If you can produce something that people want
and sell it for less than it, for more than it cost for you to produce it.
That is a magical thing called capitalism and called.
Yeah, no I agree. It is very simple. It.
If you believe we can change the narrative.
If you believe we can change our communities.
If you believe, we can change the outcome and we can change the world.
I'm Rob Richardson.
Welcome to disruption. Now.
Welcome to disruption now.
I'm your host and moderator, Rob Richardson.
As always, we like to bring stories of those who are who are creating change
and who are either building a business or focused on social innovation.
And my guest today is no different.
Tremain Davis.
We got a chance to meet during DC Startup and Tech week.
We quickly became, really just,
kindred spirits that we're both here focused on making sure that,
everybody has access to technology and all are empowered.
Because it is the new economic wave of freedom.
We talk about it often.
Digital literacy.
You know, digital ownership.
Those are the keys to the future when it comes to creating the new civil
rights movement.
And Tremain has been at the forefront of that really all of his life.
So Tremain, good to have you on the show. How are you doing, brother?
Man, thank you so much for having me. Rob.
This is incredible. I love your platform.
Just excited to participate in the conversation.
And hopefully you can add value in some kind of small way.
All right, y'all. Well, yeah. For sure.
So I know you're a multi-time entrepreneur.
You've been you've been an entrepreneur since the beginning.
How did you know
you wanted to be an entrepreneur or what sparked this,
this journey into entrepreneurship, which is glorified
but often, often not really understood for what it takes to get here.
Yeah. I mean, I love that part of it.
I mean, glorified definitely.
And I think the main thing that did that was, social media, you know,
because a lot of people can post the Lamborghinis and,
you know, you see in a snapshot what took somebody 15, 20 years to build.
And you can't break down 20 years of development into,
you know, a 32nd, you know, meme or a 32nd post or real.
And that's what happens on social media.
So it gives people the illusion that this is an easy journey, man.
Entrepreneurship is hard. It is. Yeah.
It is not an easy undertaking.
I mean, you really have to sacrifice it all. You have to.
You have to go all in.
There is no you know, there's no such thing as halfway crooks.
You know who said that?
Good luck.
That's what I'm saying, man. 1990s. Man.
And that's a real thing.
You can't go have young
y'all young kids and understand that wrong for some of y'all.
But you real true
legends, the real true hip hop, real true hip hop legends for sure.
Yeah. The story of hip hop. Yep yep yep yep.
I mean, so for me, you know, I grew up in Southeast Washington
DC man, in the mid 90s, early late 80s, mid 90s.
And, it was not a great place.
I mean, murder capital, I mean, it was
it was one of those type of situations where I was a dreamer, always have been.
I'm not really sure what that came from, but I always would
look at my surroundings and say, you know what is?
How can I get out?
Like, he's got to be more to this than the streets that I'm walking around on?
Absolutely.
Like, that was that was always I was always curious.
I was always wondering about is there more?
So that kind of was innate.
You know, and, and and and always wondering,
what are you today, if you can tell me.
Yeah. Is there any point that you remember the spark?
Was there any moment or something that you knew that, okay,
I'm going to be I'm going to take control of my own life.
I'm going to be in entrepreneurship, if you can.
Is there any moment that, like, sticks out in your mind
or you just kind of 100%, I can I can that moment, moment, exact moment.
I'm in eighth grade.
I was in eighth grade and I started,
you know, in my school
it was an illegal underground candy business in my in my school.
And during that time period in my, in my, in my school,
I also got my first job scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.
I don't know if anybody remembers Baskin-Robbins 31.
Yeah, that's not a story.
I don't think I, I think so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was my first actual job.
And so I, I had this this business.
It was on demand.
The reason I say it was undergrad
because I went to like this really strict private school
and they didn't allow like outside candies and these types of things.
I had this business where I'm like hand in hand taking orders
in first period, delivering them by lunch and taking more orders.
I had runners, I'm doing hand in hand at the water fountain.
It was like it was insanity.
Man over freaking candy business
because I'm the only provider on campus, you know, like, I'm like getting popular.
Get famous.
The headmaster had a monopoly and the whole logistics was really
there was serious bad. It was serious.
The headmaster lady, she didn't know who it was, so
she threatened to expel whoever it was when she found out who it was.
And so that made me even more popular.
I had a couple of, a couple of, like, the younger teachers.
They found out that it was me,
and they pulled me into their classrooms after class and told me
they found out it was me, and I ended up putting them on payroll.
I gave them $30 a week.
I, I had two teachers on payroll.
Man did not say anything.
I had, I had friends.
It was such a it was growing so much.
There's a lot of whole campus that I couldn't keep all the candy in my locker.
So I had to get friends to store candy in their locker, and I paid them in candy.
So what?
What ever do you are? Entrepreneur.
Oh my gosh. Oh.
So I was doing this at school and then I would leave school
and go to this part time job at Baskin-Robbins.
And you know, I don't know if you guys remember,
if you old enough, you remember use that to put up two weeks in the hole.
And what that meant was
that you would work a job, and then you had to work two weeks,
and then you had to work a second, two weeks,
and they would give you your first paycheck.
And so you work for like over a month before you got your first paycheck.
Now, I know this is old school, isn't it? How it was.
So long story short,
I'm doing my candy business and I'm working this job out there.
And I got my first check after working like a slave
after school and Baskin-Robbins scoop of ice cream.
Now, I mean, I'm only 13 years old or something like that.
So, Rob, after all the hard work I've been doing at Baskin-Robbins,
I just knew my first check was going to be like $1 million. Right?
So, you know, like, oh, like, this has gotta be
like the come up of the century, man.
When they handed me that first check, the I would never forget this number.
It was $273.86.
I have to have been working for over my $276 and 83 cent.
And Rob, I'm making that in like three days in school with two teachers
on payroll.
I got two employees, I got runners, you know what I'm saying?
You know, my name is this man.
And and so like, like I got the check from the dude that ran the Baskin-Robbins.
He handed it to me,
I opened it, I looked at it, I asked him, I said, is this, like, serious?
Like, this is this is zero.
He was like, no, you know what? I take taxes out. I know you, young.
You won't understand. He's saying stuff like that.
I was like, man, I know one thing I do understand.
I'm telling this, this what I'm about to tell you changed my life.
