Lauren Washington: Building Black Future House

Discover the extraordinary path of Lauren Washington, from Teach for America to the forefront of tech entrepreneurship and advocacy for Black businesses. Our latest episode is a beacon for those looking to navigate the challenges and triumphs of turning vision into reality. Lauren, with her wealth of experience in social media marketing and founding successful ventures , joins us to share how the threads of community and support weave through her narrative and offer a lifeline for Black entrepreneurs in the bustling hub of Austin, Texas.

Imagine if the skills honed in the classroom could unlock the potential of leading a start-up to greatness. Lauren Washington brings this perspective to life, illustrating the surprising similarities between teaching and entrepreneurship. As the co-founder of Fundr, she's breaking down barriers to create a bias-free landscape for investors and startups alike. Hear her story of Black Women Talk Tech's genesis and how harnessing community insights can lead to transformative business solutions. This episode isn't just about the journey – it's about finding your crew, your mission, and your voice in the world of innovation.

As we peel back the layers of what it means to be a Black woman navigating the entrepreneurial space, Lauren's candid reflections on the lifecycle of a business are eye-opening. From scaling to selling or stepping away, she emphasizes readiness for every outcome. Join us as we take you through the vibrant tapestry of the Black Future House event, where cross-industry collaboration and cultural celebration converge. Prepare to be inspired, enlightened, and ready to mark your calendar for an experience that embodies unity and progress.

Transcript

Langston Clark: 0:15

Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of entrepreneurial appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. What's up everybody?

Langston Clark: 0:42

Once again, this is Langston Clark, the founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial A ppetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses, and on today's podcast episode, we have Lauren Washington, who's co-founder and CEO of Fundr, a platform that provides data and insights for startup investors. She is also the co-founder of Black Future House, a three-day event bringing the creator, entertainment, sports and tech industries together to foster a collaborative community during South by Southwest, and they'll be there from March 8th to 10th this year in Austin, texas, and so what's interesting was that I went to Black Future House last year I think it was on the first Saturday of South by Southwest. I can't remember. It was an amazing time and the description that just gave is really indicative of what was at Black Future House. They were former NFL players, there were scholars, they're all types of founders and things like that, so it was a great time. We'll talk more about that as we get into the conversation.

Langston Clark: 1:38

She's also the founder of Black Women Talk Tech and Black Men Talk Tech, and part of the reason why I had this opportunity to be here talking with Lauren today is because of a previous interview I had with Kwame Bowler. One of the things that came out of that conversation with Kwame is that there's an interesting community of Black folks in Austin Texas who seem to find each other and support each other and, even though Austin doesn't have this abundant Black community, that the Black folks who do find one another create their own abundance. And so it was Kwame's suggestion to reach out to you and interview you to learn a little bit more about what you're doing and your impact in Austin Texas. As we begin, I'm hoping you can tell us a little bit about your Shiro's journey and how you went from teacher because I know you're a TFA alum to tech founder.

Lauren Washington: 2:26

Yeah, of course, and thanks so much for having me, super excited to talk about my journey and some of the other topics that you mentioned. So my journey is a little bit kind of all over the place, as I think a lot of entrepreneurs' journeys are. I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. That was never a question. I knew that since I was a little girl. I wanted to build and create my own thing that the world got to experience and consume. So that was always like the long-term goal for me. But I went to undergrad, I studied graphic design and then when I came out, I worked at Teach for America. I come from a family of teachers and so giving back and education was always really important to me. It still is and really learned a lot of things from that experience that I still carry now in terms of goal-setting, in terms of rejections or things falling apart or not working in the way that you think they should, in terms of managing large groups of people who may not want to be managed on young children, and so I was really able to take a lot of insights from that.

