Thank you, Jewel, for taking time from so much to give us your wisdom. congrats on all your success. Go check out her her Substack. it is going to unpack a lot of the stuff we weren't able to unpack right now. It's called the Joyful Exit.

And with that, give her a virtual round of applause. Thank you, Jewel, for joining us. We have gratitude for you dropping those gems. And we'll talk to you soon. All right.