I decided right there that jobs are for suckers like I did.
Like I'm talking about eighth grade. I said that to my left, out the.
I left out the store.
I quit, I told him that's it for me. I'm not coming back.
I took that check. I didn't come back.
And when I walked out the store, I said to myself, jobs are for suckers.
And and,
because I'm like, I'm making this in 2 or 3 days at school doing my own thing.
And and I got dudes that got degrees as teachers, you know,
taking $30 a week from this snot nosed kid because I'm in value in a way.
And I couldn't articulate it like that back. Right, right.
But just, you know, looking backwards
because I'm in value in a way that nobody else could on campus.
And I decided then, I didn't know what business was.
I didn't know, but I just knew right there
at that moment that I was not going to be a traditional job dude.
Like I was not going to do it. Yeah.
No, that's that that's that's incredible. So,
so like going to that.
So from eighth grade your your your you're born hustler.
It just it was there.
Now give me to the point of your, of your full kind of more mature
entrepreneurial journey and your first kind of step into that.
And, you know,
specifically think about whenever that first kind of mature business is.
I mean, the candy business is much
you're more mature than a lot of people ever get to that.
You already have a
you already have employees, you're already figured out
how to reduce your cost of goods.
I mean, you did a lot.
I didn't even see. Right.
But like
but now let's take your kind of first business venture, because I,
I really want to talk about that.
And then take yourself back to that moment in time so you can.
Yeah. So what advice?
I'll give you a younger self really quick.
So like question just like in a concise way.
And then you can dive into the story.
What advice would you give your younger self
and what advice would you ignore.
Yeah.
So the the ignoring advice is easy, which is you're stupid, don't do it.
You know, to me, like a lot of that.
And I was so young when I started my first business.
We'll get into that in the second.
So I had a lot of naysayers, and I think that just comes
with the territory of doing things that is, counterintuitive
or just not really something that everybody else is doing.
So you're going to get a lot of that.
So that was the advice that I would have ignored.
But, you know, at the time it it was meaningful because there's people
that you think care about you, you know, these types of things.
And they may too. I want to say absolutely.
And they probably do.
But but oops.
Yep. Giving you advice that haven't been in business aren't the right mentors.
But that doesn't mean that they're bad people.
It's just that like, you know,
if I want to learn to play basketball, I'm not going to talk to a hockey player.
And if I want to, I guess if I want to learn to be an entrepreneur,
I can't sell to somebody that doesn't understand entrepreneurship.
And unfortunately, it's been seen as this, this thing we shouldn't
do as a community, we should get a safe job, get our education.
And there's nothing wrong with those things.
Some of those things are passed entrepreneurial thinking, by the way.
Right? Right, right, right.
Like we've gotten to this place where
we've often been, you know, so that that that's not something you should do.
You should do the same thing in order to really protect yourself and your family.
Well, you know, and then you got to go back.
I mean, I started my first company 25 years ago.
You talking about 99 2000 and that's where the greats coming in.
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Got that great coming in now.
But it wasn't even called entrepreneurs like that wasn't even a word.
And you know, this was just this crazy business stuff like, what are you doing?
You know, the guys that wrote the book on entrepreneurship, you know, the Steve
Blank's this the egg Reese's of the world, you know, Clay Christensen,
like they were writing the book on entrepreneurship as I was doing it,
you know, so there was no YouTube didn't exist.
Like, you know, you couldn't find this information.
You was really just kind of taking a chance.
And people thought that you were literally crazy.
And my situation, it was even crazier.
So you fast forward like two years after the crazy Kennedy story,
you know, I, I was,
you know, just so having to been been blessed to be able to play basketball.
So I was all state in Maryland, all county, all of this stuff
in my high school career.
And if you can, you know any to O'Hare.
I can remember before smartphones,
in order to get your game footage or to get recruited to play basketball,
back in those days, you had to have an old fashioned video recorder
with a with a camcorder and a VHS tape,
and you had to have somebody to a game to tape you on these big old clunky tapes.
And then you had to go get, you know, copies of it made highlight reels and
snail mail them all across the country and hope that a recruiter got back to you.
So I went through that whole process in high school,
you know, again, before technology was really a thing, like, hey, and,
I said in 12th grade, I'm like, not getting the recruiting that
I think I should get.
I mean, I'm all state, all county,
but I didn't have as big of a name as some of the guys that I played against.
They went to the NBA like you Bogans and,
Joe Forte and some of these guys that had really good NBA careers.
They played against me, I SBU, I didn't have the name.
And so, I was just like, well, what do we do?
And so I started thinking about this in 12th grade, how to solve this problem.
And so I actually got a small scholarship to go
for full ride at Southern Maryland and play basketball.
And I went through there my first year thinking about this idea.
And then I went back my second year and I came back a preseason All-American.
I had all these offers from around the country,
and I broke my ankle like 3 or 4 games into the season and my second year,
and I was out for the season.
And so now you still expected to participate in practice
and do all the things.
I'm there to play basketball.
And I got this idea, this brain.
I couldn't take it anymore, especially if I couldn't play ball.
And so I dropped out of college my second year on crutches
and started my first tech company.
And with the company was to give you this a quick background
is, I don't know if you remember Black Planet.
That was like the great I remember my company.
Yeah, I guess I'm go first focus on media.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the first day.
Yeah.
That's before Facebook
and before that's the great great great grandfather, favorite.
Like, you know, the Black planet. Moving on
more than ever I look ahead. Yep.
Yeah.
When I first got to campus because my whole thing was like,
how do you solve this?
I did this problem of recruitment around the country for players,
because I'm sure that
if you're not a blue chip or like, you're not the top player in the country,
there's tons of second tier players, I guess, such as myself,
who are just as good but just don't have the notoriety.
How do you get them?
And so I got on campus, and the very first thing I did on
my first year was first day on campus.
One of my teammates said, you got to get on black Planet.
Dude, I'm from the hood.
We barely had a TV in the house, let alone a computer.
So back on Black Plan.
I don't know anything about computers, email, nothing.
And so he takes me into the library.
He sets me up an email account, and he gives me on the Black Planet.
Now, of course, you know, it's about girls at the time.
So he's like, you can talk to girls all across the country.
Yeah.
Oh, black plan to use it, instant messenger and all this stuff.