Lauren Washington: 3:30

I then went into marketing. So I worked at Instile Magazine TV Guide and did online marketing and it was at that very early stages of online marketing and I'm probably aging myself a little bit, but this was pre-Twitter. This was before Facebook had real business pages and we were kind of jerry-rigging these personal pages to become the Instile page and so really saw that whole industry grow up from inception and it was interesting to be a part of it because it wasn't something that I thought myself in. I was like I love magazines but I don't know what this whole new world is in terms of social media and how it's going to fit. But I'm really grateful that I got to experience that early because it has guided the rest of my career as well.

Lauren Washington: 4:17

I ended up going back and getting my MBA at Northwestern Kellogg School of Management and then when I came out, I worked on the agency side, and so when I talk about those lines that carry on through the journey, I ended up working at this social media agency that was at the forefront of using data and analytics to create insights for businesses.

Lauren Washington: 4:39

So we would comb through all of this big data, as it was called. Then. It was brand new and we could say, oh, this is what people are saying unprompted online we could pull insights out of that. So very, very early days of that and that led to my first company, keep Up, which was using social media data to provide insights. We were basically automating that process that we did at the agency and that led into Black women top tech. After being in this world and seeing the lack of community and lack of spotlight and lack of access that Black women had wanted to create that organization and that also then led to Fundr , which is essentially building out more access and opportunity, but from the venture side of the table.

Langston Clark: 5:25

Yeah, so before we get into Fundr, I want to have to like hop on this comment that you made about being a teacher and managing people that don't want to be men. So my background is actually in physical education and I used to be, like the elementary school PE teacher, so I had the kindergartners through the fifth graders, that's a good job.

Langston Clark: 5:47

It was actually. It was a great job. I loved it, best job I ever had in my life. But your point about managing people and I think about oftentimes and I know we need more teachers, but I think teachers would be great leaders, business leaders, especially if you teach like K through, let's say, three. If you can manage kindergartners, first graders, second graders, third graders, fourth graders, then you can manage adults, because we act the same way. You know absolutely. Are there any more insights you can give about what you took from being a teacher and how it's infused into what you do now as a leader and as an entrepreneur?

Lauren Washington: 6:30

Yeah, I think the people management aspect of being an entrepreneur, being a leader, is sorely overlooked in general. I just don't think we put a lot of emphasis on it. We put so much emphasis on hitting revenue goals and moving quickly and growing fast, but the only way you can do that is if your team works well together, understands processes, understands the goals, and you learn a lot, like I said, from working with kids in terms of how to manage that because, like you said, it's pretty much the same, like all of those dynamics I have seen replicated in the workspace oh, this person doesn't get along with this person. How do you make that work? Because you both are here and you're both here for the long-term goals. How can we figure this out together? Or someone does something that they're disappointed in, or they didn't get the thing that they wanted. How do you remotivate them to keep going?

Lauren Washington: 7:26

One of the things that I would say was really interesting for me as well, that I had never really thought about, was I did Teach for America and they had a very specific way of setting goals. You had to set two years of growth within one year for all of your students, and I taught special education where it was a year and a half, and so you were literally setting this very big, lofty goal but then every single week measuring it and changing and optimizing to see if you could shift things to get to that. That's exactly what we do in entrepreneurship I have this big goal but I may not know all the steps to get there and you have to be flexible and willing to kind of shift and change to meet that bigger. So that was the first time I had experienced something like that in a really clear, direct way. That's been so helpful.

Langston Clark: 8:12

Yeah, so let's talk about Fundr now. Tell us a little bit more about what Fundr is and its origin story.

Lauren Washington: 8:20

Yeah. So Fundr is a platform that's using data and insights to help startup investors make better decisions. We started off, as I mentioned, coming out of my experiences and my first company, keepup, and Black Women Talk Tech. Experiences, firstly, that I had in fundraising, where it felt like a whole new world to me. I did not know how to navigate the system, I didn't know the lingo, I just felt lost, and I also felt like my lack of progress was due to me and my company.

