We're sitting here in New Lab. You have you've been one of the instigators of Blackhawk Saturdays, but you're also building your own innovation center. Is that Is that accurate? Yeah. Yeah. Mean, will let me hear what I'll say. I think people talk a lot about sort of ecosystems. Ecosystems often in a lot of parts of the ecosystem, you know, there's universities, there's employers, there's the buildings, you know, hubs and programs and institutes and centers, but a startup community is people. And so the critical thing, I think that, you know, we've been trying to focus on, I felt, know, I've been sort of trying this from the rooftops the last year or two. With all the investment coming, and that's already been made in all this infrastructure. We're rich in all forms of capital here, in human capital. Right? Just a a super ambitious workforce. Right? That is always been, the backbone of not just Detroit, but Michigan's economy, all the intellectual capital, why it was produced out of our universities and all this, Just tremendous. We were then Alona is the second largest region expenditure in the country. Right, following only Johns Hopkins. And them only because of APL, so I don't think that's fair comparison. You have all the physical infrastructure. Right? And that's just something that, you know, over generations we built in Detroit and all the way to Flint, and you know, just amazing is how much legacy, right, of police making there had been and all the all all of what has happened here, which provides now the opportunity, right, for a lot of new things to happen next, And even all the financial capital, Right? We have people realize that Michigan is one of the top states in terms of personal wealth. Now that's also one of the challenges that we have. There's a lot of economic segregation, which we should talk about. You know? But the thing that and we have, of course, all the cultural capital, you know, like, from, you know, jazz and solo R and B to, you know, Motown and Techno. In In tech share. Yeah. Detroit Rock City, you know, we have, which, you bleeds over to Ann Arbor. I mean, there's there's There's so much cultural wealth, right, that we enjoy too, which again, I think We have to leverage more. But the thing that's lacking, and I'll be frank, you know, this is where our focus has been, is is the social capital, which is why things like Blackjack Saturdays are so critical, why wanted to make sure, you know, we supported, you know, Community leaders like Johnny Alexa, who understand how to bring Kimi together in ways that make this accessible in the way that manufacturing had always been. So say this about manufacturing. Manufacturing was always special because it's one industry that offered a job to anybody. Right? So throughout history, right? You know, that was really the opportunity, that anybody could get a job in manufacturing, do well, and lots of people came up here because of it, right, from Kentucky and part South. But now, you know, with kind of the acceleration of of how changes happen, right, through technological advances in manufacturing and almost every and and You know, technology is not industry. Technology is every industry. You can't name a single industry or sector that has not been transformed. Unaffected by technology, right? And so, really, you know, things like black textures are critical because it provides again, not just the training and all this, which is important, but it's really about culture change. It's really about us understanding how to Go after it using the tools. Right? And and I think that that the reality is that, like, young people already get this. Young people are digital natives. There's not a single person. They're not a young person under age of thirty who has not sort of grown up not knowing what the Internet is and, you know, mobile Right. And and all this stuff. And so young people are digital natives. They've never known it a world that's different. But there's a lot of folks, right? For whom we do need to be more intentional, right, about how we create opportunity and pathways for their success and for economic participation. And so that's a large large part of our focus. And it's not just via the foundation. So while we have our foundation, which is, you know, one aspect of what we do in terms of giving, the other two parts of what we really do as a family office, you know, my family is doing Post Duo is private investment. Right? So we we put our money where our mouth is. Right? So we make sure we're we're backing the companies and people that are going to change, you know, kind of fortunes of our communities for everyone, But also on policy. It says something a little more shy about because personally believe that, you know, people like me should be sort of shut up and be in the background a little bit more on this stuff often, you know, when it comes to policy and let that be led by folks who professionally have sort of spent the time studying, you know, in community, right, and really driving an agenda that is more ground up. But that said, I do believe that we have responsibility to lead. That my biggest knock against the business community we often have here is that it's not often about community. It's often about business. It's about right. And I think, you know, we have to be more thoughtful than that. I think for business to be successful, we have to be investing in the communities in which we operate. For our shared success. And and for me, that was, you know, lesson learned from from kinda Duo and And what we built in Ann Arbor because, you know, we could not have built Duo had we not invested heavily in helping to build the startup community in Ann Arbor. Right. It is. So that is an effect about ecosystem, about culture, and about community. And I'm kinda curious, you know, you've had such a hand up in, in launching Black Tech Saturdays and working with Johnny and Alexa. You know, when you were first talking with them, what did you see in them that, ignited your passion and ignited your vision to say, wow, these guys can really do something. I mean, I remember being at the first black tech event with fifty or sixty people, and there was just an energy about it. It was an energy from the start. Well, I'll say this. I mean, it wasn't, you know, it was never my vision and wasn't, you know, it was properly sort of Johnny Alexa. But what had done is we had created the kind of platforms earlier that had helped them, you know, get get a start. So, you know, the first events there were were were not actually technically Black Tech Saturdays, but when Johnny Alexa had organized For For MFF, the Michigan Founders Fund, a Black History Month celebration of black tech. Right? We did over at Centric Place, is a black owned co working facility over in Farmington. But, yeah, they had pulled together it was one hundred and twenty founders, investors. We bought a bunch of my friends from across the country for it. And I think there they sort of really saw the opportunity. Quentin Messner, he'd not been in the seat too long at NBC. This was years ago. But was sort of stunned. He's like, wait a second. This is awesome. Well, this is happening. But I didn't realize actually that we had a legacy of black technologists who had built this place. And, know, frankly, You know? You know, a lot of these things is just hard because I I I watch it all happen in out of Ann Arbor, my my friends, Maria Levi Thompson. Right? They were professors at the