And so like, I was like, oh, really? Yes.
I get on Black Planet
and sure enough, you can talk to girls of all the way around the, country.
Now I go straight to being an entrepreneur.
And I say, wait a minute, I should create
Black Planet for sports recruitment.
And that was my for.
That was the epiphany I got the first day I was on campus to play basketball.
What if there was a black planet for sports recruitment, where
college coaches can see see players in a game film anywhere in the country?
And then that. Then I saw the recruitment problem.
And so I had that idea.
My I had my daddy in 12th grade, but I didn't it didn't crystallize
high school. Right.
Once I saw Black Planet, I immediately said
this is the way to do this idea I've had for a year.
Then I play ball a whole year, and then I got,
like I said, I got hurt my second year and, and I dropped out
and I started what I called, c athlete.com.
And right where we were doing,
we were creating a black planet for sports recruitment.
That was my how do you think I know going down that going down that road there.
So you started started this black tech.
Sorry, not black tech, but this black,
black planet for recruitment.
Now, did you know how to code?
Did you know I've never been a tech like welder.
Never been a tech.
You know, she had her walk people through that process, right?
So yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's feeling like right now
it's it's never easy, but it's much easier now than it was.
It was there like, you can you can pop up a website.
If you really got to put in 3 or 4 hours, you can figure it out.
But, I even had I never even had a computer growing up.
I mean, how do you go about this, like, you out here?
Like, where does your company.
Yeah. So, so so here's where it started.
So, you know, the listen, the internet is just coming out.
I mean, AOL America Online is just getting big, you know, so
all this old tech,
you know, where it was back then 25 years ago
is not what it is today first and foremost.
So the first thing I had to think about was building a team.
So if there's any entrepreneurs out there,
what I would say is lean into your skill sets.
And what I'm really good at is the stuff we're doing right now, right?
Which is relating to people,
creating relationships, you know, finding ways and strategies on
how to add value, how do people teams and relate to people
interpersonal relationships? I'm good at that stuff.
And so the first thing I say when I have this epiphany
that I want to do this idea, is that I need to know somebody.
Now, back then, it wasn't like how to code.
It was like, I need to know somebody who knows computers.
Because there's no there's no smartphones, there's no apps.
Everything was web based back then.
So we had to create a website, you know, type of thing.
And so, I started asking around, and,
and this guy I know, he's like, oh, my nephew is good with computers.
And he was like a couple years older than me. I'm 19.
He's like 22, 23. Right.
And so I told him about my idea.
He's like, oh yeah, I help you with that.
And he was just graduating from, I don't know if Virginia Tech one of them.
Right.
And and we together went out to try to, build this company.
We raised a couple of dollars on friends and family, a couple of angels,
put some money in, and, I mean, the solutions were dirty, Rob.
I mean, these were dirty solutions.
Trying to get to this. Yeah.
Thing that we were going to take to market.
And, you know, just to give people
a little bit of, context about what we discovered throughout this process,
is that what we really were, were doing and we didn't know this.
And this is another thing I always advise entrepreneurs
at this stage of the game, you know, looking back on it is to understand
the macro environment, the bigger market that you're trying to go into.
Because our ideas that we want to solve, sports recruitment,
what we were really doing was solving streaming video.
Now we were out six years before YouTube came out,
and the whole idea was that we wanted to to stream 30s of game film,
you know, onto our platform so that any college
coach or recruiter can see, you know, from around the country.
And that was what so we kept bumping up, bumping our heads up against two things.
One is, how do you,
yeah, because, I mean, we were still just coming off a dial up internet.
So how do you stream in that environment?
And the second thing, this is the little known fact, was storage.
How do you store, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
There was no.
Oh, my gosh.
I mean, you could buy a computer, a whole computer back then.
It would still come in from a store standpoint with
he basically had to buy servers. Right.
This was the only way I can see you doing it, man.
I mean, we were buying these little computer boxes
that were still coming in embeds
and having a network of them together like a real data cloud storage.
But, you know, no dirty solution, man.
And like, gigs didn't even exist.
You know, you talk about two gigs, three gig,
you know, your iPhone, you buy this, got 16 gigs on it
that did not exist back then in one place, especially for like a,
you know, a startup, you know, like,
but then you didn't have access to that type of stuff.
And so like the way we were trying to solve it was very,
very, very, very entrepreneurial. Let me put it that.
Yeah. Yeah.
But those were the two things that we were really solving.
But we didn't know that. You know what I mean?
We thought we would try to solve streaming.
I mean, I mean, how would you like, going back, I sometimes think back
and maybe you would, but, like, sometimes I think even Mark Zuckerberg's at this,
an idea is not fully formed until you start doing it.
So, like, it's very.
I think you can try to see.
And you probably have, more of the ability to see, the forest
for the trees now enable toys, like, because, but it's building that muscle.
Yeah.
Even when you have some of that muscle built, it's
just it's it's you can start one concept and not see it till.
Yeah, you start to really kind of dive into it, but you kind of always like.
So now you've learned that lesson in terms of seeing seeing things.
And I want to talk a little bit about AI in a second
and related conversations, because I think there's
there's a good, point to lean on here, in fact, that you were
you had this transitional moment at the beginning of the internet,
and now I feel like we're in another kind of stage.
Oh, right. Right.
And, and, and, and I'm sure there are lessons
that you can draw from being at that earlier stage.
I like to tell folks that there's no
there's no wasted activity when you're doing something productive.
Oh, yes. Yeah.
Even if you quote unquote fail,
if you actually learn and don't give up like these things
become applicable in the future so that all that, all those,
all that, muscle tissue that you built up and, and your brain,
those synapses that were created from learning how to do the candy store
to learning how to, then build a internet company from, from the ground up,
and the old fashioned way, learning how to think
is something that will never, that that will never go away.
It is something that is definitely is needed, learning how to create value,
understanding vision and articulating that are very important.
Now we're moving to the AI age.
Not moving. We are in it.
Yeah.
I'm just curious to see, do you see any comparisons to the beginning
of the internet in the AI movement, and what lessons do you think?
You can take from,
us being seasoned enough to be at all the stages of the internet
to be at this current stage? Like what?
What's the most important lesson you think you can grab from the past
that's applicable to the present?