Lauren Washington: 8:51

But when I started Black Women Talk Tech, I realized, oh, there's all these other women, hundreds, thousands of them who are having the same issues. So therefore, this is a systemic problem. It can't just be me, it can't just be you. There's obviously something else happening here. And so what? We came up with Fundr and it's been through a pivot. But the core of the product is really to remove bias and increase access, and by using data for that, instead of using people's subjective views of founders, we can help optimize the way that they look at these companies and founders. We can help optimize the process that they're using to evaluate these companies and hopefully open up the door for more investment into founders that don't look like the norm.

Langston Clark: 9:41

Yeah, talk a little bit about how Black Women Tech talks. And did you use that community you built to get the information that you needed to start this business? So were you using, like, did you use, focus groups, or was it just you listening and hearing and understanding what people were saying as part of that community?

Lauren Washington: 10:09

I think it originally started out as listening, because every year, we would do different programming at our events, and the number one thing that people wanted all the time was fundraising. Obviously, there's other parts of the business that are really important, but if you don't have money particularly if you're trying to build a scalable business to compete or to hire or to grow you're kind of dead in the water, and so that was always the number one issue. And, again, because a lot of this data that we have right now when I started did not exist. We did not know that there were these funding gaps, and so I think people were trying to figure this out and trying to learn how to navigate the system, and then, when we did hear all this data, we said, oh, there's a much larger problem here. The conversation then shifted not just from founders, but then to investors as well, so I had so many conversations I mean hundreds of conversations over the years.

Lauren Washington: 11:03

I worked at Black Women Talk Tech. That led to some of the development of this. Once we started building, though, we definitely had larger research initiatives that we did. We had interviews, we did testing, we did surveys. I come from a research background, so I really wanted to make sure that was a part of what we were doing and really integrating what people need instead of just creating something that feels easy to develop.

Langston Clark: 11:32

Yeah, so the way that I'm thinking about it and correct me if I'm wrong is that Fundr is almost like a dating app. It's almost like a dating app with no picture, right. And so I just give you my narrative, I give you my data, and then the person, the funder that I want to be paired with, looks at my data and sees if it's a good match for them. And if we both swipe right, then we get to go on a date. Meta-fork is you know.

Lauren Washington: 12:04

So sort of. We mainly work with investing firms at the moment to help manage their deal flow. So it would be, let's say, you're a VC firm and you have all these companies coming in. Yes, they would come in through our platform. We would look at it from that some objective data perspective, helping to remove some of that initial bias or act as like a check for some of the decisions you may have made. Right. Sometimes you don't even realize that a company might be a really great fit for you because it didn't come in from the right source. Right, it's not a warm introduction. Or you just quickly look through their pitch deck and you miss something. Or they didn't put it in their pitch deck that they had tons of revenue which I've seen so many times from founders. They don't put their traction in there, and so what we're doing is pulling all that information out so they can really see the larger picture and make these decisions.

Lauren Washington: 12:59

We do have a matching platform as well, where we can match investors to founders, but I think from our research, we really wanted to focus on process, right? I think this is what we kept coming back to when we had conversations, particularly with investors was actually, I feel like we have a decent pipeline, I feel like we have this goal of investing in different types of founders, but we don't know what's going wrong and where right. We just don't know. Is it at the pitch, is it at the intro, is it at the deal terms? And that's what we're trying to identify for them. So, taking that burden off of founders to be changing things about their pitch or learning more things We've learned so much about investing at this point and really just shifting that burden, I would say, onto investors so that they can do the work internally to change the system. They're the ones with the power. They need to be the ones to change the system.

Langston Clark: 13:57

Yeah, I think that's really interesting because there's so much.

Langston Clark: 14:01

There's so much that we get about. So, like doing all of these interviews, and I have all of these friends who are everybody I don't want to say everybody's trying to start a business, but I think entrepreneurship is something that is deeply embedded within our generation and younger of black folks. People want to start building things, and people in our community a lot of times want to start building things that could serve us but then also serve the world. But like really rooted in our community, and we hear all of these things about going to these classes or this Google secret Google meet up for, like, black folks. You need to do this, you need to do this and all the coaching is for us, yeah, but it's interesting that you have created a product that actually teaches the funders how to find people who maybe have gaps that you're missing, or maybe they're missing, but you can. So I definitely like no, this is what you need to be looking for and basically, your company is standing in the gap of that missing information, which I, which I think is great.