University of Michigan, They spun out a battery technology company, one of the first called TGA technologies that really pioneered the space were acquired by A123 systems, ran that in the Obama administration, Maria had helped build a lot of policy that led to the Green Gnome programs that have funded EV battery manufacturing in this country Now for better part of a decade before there was any market. And so we have a black founder in Ann Arbor, who really is the reason why we have any EV battery manufacturer in this country at all. We never told that story. And, you know, Maria has has gone to the VC and and, you know, Levi's gone on to, you know University of Delaware, but, you know, they stay connected to this community. But the continuity of of these kinds of stories, threads, and histories to what happens next sometimes I would say too often, gets broken. And it gets broken because there isn't a community to carry it, where the connection between people, the relationships, right? They don't And so I've worked so hard to try to pull these people back in, kinda round up more folks that should know each other, and build more of a of a business community that actually understands why we need success, successful founders, critically to reinvest their time, talent, and particularly their capital into the into the ecosystem, alright, for the next generation. Because there's a strong signaling here that happens sometimes in Detroit, which is which is pretty damaging, which is that one of the ways you show you demonstrate you're successful in Detroit is you leave Detroit. And that's that's really a problem. And in part of that happens because people don't feel like they're valued here. You know, it's always a case that, you know, I mean, literally, the biggest frustration for me, and I don't want me to gripe on all this stuff, but you know, it's still a sore topic for me. When I was building Duo, I'd sold to, like, every institution, major institution in Ohio before I sold a single Customer in Michigan. I sold to Ohio State University, we sold to four nets, the state of Ohio network, we sold to the state of Ohio, we sold everybody in Ohio, and no one in Michigan would give us time of day. And I think it's because there's this inferior complex in Michigan, where we feel Yeah. So Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, seriously, like like, it's it's kind of this this very institutional kind of thinking where it's like, you know, if you're not part of the corporate sector and all that kind of thing, you're some up and coming sort of entrepreneur, they look at you, they're size you up, they're like, yeah, Or you're still in Michigan. You must not be that good. Yeah. That's an unfortunate legacy that we have to extinguish. You're absolutely right because so much innovation has happened here and so much success is on the rise here. And you look at new you know, and Black Tick Saturdays, in my view, watching it every week here, at New Lab Live is a testament to the fact that if you build it, they will come. I mean, and what they built is a community, a community of black entrepreneurs and black technologists and and African American investment that's really, really come together in the last two years. And it's just been so inspiring to see that, and it's part of the energy of this very building. You can't come in this building without being inspired. And so where do you see this going next? You know, with your investments and your investment outlook for the state, you have been vocal about policy changes to make Michigan much more hospitable to venture capital, to investment and to technology startups and companies moving here? Yeah. Well, there's there's sort of the top down and bottom up approach. And so I guess I'll say as as a founder, I'm always gonna be aligned with founders. Right? It's the grassroots and bottom up. You know, the people, the founders are the people who put themselves, their families, at risk on behalf of our communities. They're they're out there trying to create value in this world, doing the crazy stuff that, you know, I mean, you gotta be a little crazy to think that you can do something no one else has done in a way that everyone else should follow. Because, you know, entrepreneurship entrepreneurship is about executing without all the resources required. And so there's a certain kind of ambition that that that that that takes to take those kind of risks and and have people follow you through it. And so I I believe deeply that, you know, our job as a community is to wrap around those people. We have to protect those people. Right? They're they're the ones actually, you know, making the world better for all of us. And And so, you know, the way I think about this is we we do a lot of direct investments, but we also fund a lot of funds. We're over fifty venture funds, mostly emerging managers, mostly underrepresented founders, leaders, and almost all of our investments in this region in Detroit are BIPOC and underrepresented founders, women and you know, black, brown, and immigrant founders, the way that our foundation also largely gives to black, brown, immigrant led. Nonprofits. Because, you know, quite frankly, you know, there's there's there's room for everybody, and there's probably plenty of capital out there that that goes follows its usual paths. We just think, again, it's important that we create more diversity. Right? And more participation into this economy. And and so from my perspective, a couple of things. One, if you look at the numbers. Right? There was a report two years ago and actually revised over last year by start up genome. Where they called out that based on the numbers, the metrics, Detroit is the second emerging startup ecosystem globally. Right? But only if you cut in. Well, I want you to repeat that. That is a wicked, wicked statistic there. Yeah. Detroit is really America's next great startup hub because it is the second emerging startup ecosystem globally, but that's Metro Detroit. And by Metro Detroit, most folks will count as sort of the county, I count it including Ann Arbor. Again, lot of my Ann Arbor folks, friends might not agree. But you think about it, you know, Detroit to Ann Arbor is closer than San Jose is to San Francisco, is one Silicon Valley. And you think about the talent kind of shed and labor shed and kind of commute patterns and, you know, in the legacy and history of our industries, even our auto industry, right? Like, why are all the North American R and D headquarters for Toyota Hyundai, Kia, Honda, as much as Ford, and anywhere else in Ann Arbor. Right? And all the rest of industrial production and manufacturing and everything else spread across greater Detroit. It's because these are connected communities, right? You cannot have an industry cluster where the major corporates are hand in glove with r and d centers and capabilities, which again schools like, you know, U of M, Wayne State, and Michigan State represent. And these all now for the first time are represented in the city of Detroit, right, in a pretty significant way. In a big way. Right. Well, Michigan's going to launch in twenty twenty seven, the University of Michigan Innovation Center, and that is going to be a spectacular facility with a lot of programming around what you're talking about, which is to build a culture, to build a community, and to bring the assets of the university to the city of Detroit where it was actually founded in the first place.