Man. Listen, you know, one thing that I like to tell people is
that we're not going to see another, like, period of time, like this for another
150 years, like I'm going to be dead and gone
and my grandkids are going to be experiencing
the next boom that's happening, like it's happening right now.
And the fact that we saw two of them so close
together, we'll never see that again in our lifetime.
So the internet happened.
And like I participated in that, like we were building a company right as
the stuff that we use today. Like like we were out
trying to sell streaming video, although we didn't know it.
That's what we were working on six years before YouTube, five years
before YouTube, which is ubiquitous now on the planet.
You know what I mean?
Mark, Mark Cuban got his first billions from Audio Net, which was take,
you know, like like some of the richest people in the world
were working on the same stuff that we were working on at the time,
you know what I mean? And so, like, I just have more capital.
Let's capital.
Well, I mean, Mark, Mark Cuban was probably way smarter than me too.
I will say that.
Yeah.
Maybe not.
I mean, it's not I don't know, I don't know, I don't like, I think smart
there's a lot of smart people. Right. Yeah.
Right. Right. It's like access. Access.
Networks and opportunities.
I didn't matter now.
That's one thing I will say is that I didn't have access to network.
I didn't I mean,
I started literally from the gutter when it comes to where I am today,
because I didn't have access to network resources, capital like, nothing,
you know, and I had to figure it all out on my own.
But to answer your question, like, there was a time when the internet was
being born, like 95 to 2005 with YouTube and all of that stuff.
You know, 2007 is where Facebook came out.
Right after that, the iPhone came out, you know, so there's like a 15 year gap
from like 95, 96 to like 2010 where
like everything that we use today was it was invented, you know what I'm saying.
And like that
or even if it was already invented, I'm talking about maybe even commercialized.
That happened in like this 15 year gap.
Now we're seeing that same opportunity happen right now.
Where's the next ten years?
AI development is going to shape the next hundred.
That during that
15 years, there was so many billionaires,
hundred millionaires, more time millionaires born because they either
invested in the technology that supported
or came out of the internet.
They found it something in or around that space. Yes.
A lot of dead bodies
and a lot of, you know, skeletons from that time period as well.
But it was such an era of innovation because once the internet,
you know, problem was solved
and became ubiquitous, now you can start doing things like streaming.
Now you can start, I mean, that's what made the iPhone hit the way.
Did it convert all of these technologies at the perfect time?
And like, that's what's happening right now.
And I'm just I'm telling people, just on a bullhorn
from the top of the mountain screaming in as loud as I can get involved,
like the next wave of billionaires is going to happen
because of where we are with a it looks like we're we are with a,
looks just like it did back in 97 when the internet was first.
Yeah. You know, it's just like it.
No, I, I completely agree.
It looks, it looks it looks a lot like it.
I, I tell people there are and now I think about there might actually
be five stages to the digital, you know, digital revolution.
There was the,
there was the, there was a,
there was just a read version, which is the, which was the first starting
on the internet when people just put up sites. Right.
Then there was the centralization versus when it read and right, right when that's
when the social media, Airbnb that got a centralization. Yep.
We're still in this phase of, we still might say
centralization, but there's a third stage in terms of ownership of data.
There's this.
So that's the Web3 component.
People think about blockchain owning your data,
authenticating your data like no one thought.
A lot of people, I knew it was important.
And that's where I stuck on or that's where I was before I got getting into
AI and data. Right, right.
But the two are related because now the fourth stage
is we're on AI, which is the manipulation,
the, the, the mass distribution, the creation of data. Yep.
Just from having some data. Right.
And so like and then there's a fifth point that, you know, we'll,
we'll get into on a lot of the podcast, which is quantum computing. Right.
So like that's, all those adding together is going to really recreate
how we interact in the world, how we tell stories, how we,
how we experience the world.
But there are some fundamental fundamentals
one still has to have, like at least at least I believe that. Right.
So I think your experience does you.
Well, because I had a conversation earlier with the, with, with,
with a leadership coach and she said there's a lot of applications,
a lot of people putting applications out for these jobs using AI.
The problem is they're not qualified for these jobs are putting out.
So they're like over flooding things and understanding, like we need to use AI.
But I told this to my, my son who told me I was telling him
about financial literacy.
I think we had this conversation before. Right?
And he's like, well, you know, I don't need to know all this.
I can just look it up. I said, well, you can't look up how to think.
Know I solve a problem.
Yeah, exactly.
Those are things you got to develop the muscle for. Yes.
The grind floor.
Yeah.
So let's talk about AI everybody.
Because everybody says get into AI.
How would you advise someone to do that.
What does that look like.
Yeah. So it's a couple of different things.
Like everybody's not going to build you know what I mean.
Their own you know large language model.
Like everybody's not going to do that you know.
But I think the first thing that I would say
is to just calibrate yourself to what's happening right now, you know,
I think I think just understand where we are in the market,
like where we are as a, as a human race, people that have no clue.
And so I just tell people to just first take a second
and just think through like, hey, wait a minute, this thing is happening.
You know, AI is not something to be scared about.
AI is not something that you need to be fearful about.
You know, it's going to take my job. Oh, no.
You know, you can't approach it that way because because, you know,
you have no control over stuff you don't control.
Absolutely, absolutely.
You know, you got to get in the game.
And I think so many people are just sitting on the sideline just for fear
or just not understanding exactly what's going on.
So that's the first thing just you can get on a podcast.
I know you got tons of concept
content around what this thing is absolutely about you.
I mean, it's it's free on YouTube, free on podcasts like this,
like just listen to a 5 or 10 minute, you know, piece of content.
Short form doesn't have to be a long, you know, class at Harvard,
although that's available for free as well, just to understand
what's happening and where we are.
The second thing I would say is, is that AI is not like new.
Like this is this is you out of it.
Like people don't generate. They always do
Alexa and all of these things that we use every
oh Siri, turn my my water on, Alexa, turn on my favorite music or my favorite song.
Are you so you just simply have solutely.
So we've been engaging with it already in the main space, you know?
So just think about it like this AI is used to, to
to bring your favorite movies to the forefront on Netflix.
That's why Netflix is always suggesting your favorite shows
and shows that you think you have, because it's using this technology,
then Netflix is not even I mean, it's barely a 20 year old company.
You see what I'm saying?
So that's how fast this technology is moving to.