Lauren Washington: 15:02

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, like I said, I've been in this industry for over 10 years now and if you look at the statistics overall, last year the funding to black founders went down about 90 percent. Right, all of the funding to women founders went down significantly. It's the worst that's been in a long time. So what we're doing right now in terms of making these changes and these commitments that came out of 2020 is obviously not working Right.

Lauren Washington: 15:32

If we're we're sliding back in such significant ways, then putting that burden on the founders to learn or to change their pitch or to help navigate the system I'm not saying that's not important, it is. I think educating founders is really important before you come into this space, but obviously there are other systemic issues that are the problem and we're starting to see a lot more movement in that way. California just came out with some legislation where they're now tracking demographics of the investments that these funds are making. New York has their venture alliance that is also putting together a coalition of investors to start tracking this data. I mean we have to take different steps now, because I think we've gotten to the point where we know all of this and we just and not much progress has been made.

Langston Clark: 16:20

Yeah, it seems to me, just based upon what we talked about and what I've seen on your LinkedIn profile, that much of what what you've done as a founder and as an entrepreneur has been really rooted in building and developing community from black women talk tech to black men talk tech. And I'm wondering if now if you could kind of tell us a story of going from black women talk tech to the story of Black Future House, because it's really interesting how nowadays it seems like that founders are really, in a lot of ways, community builders, like you see people doing these startups and they get like groups online that are talking about their business and they just really focus on that narrow group of people and then go from there. So talk a little bit about how you've been able to do that and how it's evolved into Black Future House. Yeah, so I would say.

Lauren Washington: 17:19

I've always kind of been a community builder. It's just something that I naturally gravitate towards and I always say that it's selfishly, because that's what I want. Like it's not. I don't have any like real ulterior motives outside of. I feel like I need a community of black women founders and if it doesn't exist, I'm going to create it, and it's truly as simple as that. That's where black women talks. That came from. It wasn't meant to be a business. We didn't get together with that idea of it turning into what is now the largest conference for black women tech founders. But it took off in that way because it came a from an authentic place of need and because there was a huge gap that that was obviously not being filled. So the first year that we did it, people said this is radical. I've never seen a group hundreds of black women in a space together talking about what their business is, in a space together, talking about what they're going through in this industry and particularly as an entrepreneur.

Lauren Washington: 18:17

Like you said, I think we're seeing this move towards community.

Lauren Washington: 18:21

Some of it, I'm sure, has to do with the way that promotion works and the internet works and social media and the evolution of that, but I think a lot of it is around the fact that we need community to survive.

Lauren Washington: 18:33

There is no way that I would still be an entrepreneur today if I did not have my entrepreneur community, and so I think what ended up coming out of Black Future House, similarly, was my South by experience and the fact that, yes, there's a lot of groups that are coming out here, black led organizations, who are putting on events.

Lauren Washington: 18:51

They don't get as much shine, they don't get as much promotion and, as a black attendee, most of the time you're not even buying a South by path. You're coming down to experience all these other things and support all the people you know, but you're running around all over the city trying to get to them. And so the idea for what we were doing was what if we create a house and we create the structure for all these organizations to come together, put their programming on, and then we can help share costs and we can help promote and amplify each other's message. So last year was the first pilot for that, and it's only grown and taken off since then. So, again, it's just like taking the step for something that you feel is indeed and something that you want. Community wise is generally how I've put all those things together.

Langston Clark: 19:39

I think it's really serendipitous that we got a chance to meet like this because, as I mentioned, I actually went to black black future house last year and it was a great experience and, as someone who doesn't live in Austin but I have I have some history there with the grad school there. So I went back and I saw my homeboy, malik Crowder. I don't want to call Malik my homeboy because we not even the same age. Malik is like my elder, so I can't call him homeboy.

