The Time Needed: Building A Startup

As posting for a sort of financial journal has been a bit of catharsis, much of the information coming in from the financial markets are mutli-dimenional. It’s news until one factor is done. Market shifts are redundant until the proverbial other shoe drops. And majority of my post come in between thin meeting breaks, laden with a very small phone and very large fingers. Aside from fighting auto correct, posting has always been a journal entry during a very personal process, building multiple startups.

For certain cultural factors, it’s not necessary to advertise every win executed in the press. Some information suffers through too much advertisement, so until the win is stable, I don’t like to brag or alert too much because then that person, political decision, or business outcome could suffer. Watching how the business world operates is information. Information on what to be prepared for and what to avoid.

Business while Black even has more mystery required. Jealousy and a bad eye can make even the most smoother things fall apart, overnight. Bad energy is a real thing and seeing it with my own eyes, jealousy can turn into an execution campaign in the wrong hands.

With all that being said, personally I’m in the process of building a bit of unicorn startup, using all my prior skills to design three patents, along with at least 1 Data Room, 1 lab module, 2 UI/UX layouts, and learning what SaaS Systems to overall use. Since I’m doing all of my own work, it’s time consuming and it takes me away from posting, something that becomes fun when the markets are vibing.

When the markets aren’t vibing, I’ll be honest it’s like waiting on paperwork to process. It’s boring and slow, and twice as hard to respect, when you know it could move a lot faster if it wasn’t for bureaucracy, political pettiness, and the fact these techbro types don’t know how to “fix” things in comparable time. Real talk a lot of them don’t come up with the ideas they flaunt around, so when things fall apart, they do the next best thing delay and deflect.

When a company is the source of its innovation, you learn really fast there is a flow. From personal experience, America would be ahead of many countries, when it comes to innovation if it wasn’t for celebrities, and techbros, and non builders, quick to squat on others work and constantly pirating the sources.

These people are celebrated and wear those dumb ass Black T-shirts in jeans but many of them simply buy ideas before it gets off the ground, and then parrot the case study to funders. When investors flinch, it’s really because they realize they’re dealing with the IPs representative, and that ends up turning into legal mess down the road with no credit or compensation written into the M&A.

I’m going to be honest, the culture of innovation is a death sentence for many R&D projects because it’s flooded with theives. And the same people being celebrated are basically modern day pirates, moving predatory over people that don’t know the process. When you don’t know, the process of getting from idea to concept, to actualization, gets daunting and people just throw their hands in the air and take the quick money.

The amount of projects stolen before they get off the ground in the US is abysmal. And seeing so many things get stolen, it makes you want to you hold things really close to your chest. The problem you end up holding a lot of things so close to your chest so long, it ends up fused into you. It slowly becomes harder to share. If you been burned one to many times, it does make you gun shy.

Basidcally America’s culture does not protect its innovators. It runs them through the gamut, and by the time the project gets legs, they strip it apart so much, any corrections get lost in post funding class actions. Then many have to watch the ones in the cliques get the billions, after selling the idea they stole, and then have to listen to their half ass TED talks about “simply believing” to get to their level.

When you see Elizabeth Holmes, Mark Cuban (back in the day), and now Musk, buy up ideas or blindly get handed billion dollars checks without proof of concept, it discourages a lot of people to want to share. It’s especially hard knowing you have to go through petty funding gatekeepers who spend more time smearing research to protect their own dissertations.

There is also the frustrating process of America’s NSF culture being too University heavy. This means if you come up with an idea that the school can’t exploit, they basically block any progress until you yield it over to them. This become a toxic culture of academic elitism spending more time fighting innovation when it clashes with their ego. God forbid someone Black knows something they don’t, especially in areas they refuse to fully analyze.

You end up finding out dozens of “laws” they judge are anecdotal and clash with things you culturally know are true. When you don’t feel like arguing, you still end up fighting outcomes because their research says otherwise.

Growing up, everyone was smart. The old drunk Navy vet could walk by a car, know how to break an engine apart, and put it back together because he never got the job that would have led him to work for NASA. The girl who used to do braids and had the growing hand, would never get the funding or knew anyone famous enough to back her hair product. The elder that cured most illnesses with herbs, they’re still refuting in medicine or White based alt medicine, reporting actual proof, as theory.

Growing up, everyone around me knew how to make money. They knew how to survive (good and bad). Finding a way, even with push back. America made everything that should be easy, harder. But it was America’s quiet anti-money habit of wanting Black America to produce results, without compensation that made me realize I had to move different.

Knowing the process for innovation, overseas, they wouldn’t survive a week building here, if they faced the roadblocks we face when developing anything. And we isn’t even Black, America is just an exhausting place to build anything beyond the scope of typical. You gotta fight against politics, racial expectations, racial bias, hating ass Banks reps, Latinos somehow, always being between paperwork there and here, some bitter ass 50-11 degree Auntie, and the old hood negroes lying about wanting to invest. Then White people (Insert any BS). Nerds being mad you know something, at all. Then overseas, people being surprised a Black person can read. Seriously wtf.

Having the exposure to learn the blocks, that led to the building blocks, I started seeing a dangerous trend that ego, character flaws, and entitlement made people lazy. As I got older, I learned it wasn’t laziness it was frustration of constantly hitting walls. People around me would stop making sustainable decisions and started relying on sure things to survive. Those quick fixes would eventually die off, and people would fall behind too far to adjust professionally.

There weren’t banks lending, the stock market growing up required $5,000 to even play, Adobe used to be expensive AF to build prototypes, and you needed a license to even cut the grass. Every way to make money beyond blue collar and enterprise building was completely unattainable. Half because the Black community was drunk on degree attainment without alcareer, becoming a celebrity by any means was the way “out”, or latching on to someone famous/pro athlete, through mere affiliation.

No one understood what the next level looked like, without professional burnout, blackmail, or stealing ideas. For me, I’m self learning and taking information from school a step further. As my process becomes more stable, I guess the steps can be shared later but, even that’s hard to responsibly do because so many things are changing. By the time I finish, it won’t be the same industry, so I’ll see what’s feasible to share.

Right now I’m almost done with filing my trademarks and style guide. In tandem, I’m currently creating dummy scenerios to finalize the nonprovisional patents. Next, expanding the branding and building Virtual Rooms. Then, setting up meetings with family/friend investors in the fall. I’m fighting if SBIR should be considered but they only approve international, corporate, or university submissions, a headache not needed now.