And that would be my third point is that it's moving way
faster than it was 25 years ago when I first got started.
And I think right now this not I'm not going to say the scary part,
but the, the the part that's way more interesting to me
about the whole development piece of it
is that you can develop gut stuff and go to scale so quickly.
Now, you couldn't do that 25 years ago.
You had to build a small,
then you had to get a few clients, few customers build you, work your way up.
But because the technology is developing so fast
and you have access to so many people, you can build a technology.
I mean, ChatGPT had 300 million users or something like in the first year.
It was something insane, you know, but they were given $1 billion of what
they were. They were
I mean,
even with $1,000,000.25 years ago, you wouldn't be able to.
No, no, you wouldn't be able to scale that size.
You wouldn't be even with $1 billion.
You wouldn't you just the infrastructure wasn't there.
But now that the infrastructure is there and you talked about that,
you can scale so quickly with this technology,
which means that it's going to leave certain populations.
And this is where I have a real soap box, populations of people behind bars,
especially black and brown communities, you know, other more diverse communities
that aren't thinking about the future of AI, the future, not even just a yeah,
the future of just technology in general are not thinking meaningfully about it.
You know, it'll really foster and communities
left in the dust and and like that's something that I'm really passionate about
because I, you know, I think equity is a big, big,
big risk when it comes to how fast this technology is moving.
Yeah.
Because it's not a consideration for, for the technology.
Like as we talk about building
and responsible AI, we often talk about that disruption now
and that our signature conference, Midwest Con, it's when we talk about responsible
people, talk about responsible AI, and all the time.
And, I kind of equate it like this.
I say, responsible AI is the new DTI.
What do I mean by that?
This image, this is what I mean. Okay,
a lot of people say it and don't have any real meaning when they actually say this.
It is just something that they say to be,
to be, to be, to be thought of, to say, oh, we're thinking about it.
Lots of people are not thinking about it, and they're not, because
it's the whole infrastructure has been built to be inequitable.
But like what I've, what I, what I tell fortune 500 companies,
the big players in this space
is that you want to do this because you're going to need to build trust.
And if if you have a whole population that becomes
so mistrustful, we can go backwards on, on on innovation.
So it's in your interest to actually do this in a way that,
that, that actually is more accessible, that is transparent.
Yeah. Now, I don't that they're going to do it.
I think they're going to do it.
But like I think we gotta push forward and do everything we can.
But I do think that's
that's the conversation I have with them when we talk about this.
Well, you know what?
And I think we had a, a brief, part of our discussion, to,
you know, leading up to this podcast about this.
I don't know if that is the right
you know, I don't know if
that's the right approach, because the way you change behaviors,
especially in such a capitalist society like America and just, you know, basically
all of our allies, which is most of the world,
is there has to be a substantive business model that drives the change.
And so, I don't know, and this is just, you know, my
know, this is especially like saying you got agree I don't know what.
No, no, no, no.
But I'm just saying I don't know if there's
a business model to support equitable I you see what I'm saying?
Like I don't know. Yes.
Because I mean, even if you just
think about the technology as it, as it is today, you know,
especially the tech that's kind of becoming ubiquitous and everybody's using
it was built by a very small few people, you know, set of people,
you know, and, and those that are now trying to get into a,
meaning building out their own form of it, their own limbs and things like that.
One thing that they're having a problem with is how do you commercialize?
How do you what's the business model behind you can't just get into AI,
you know what I'm saying?
Like, you can it's great that we're doing it is great to be.
But what these larger firms and cover and Google and all these,
what they have mastered is how to the business model behind it.
And that's why they're able to drive the narrative.
There are a lot of people that are getting into it. Yeah.
But I think one conversation that we need to have as
builders is how do you commercialize the AI?
Because there isn't a substantive business model that's driving innovation.
Listen, everybody talks about innovation, but there is no money in innovation.
The innovation is in replication.
I mean, the money is in replication. There's no money in innovation.
The money is in replication.
How do you take something that you innovated on and then make it
so that a billion people can use it?
That's where the money is, and that's what Google does.
Well, that's what Tesla does.
Well, you know, Netflix, that's what they do.
It's not just the innovation.
You have to wrap that around a business model that can now add value
to billions of people.
And I guess because I'm an entrepreneur.
And to your point, have, you know, on this scale said over 25 years,
you know, I can see the real issue, the real issue is not necessarily equity.
The real issue is not necessarily innovation.
All those things are there is commercialization.
Like that's what moves the needle.
And these larger companies are the ones who do that really, really well.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, I would have a different perspective on that.
I think yes, they obviously do it.
Well I mean that's not that's you can't argue with their they
you can't argue with the trillion trillion dollar company,
kind of speaks for itself in terms of,
I will I will say, though, what makes this different from every iteration of,
entrepreneurship, of innovation, whatever.
Adjective we want to use to describe what we're talking about here
is that I data data is, data is derivative.
It's building on itself.
So it's much easier to create digital dictatorships,
and then for you not to, and, and, and for folks to be able to control data.
So the question is, I believe it's going to become, extremely,
it's going to be extremely important to figure out, what this looks like.
And I think it will be, a model, because what's also a model is,
if there's, there's a business that is at its core,
also has a mission that is about solving
some type of pain point or problem or rallying the community.
Right.
So this is my this is my thesis and this is my theory.
And again, we'll we'll see how it how it plays out.
No one can predict the future, but I hope to try to envision it.
So I believe that I believe that, you know, a lot of the inequalities
that have happened over time, particularly I'm talking in the in the digital realm,
those things have never been adequately addressed.
From the input of the data, to the infrastructure, where, where it,
where people actually have access to, the internet, all those things.
Right.
The information is more democratized than ever has been so today.
But but at the same time, inequalities are starting to stretch out
larger than they have been at the same time.
And I think the risk to that, comes to a few things.
So when I talk about equity, it's also your point I completely agree with.
It's about making sure people have the knowledge.
They go out there and learn.
We have complete agreement there. Go learn.
I tell people learn by doing the same thing.
When I discuss blockchain is the same thing that applies to,
I go to ChatGPT, learn some, just go on there and just see how it applies.
Play around with three.
It's free.
Go to perplexity.
Go to go to notebook LLM.