Langston Clark: 20:00

Malik was there and it was interesting to see Kenny Vakaro, who's a former safety for the New Orleans Saints and some other teams and play football at UT Austin, was there talking about his business and there was all this diverse group of black folks there talking about their businesses and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about your art of gathering. How were you able to curate, you know, and get all these black folks in the space? What's the space like that you create for black folks when they get together to talk about their business or do business with one another?

Lauren Washington: 20:32

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I think the authenticity that I mentioned is really important, and I know some people don't like that word, but it's true. I think you can tell when someone is not doing things from a place of wanting to make the world better or wanting to make their community better. You can tell right. You can tell when it's from a place of just a money grab. So I think that's part of it. Again, it's like this is what I want, this is what I need to see, and so I want to bring it forward. And I think the other piece is really being open to collaboration.

Lauren Washington: 21:05

So this is something that we talk about internally all the time, and I've had all these conversations around black collaboration and why it can be difficult for us to come together and collaborate, because I think sometimes we internalize some of the lessons that we've heard or the stories we've heard about. There can only be one We've been told this forever there's only one black person who's doing x, y, z, and there's not an abundance of opportunity for us, and so if you live in that mindset, then you're unfortunately not going to be good at collaboration. But if you live in the mindset of, oh, let's all get some. We could all participate in this and lift each other up. I think again, people feel that and they understand it and are willing to participate in those types of organizations, and that was true for Black women.

Lauren Washington: 21:54

Talk tech as well. People would come and just be shocked, because the general startup industry is very much the dog eat dog world. When we came together, it was how can I help you? What are you working on? How can I amplify you? And it was just a completely different experience that I think people are gravitate to.

Langston Clark: 22:13

And I think community happens in a large way, but they can also happen in a much smaller way, right, and so I mentioned that a trend that I'm seeing now among founders, whether they be black or other racist ethnicities, is that people are building community around their business. But that community could also be between you and a co-founder, and I noticed that with many of your businesses you have a co-founder. Talk about how does somebody effectively co-found, but then maybe also added how do you think black folks could effectively collaborate across businesses as well?

Lauren Washington: 22:45

Yeah. So I think the co-founder relationship is one that if you have not had it like, you're not going to experience in other ways in terms of work. You know, I think sometimes people think about it as like your co-workers or your boss, and it's a totally different relationship. I mean, you were so intertwined and embedded not only in this business but effectively in each other's lives, because everything you do with this business has consequences, right, and pretty major consequences. You're taking a huge risk together. So there needs to be a certain level of trust, communication, there needs to be a certain level of how you work together and not being aligned, the goals you're reaching and moving towards, and I think we just don't have that conversation a lot about how to create that, and particularly in the startup world, where sometimes having a co-founder is a prerequisite, right, like they will not talk to you if you are a single founder. I think that's changing a lot, but definitely when I first started, that was a prerequisite. If you were a single founder, they would just throw your pitch in the trash. So I think, yes, I think it's important to have that support and to have more people with you, because you cannot build something really big by yourself, even if you don't have a co-founder, you're going to need a team of some sort, and so I think that's kind of the first step for them.

Lauren Washington: 24:00

But I think the one thing we have missed is how critical those relationships are in terms of building them out. So that's definitely a lesson that I have learned over time. And then I would say for Black Collaborators it's similar. It's just about making sure that again, you're going towards the same goals and you have this abundance mindset and you don't feel like it just has to be me. If I don't win, then nobody else can win. So I think really making sure you find people who are aligned with that is the best way to create it, and not everyone is for each other, I like some of those personality differences or, like I said, goals differences, and that's fine and you can shake hands and move on and keep going if that's the case.