That's another thing that I use for this podcast preparation today
that can help you, actually prepare, get notes and then learn how to,
I like to say I don't think, I should be a total replacement for people.
And I think there will be just like people didn't the business model in creating
food used to be that, just create mass produce the food.
Don't worry about the quality of it.
Shoot out as fast as you can and mass produce it.
And that was the that was the model for the first 30, 40, 50 years of, food.
But then people started saying, well, what's in this?
And then people wanted to have organic.
They wanted transparency.
So I believe that's going to happen with, with the type of art
and things that we create.
I believe people are going to want to have a dance.
With humans evolved,
I still think we need to work with I am pro I, I'm just pro authenticity.
I'm pro transparency and I'm pro ethical and I, I don't I do think there will be a
I do think they will be I don't think in the short term I agree.
Is that what you say.
So probably it's going to be we're going to rush to that.
And I believe that there's going to be errors because of that.
And that's going to have openings in the market.
And there will always be people that want to, do this in a responsible way.
So I do think there will be opportunities for that space,
because so many others are just saying,
how can we rush without any type of guidance to what we're doing with AI?
No. Listen, I, I don't I, you might have misunderstood.
I don't think you, you you capturing.
I'm not disagreeing with you.
I agree with you in this.
Oh, no, no, no no, I do, no, I hear you, but I'm saying no, I do agree with you.
My thing is just all of the elements that you just said, which are important.
I just I'm just adding something to it.
I think in order for for us to really move the needle is to figure out
how we can take
all the stuff that you just said and create a business model with it.
You see, saying, that's the only thing I'm just
and I completely agree you can do that.
Then it becomes something that can grow, you know, you can't.
Like business is the is the most magical, you know, mechanism on the planet.
It's the only way to grow anything.
You I mean, if you can produce something that people want and sell it
for less than it, if for more than it cost for you to produce it,
that is a magical thing called capitalism and called.
Yeah, no, I agree, it is very simple.
And so like if you can put equity, if you can put like these things
in that wheelhouse, now it becomes a fuel, an engine for growth,
because now you have to look at it like Google has to say, wait a minute.
These guys are focused on ethics.
These guys are focused on things like compliance.
These guys are focused on empowering the global South.
These guys are focused on these types of things.
And wait a minute, they got $1 billion.
They they're they're valuation is what you know how did they do that.
That's when it becomes something that that
that that that initiates change and I agree.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying
I would say one point that I want to get to infrastructure.
Yeah I would say yes.
But okay.
There is a point where this is this is where I believe in policy.
Right.
So I go back to, yeah, you talk about a lot.
Yeah. So let's talk let's talk about the industrial revolution. Right.
And which there's no
there's no doubt over the course of time that's created more value.
It's how we got here.
But a lot of, a lot of shit happened between
then and where we got to in the 70s and 80s and 60s.
Right. We had two world wars. Okay.
What? People remember this, right?
We had, we had a massive raid.
Redefinition of what it was like to work.
People actually got rights in the workplace.
That's a foreign concept to most of the world 99% of the time.
Right.
That allowed us the freedom to have more entrepreneurs and things like that.
Having a middle class. Yeah, those things we take for granted.
But those are new freaking concepts last couple hundred years for our
that is not the traditional way people think about things, right?
We could still and so like, what I think we're going to have to do
is that we're going to have to have we're going to have to redefine how we interact
and work with each other. What is policy look like?
And I'm not saying I have the answer completely.
I just know and I'm very confident that understand
enough about algorithms in AI that they're so complex.
No one can no one has any full understanding of how it works.
Hard. Hard. Stop. Nobody.
Yeah, right. Right right, right. Okay.
So yeah, but although we can't fully understand
or control systems, we can dance with them.
As I said, although we can't predict the future,
we can't envision what type of future we want.
So what I say is we should we can use this technology in ways
that solves almost all of our issues or amplifies a lot of our issues.
We can use it to inform people more, or we can use it
to how social media is doing it now, which is
we can figure out how to fight over nonsense
and make sure our brain is being hacked because we're creating alternate
realities that are actually aren't factual with what's happening.
So like, we have to think about what type of future we want for humanity, right?
And that has to be centered in what we do.
So I think how you create that business model is through awareness and eventually
through policy.
And then you and then you creating some level of standard.
There will be no perfection. Right.
But what we will do is set, like, what do we want to have happen?
What's it look like?
What's the purpose in building this?
And also we might want to ask the question, should we build this?
Because that's a real question.
We should ask for some of these things sometimes. Right.
And unless there is the government intervention in some ways, in
a reasonable way that promotes innovation, but it needs to be involved.
We know that, you know, capitalism without any type of restraint.
You know, that that, that that's how we got slavery, right.
And that's extreme example.
But like, we all of this comes with balance is all I'm saying.
Right. And
we got to go full speed ahead.
But we also need to just understand that this is a new
this is new.
This is much different than any technology we've ever had.
And it's and, I'm hoping it's going to create these new type of jobs.
I believe it will.
But then there's also challenges there,
because then we got to figure out how to train people for these new jobs.
Yeah.
And we got to reset people's brains to think differently,
and to kind of let go of the things that they are used to doing,
which is also very difficult for the human psyche to do.
So, like, we have to really wrestle and think about
what does our future look like and not just take it for granted.
Right? We have to build and be intentional about future we build.
And then I want to, I want you to reply to that.
And then I want to talk about, your infrastructure pay,
play in terms of Africa, how you see and, and building that infrastructure.
And then we'll kind of close out with a rapid fire question.
Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
So you know, what I would say,
especially from a policy standpoint, is that policy is going to be necessary.
I mean, absolutely necessary.
You know, I think that as always, policy is is way behind of innovation,
especially substantive policy that makes sense.
You know,
and you trying to do that line between not stifling innovation versus testing.
Yeah. But you still gotta create those guardrails.
I mean, I think that you're right.
You know, I think that so we, you know, just a quick example.
So we experienced a little bit of this.
So I run an ID tech company, I run a couple of venture backed tech companies.
One of them is an is in edtech.
And we built AI enabled educational programing.
And our are probably 85% of our clients are in the K to 12 space.
So we work with cities and school districts, that type of thing.
Now, if you know anything about that space, AI is not welcomed
in that room right now.
You know.
So there is already, you know, regulations, heavy regulations.
And that's just because we're dealing with minors.