Langston Clark: 24:41

So you've been a teacher, you're a business woman, you've got your MBA, you've had a number of schooling type of experiences, and school creates a type of community. I think it's the easiest way to find community because you automatically have friends. Do you know what I mean? And so it's almost like you recreated these environments for people to learn from one another, even after you finish your formal education. Talk a little bit about how you've been able to continue your own learning as an entrepreneur, and how does one position themselves to be able to get access to these? I don't want to say this. There's almost like there's these secret opportunities that exist that not everybody gets invited to. So how do you get invited to those exclusive learning opportunities as an entrepreneur and a founder?

Lauren Washington: 25:25

Yeah, I mean, I think as a founder, you have to always be learning. I don't know many founders who aren't reading dozens of books a year. You have to constantly be shifting and learning because your business grows so quickly, because you're taking on so many things that you probably haven't done before. Even though I started five companies, there's still new things I don't know how to do and I'm learning all the job and I'm either learning it from other people that I know who have done it and gotten their feedback on it, or I'm learning it from a book, or I'm just learning it the hard way through, just failing. And so if you don't have that learning, mind that I think entrepreneurship is going to be really difficult for you. But the other side of things, in terms of getting access to opportunities to learn and grow, I think a lot of those have come from the community building. That I've done and being active and saying yes a lot. When you say yes, people will follow up with you again because they know you're going to say yes or they think there's a likelihood of it.

Lauren Washington: 26:21

And then the second piece, I think is also speaking out and speaking on what is important to you. So when I first started my journey as an entrepreneur, I was hesitant to talk about being a Black woman in the space again because that just was not a conversation and I wanted to be a founder. I didn't want to be a Black woman founder, I didn't want to take that burden on and I had someone who was one of my investors say you have to go and talk about this, you have to talk about the stuff you're going through. So I started opening up slowly about that and that was truly when so many opportunities came across, because people knew I cared about it and I was passionate about it and I was willing to say something that was potentially controversial for the greater good and for something that I truly believed in. I think that was really what opened up a lot of these opportunities for me.

Langston Clark: 27:10

I think that's interesting, because another common trope that I'm seeing now is you talked about authenticity a lot of times, and being who you are will attract the opportunities that you need, so I think it's great that you share that. And you also mentioned you started five companies five. I'm just trying to get past my first one with this podcast so from my perspective, I think that's absolutely amazing, and I also noticed that you haven't stayed with all five of these companies. So Black women talk. Tech is something that you've transitioned out of, and so can you talk about the transition from being the founder to transitioning out of your business, to sunsetting it, to handing it off to somebody else, to selling it to somebody else? What's the process? Like that like?

Lauren Washington: 28:03

Yeah, I mean I think every founder should prepare themselves for that, because the likelihood of you staying in your company from the time you started it until the time you retire is very, very low, just in terms of just failure rates of companies, the way that companies have success these days, which is through acquisition normally, so you're absorbed into something else and your product might go away, or just again, like you just have shifting values and changes in terms of your life that your business does not make sense for anymore.

Lauren Washington: 28:40

So my first company failed. I mean, we came out and had a really exciting debut, but we were pulling information from social media platforms and their APIs and then Cambridge Analytica happened and they shut off pretty much all of their access to data. We had nothing. We didn't have enough money to pivot because we hadn't raised a lot of money, and so we were pretty much dead in the water. So that was one that I had to close and that was probably one of the harder things I've had to do. But that's because I didn't prepare myself for it. I didn't prepare for the fact that, like 90% of companies fail for a variety of reasons.

Lauren Washington: 29:19

Black woman Talk Tech was a little bit different. It's still running, it's still growing, which is super exciting. My co-founders have stayed on that. The reason I shifted was because I started working on Fundr and I couldn't manage both of them at the same time. They were both starting to grow and I felt like Black woman Talk Tech was in a place where I could hand this off to them and it was stable enough as a company that they could continue building it and growing it and I trusted them to do that, whereas Fundr was brand new and needed a lot of handholding and a lot of attention to kind of get it to that next place.

Lauren Washington: 29:54

But yeah, I think in terms of building your business, especially if you're doing a scalable company, just preparing yourself for something like that is really important so that you're not blindsided. Or even if you have a really exciting outcome like an acquisition, I know a lot of founders who've sold their companies and kind of had regrets because they weren't the founder anymore and they weren't driving things and they were in this now big corporate culture, and so that's a really important part that we don't talk about a lot, and I've been through a lot of programs, a lot of accelerators. They never prepare you for that stuff. So I think it's really important to start thinking about those things before, in the very, very beginning. What does this look like for you long term?

Langston Clark: 30:36

So I'm assuming you started Fundr with that in mind. With the acquisition in mind. Yeah, with like one day, not in terms of you failing, but in terms of somebody's going to come by this maybe will IPO and things will change. So in the back of your mind you're like it's not going to be mine one day.

Lauren Washington: 30:58

I think you have to. If you're going down the venture alley, if you are building something that you want to be a lifestyle business, that you want to pass on to your kids, that will be in your family for generations or, like you said, you can retire on, then you don't have to necessarily think about that. But if you are going down the venture route, then absolutely because that's what they expect. They expect some kind of return on their funds and usually that's an exit. It could be an IPO Again. That's a tiny, tiny sliver of companies, particularly these days. So normally you're having some kind of acquisition. You could potentially buy your investors back. That's also pretty rare, but generally you have to be prepared to let go of the company at some point, and so before you even start the conversations with investors and before you even take their money, you have to understand that. If you're okay with that and if you're not, then look at other alternative options for building your business.

Langston Clark: 31:59

This makes me think about a conversation I had with my wife the other day, maybe like a week ago, and she was like Langston, when you're starting a business, it's not yours, it's not yours. We think it's ours. We're the owner, but it's not ours. If you want your business to grow and be what it could be, it can't just be yours. I appreciate you sharing your perspective on that.

Lauren Washington: 32:21

That's true. I think we have this idea that I'm going to be an entrepreneur and be my own boss, which I hear a lot of people who haven't been entrepreneurs that say this and I'm like you're not going to be your own boss. Your investors are your bosses, your customers are your bosses, your team members are your bosses. I mean, you have so many people that you're answering to you that you're not, unless you're an individual freelancer you're not you're not only doing this for yourself, so it's an important mindset to have coming in. Yeah.

Langston Clark: 32:49

Definitely, Definitely. We talked about quite a few things. We've talked about your learning experiences. We talked about you being a teacher in a classroom, K through 12. Now I want to talk about you being a teacher as an advisor, and so we talked about before we started recording the entrepreneurship and residency at UB. But then you've also been in these other advisory positions at South by Southwest, working for the mayor's task force in the city of Austin. Talk about these different seats that you sit in as an advisor and what benefit that is to you but also to the communities that you've been a part of.

Lauren Washington: 33:23

Yeah, I think there's a couple reasons why I take these advisor roles. Some of them are to give back, because people have done it for me and it's been invaluable. I think that's the one of the things I really like about the startup venture industry is that there is this nature of giving back and providing advice and helping people, so that's something that I just like to do, but, on the other hand, I always learned something from it too. I am at EIR, which is mainly an advisory role at UB, at their cultivator incubator, and every time I talk to one of the startups there, I come back inspired and I come back learning things, and that's really important for any kind of mentorship.

Lauren Washington: 34:04

Right, it should be a two-way street. You should be learning something. It's a relationship at the end of the day. I think the other piece of it is really being able to have my voice in a room so things like the mayor's task force, the South by pitch advisory board, understanding my experiences as a Black woman and that specific perspective that I have in this industry as a founder If I am being invited into those rooms and being allowed to sit at those tables and share my voice and speak for other people who I know are having similar experiences. It's really really hard for me to say no to that, because I know it doesn't come along very often and I'm super grateful to have that opportunity to do it and to be able to kind of again speak for the things that I believe in and the people who I'm trying to advocate for.

Langston Clark: 34:50

Do you see being on an advisory board as a step toward potentially being on a corporate board? Have you thought about it in that way at all? I have.