We're dealing with elementary, middle and high school kids.
So even though this technology exists and there isn't no broad,
you know, policy around the innovation part of it, there is actually
some guardrails in certain,
verticals, and education is one of them.
And so especially at the high school, Medicaid, it's world space.
And that's where we are.
So, you know, but, you know, this technology is, is allowing us
to reach communities and in ways that just wasn't possible
before and get resources to, you know, rural Arkansas and rural Texas.
Absolutely. There's no question.
And New York City, you know, and, and and and these boroughs
where these are very, very, very poor young people that are trying to get
resources on how to go to college and how to get a better.
We're using this technology, but we've had to get creative.
So like, I'll give you an example.
We wanted to build, an AI tool that was a virtual college and career counselor and,
and this tool, we had to do it with a rag.
And so if anybody, you know, doesn't know what a rag is called,
retrieval, augmented generation, that's what RAC stands for.
But basically it we created our own data set
so that if one of the students asked our bot a question, it does.
And search all over the internet, you know, to give them an answer,
it is is searching for the answer within our data
set that we've been able to create.
And that and those, right.
All right.
So I think maybe people know what it is like.
Basically, if you have it,
it goes out and finds the information, but you directed it to have a specific
data set, specific data. Right.
So I'll give you an example.
You know, if, if,
if some kid or parent, a first generation student wants to know about fast food
or potentially going to community college, our bot would be able to have an answer.
But if you ask this same hour by about, you know what North Korea is doing
today, it'll say it doesn't know because that's not in our data set.
And so that the US positioning our technology
that way was able to be used in the K to 12 setting where
there is under regulations, because you're dealing with minors
and kids and their data and things like that.
So like it's happening, regulation is happening.
And like in the educational vertical, they're very cautious around it.
Yeah.
But they know that this technology can help to reach community.
I mean I think I2I think there are two I think are two.
Casey this is I, I go to that
and that's not even what I mean by data in terms of that.
That's a sort of what I mean by policy.
They have some good stuff in place, but the mindset should be,
this is like trying to not do the internet.
Like, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta figure out how they use this.
So, you know, I talked to.
Yeah, yeah, I used this.
I was saying education is a good example of
you can probably straddle that line a little bit because they have to be very,
very, very strict on what technology is coming in
because you're dealing with these minors.
But they also know that you need to to to have the innovation
so that you can reach communities that haven't been reached before.
And a lot of those older administrators and teachers are retiring now.
So there's a lot of 30 something, 40 something superintendents
that are thinking more forward.
So that space is going through, transition right now.
Right.
That I think and this is just, you know, again, we're early in the
I think the other vertical verticals.
That's what my point is can look at education as a potential model
for how to create regulations in other spaces.
That's absolutely pointed.
That was absolutely I mean, there's some other good models too.
I mean, there's some models that go from, there's a model,
and in Europe that everyone has a essentially a,
a constitutional
right, to their data and information.
There are frameworks out there.
None of them are perfect, but there are frameworks that go from that.
We certainly should be looking at.
Okay.
So let's talk more about how we actually get more equity, like,
because in a real way, like there is there's when it comes to I,
I is also not just a software play.
It's an infrastructure play, as you know.
And I know you have a big vision for infrastructure that's worldwide.
Tell us about that vision and why it's so important.
So it's a, it's a, it's a big idea what they call a beehive.
A very audacious.
Yeah. Go.
Yeah.
Listen, you know, this is college.
Yeah, I know, I know entrepreneurship. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, you know, this is something I want to do,
hopefully in the next, in the next couple of years
at least start on the seed of it.
The seedlings of it.
And you guys are here first let's let's see what's going to be
into the universe.
It's going to be documented a history of time.
Yeah. It's going that's I think so.
So, like I said, I run to venture back tech companies, we're hoping to exit,
the edtech one
at a billion in about four years, and we want to exit the deep tech one,
probably in the next 2 to 3 years, probably at around 100 million.
That's our exit strategy on both of those.
So I'm already thinking like, okay, well, what do I want to do next after 25 years
of doing this stuff?
And now I have such a,
I don't know, a heart for social impact, you know, especially when you think about
innovation, entrepreneurship and technology.
So I came
I've been coming up with this idea that, you know,
how can we create the infrastructure globally.
So that to your point, Rob, you know, we can get more builders from,
every community on the planet building,
this technology and I'm talking about regionally specific,
because one of the problems with commercializing
or or coming up with substantive business models, let's just use looms,
large language models,
for instance, like AI and all that stuff was really good at language.
I mean, that's one thing that it is good at.
I can see somebody in Mandarin right now using some app on iPhone,
and we'll be at a talk like we've been friends for 40 years,
you know, so that's good at that.
But if you think about the cultural implications of what's
happening with this, a, that's where you can start seeing some of the gap.
So we're here in America and you can just use us as an example.
Certain communities aren't represented.
That's what we were talking about in the technology as it's being developed today.
And that's here in America.
So just imagine, you know, Botswana or just imagine, you know,
you know, some other,
not as well known places on the globe,
you know, they would never have their own lim
that speaks directly to the cultural, things
that are meaningful for that, that region, you know, these types of things.
So which means that the technology, in order for it to make sense
for the region, has to be built regionally.
It has to be built there.
You know, you think about the what is that?
The west, the west coast of Spain, where they speak.
What is that, Cantonese?
You know, that's a very small, you know, but that's very different.
If you go to the east coast of Spain, where they're speaking another language.
And so how do you have this technology that can be very specific.
So the problem is, is that it makes sense.
In China they got a billion people.
It makes sense to build this in in India they got a billion people here
in the United States, you know.
And the society that we live
in, it makes sense because capitalism pretty much runs everything.
But in those smaller areas of the world,
there is no business case for building this technology.
When you only have a country that has 30 million people in it,
you know what I mean?
There's no global business case with that.
So my idea is, how do we create, an infrastructure where
multiple developers of this technology from multiple places around, the,
the world can, can basically
build regionally specific,
lives in this technology.
Right.
That that will help them to compete at a global level.
I can tell you I can tell you my thoughts, Ray, is that, is that, like,
that's going to take intervention and, public private partnerships.
So, just the same way infrastructure has been built out.
There actually wasn't a there wasn't actually a business case
for the internet as well as it seems. Right?
Oh, 100%.
Yeah.
No, it was a Netscape was like, let's run Netscape who prove
that there was a business model to the internet
when they when when Netscape went public, that was when everybody said, oh,
wait a minute.
It was, it was it wasn't actually the federal government that was doing it.
Right. And then no, no, no, no.
So then Netscape pulled from that.
So I'm saying this to say, yeah, there was billions and billions
and billions, poured into this technology over many years.
Yeah. The same thing's going to have to be required.
So this is where you have public private partnerships.
You have you definitely need this is where you need government
that understands that infrastructure is more than building out
roads and bridges, is now about building out
digital infrastructure as digital infrastructure.
Absolutely right.
To be competitive.
That's a part of what we're going to have to do, to continue to be competitive.
And we're still behind the United States in this too.
So like, we have to really, really built that out, to get to the to really be able
to maximize the technology in a way that's meant.
So I want to get
I want to get to these last couple of kind of kind of questions,
because we've been on for a while and it's been a great conversation.
So, some of our rapid fire questions I like to ask.
So, all right, what is an important truth?
You have that very few people agree with you on?
Man, You know,
that's a good one, man.
So to me, you know, listen, please don't don't don't put it in the chat.
Don't come after Rob.
Guys,
my my, I guess my important truth
that not many people agree on and especially in this.
And, you know, I guess, you know, my immediate community
is that I don't know if equity is the big issue.
You know what I mean?
It is an issue.
But I don't think equity is the issue.
What is this?
You it I think I think that the issue to me is commercialization
because I think the, the, the resources,
attention, all of that stuff goes to where the money flows.
So if you can find a way to make money off the topic of equity,
like I said, a business model behind it,
then everybody is interested in and then it starts to move the needle.
And I think you do make a good point on this in terms of
because I think a lot in our community really stick on nonprofits.
They focus on like instead of like, well, how do you create a sustainable business?
Yes. Right. Yes.
So to that, I agree in terms of like, you can't move a community,
unless unless you find ways to produce value. Yes.
You know, to do that. So like there's no disagreement to that.
I think that goes towards mindset and working together
and figuring out how to build, because some of what that means is like,
everything won't commercialize at first, which means you got to have support
from multiple people.
Like, a lot of these people have lots of runway and time to figure it out.
We need to be in the same mindset as a community to invest
in entrepreneurship, not as something that is a something that's wild out there.
That's only for other people. Like, you know what?
To be honest with you, Rob, I don't think that it's the community's responsibility.
I think it's people like my responsibility who's been in this space for 25 years,
who have access to what I mean, bro, that's what I mean. It.
I mean, like, we get into the mindset.
That's what I mean. Absolutely. That's our responsibility.
Let's like we're doing today to teach the community
because we just don't have that built into our culture
to go out and learn these things, invest in these things, build these things.
It takes us to build the infrastructure so that others can come in
and learn and build and grow and develop and innovate.
And that's that's part of what I'm doing now.
Absolutely. All right. Very quickly concise.
What's a slogan or theme in your life in like one sentence?
The path.
And this is something I say to myself all the time.
The path less, less taken is where I became good.
But the path never taken is where I became great.
That's good. All right.
All right. Final one.
What do you see as the next big global disruption.
The next big global disruption.
It's got to be climate.
It's got to be food.
And I think the technology, the things that we're talking about
today, are, you know, I think they're interesting.
But I think how you apply those things to things like food,
climate, you know, smart cities, I think is the application.
So everything we talked about for the last hour, I think is interesting,
but I think the application of it is what's going to be the disruption
for the next, the next 20 years.
What's so interesting?
You come full circle like it comes back to how do we
how do we make sure that humanity is taken care of and not destroy itself?
Is what I hear you saying, right?
I mean, like it goes back to climate.
So, yeah, honestly,
geopolitical and not going and not and not killing each other either.
Let's, we've actually had a good run relative for.
I'm not saying everything's perfect.
Yeah, but yeah, when you compare us to where we are for the last 30 years,
for the rest of humanity.
Yeah, most of humanity was constantly in conflict and wars.
Like when people think about wars, like they
they just don't have any grasp of how of how many people die through wars.
This is because I think about World War Two as we in this World War two.
Do you know how many people died during World War two?
What the estimates are? No.
What's your guess?
10 million.
Okay.
It's over 50 million people. Wow.
Wow. Right.
I mean, when people just think about that for a minute. Wow.
Like, that's a lot of people, right?
And wow. And you know, there's but there is no more.
There's I don't think there's any more world wars
like we got to we got the equipment to wipe each other out quickly.
Yeah, yeah.
Analogy it is technology will amplify that even more.
Right.
So like we're going to
we're going to have to make sure we figure out a way together
because it's not going to be destroying each other.
We're not going to be able to, outgun each other at this point.
We can. Oh, nevermind. Everybody has enough power to everybody.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah. So like, let's we got this to figure it out.
One of the things I would say is, you know, there are bigger issues
because, you know, we can talk about war
and killing each other and everything like that.
But you know, if everybody's starving to death,
you know, I'm saying because it's not enough food, we have to figure food out.
You know, they're saying, I mean, we got 7 billion people on the planet.
They're saying in the next 20 years
we'll have ten, like, I mean, 10 billion people on this planet.
There's already food shortages, water shortages.
Just imagine another 3 billion people on this planet, you know, especially water.
I think water is a bigger failure, a bigger planet.
But water is a huge problem under water.
So yeah, we can use this technology to solve those problems.
That's why I think the big disruption is going to happen.
Those kind of breakthroughs in energy, you know, breakthroughs like that
type of stuff, you know, that like knows that that's where the big disruption
is going to happen. That's why I'm excited.
You know I'm excited looking forward to disrupting.
And when you exit from those companies will you know I'll be at a good time.
Then let's, let's go and shake up the world together at some point.
Jamal. Absolutely.
Yeah.
I appreciate you, Rob. This has been incredible.
Yeah. Thanks for coming out. Disruption now as always.
And I would love to have you up at West Con.
Let's definitely keep the conversation going.
I will talk to you about, we'll follow up on HBCUs and partnerships
there, and I just I admire everything that you've done.
I'm, I where you where you came from and,
and I'm bullish about your future brother.
Thanks, Rob.
Thank you. All right.