Lauren Washington: 34:59

Yeah, I don't know that it's like a necessarily a bricked path for me. I think, particularly when it comes to corporate boards, some of it is just like opportunity, when the opportunity comes across and you're the right fit. But it is something that I have explored and it's a good way to start getting some exposure to that. Sometimes those advisory board positions, if those companies grow large enough, could turn into paid roles or just even having that experience in terms of helping to run and manage a company is valuable. So it is something that I've looked at for sure and that's an experience that, again, I would learn a lot from. That definitely interests me.

Langston Clark: 35:32

And so I know one of those advisory boards, as you mentioned, is the South by Southwest Pitch Advisory Board, and so, as we're recording this, south by Southwest 2024 is just weeks away and I will be going back to Black Future House. Just give us some insights into what Black Future House will be this year 2024 at South by Southwest and what do you think Black Future House will be beyond 2024?.

Lauren Washington: 35:57

Yeah. So this year it is taken it to the next level in terms of Black Future House. So we opened up and had an application process for organizations to come in. We had over 100 applications to be a part of the event this year. So from that we made the hard choices of choosing 16 partners. They run the gamut of Revolts podcast network to rock the bells to know badness. Future of food. Black Ambition Prize is coming back again, and so we have a huge group of really influential, incredible organizations that I'm really excited to see their content. And it is again going to span a number of different industries. This year we have about eight different topics everything from sports, as you mentioned, to music, to travel, that we have innovation and tech, we have film. So really excited about the different type of topics and particularly because those intersections that happened last year between those topics were so exciting, right, that people came for the entrepreneur panel and then stayed for the e-gaming panel and they were like I didn't even think I was going to be interested in this.

Langston Clark: 37:06

And here.

Lauren Washington: 37:06

I am thanks throughout the whole day listening to all these really interesting topics, and then all those people came together and had conversations, so you had startup investors talking to you know, the X and a bell players and you know, trying to figure out what they can do and how they can collaborate, and that's exactly what we wanted, so super excited about that.

Lauren Washington: 37:24

We have a lot of different activations happening. There's going to be a live podcast recording, there's a food competition where we find the next Black chef. There's a lot of different things that are kind of happening internally as well, so it should be really really exciting and moving forward. I think it's just really keeping that spirit alive, making sure that we are serving not only the partner organizations that we have but all the people who are coming and again, creating that really authentic experience that you know people have a space where they can come and just breathe. Like that's the one thing we heard so many times is that I came here, I've been running around outside, I walked in here and I felt like I could just take a breath. So that's that's the experience that we want to keep going.

Langston Clark: 38:05

All right. So, lauren, my last two questions are going to be this. Number one where can we go to follow and support Fundr and Black Future House, and what books are you reading that have either you read for pleasure or have inspired your journey as an entrepreneur?

Lauren Washington: 38:23

Yeah. So in terms of following us, you can find Fundr at Fundr. ai, and then Black Future House at BlackFutureHouse. com, and then you'll find all our social channels through those pages. And then, as far as books, it's tough because I read a lot, and so I would say some recent books that have been really incredible. One was called the Magic Box Paradigm, and I think I talked a little bit about preparing yourself for an exit previously. I wish I had this book at the start of my journey, because it essentially does that and it says here's how you start those conversations, here's the roadmap and the blueprint to your exit, which could be five to 10 years from now, but you need to start thinking about it immediately.

Lauren Washington: 39:04

I thought it was an incredible book. And the other one, what I read recently, is called 4,000 Weeks, and it was essentially saying the average person has 4,000 weeks to live. How are you using that time? So it's really like a meditation on time and how time really influences who you are like. How you spend your time is who you are essentially is the takeaway from that, and so both of those were really eye opening and, I think, really exciting for any entrepreneur to read.

Langston Clark: 39:31

Lauren, thank you for joining us here today on Entrepreneurial Appetite. I look forward to seeing you in two weeks at Black Future House because I will be there, and thanks again for joining us.

Lauren Washington: 39:41

Thanks so much for having me. This is great.

Langston Clark: 39:42

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