Dream and Hustle

US President Obama to Sign the Biggest and Best Legislation of His Presidency and Will Super Empower African-American Entrepreneurs

On Thursday April 5, 2012 President Barack Obama will sign the most significant piece of legislation he proposed and was passed by Congress. The biggest benefit of the JOBS Act has nothing to do with jobs and everything to do with how people can now raise funds for their ventures. In terms of African American entrepreneurs, this is the biggest accomplishment President Obama has done for brothas and sistas.

One of the biggest items in the legislation is the “crowd funding” clause where people can seek up to $1 million in investment through crowd funding without SEC overhead and accredited investors. This is an extremely big deal for African American entrepreneurs because that means we can now raise money without middle people like VC firms that have a notorious track record of discriminating against African-American entrepreneurs.

I read that many of the VC firms are mad and scared of this law that Obama is signing because they wanted to be the “gatekeepers” of innovation. This is extremely scary because that means some of yall can just raise your $1 million from the people who believe in your dream and your hustle, not some “Shark Tank” crap full of self-important people giving you a thumbs up and thumbs down.

In addition, to hell with a stupid “elevator pitch”, you make your pitch to the people and they will invest their little money in your venture. The people can just offer $5 and you get enough people to believe in your hustle up to $1 million dollars. Do that sound real familiar to you by the way? Yeah, that’s exactly how President Obama was able to raise money for his candidacy so successfully was through crowd funding of asking people to give just $5.

Many of you remember I did an article on Stockbox Grocers last year (http://016f182.netsolhost.com/dhblog/2011/10/22/a-hood-orientated-review-of-the-stockbox-grocer-model/)where we review their business model. Carrie who helped run Stockbox Grocers appreciated many of your comments and left a long detailed message on Dream and Hustle explaining the business model. I think we spoke and emailed briefly afterwards but guess what? Stockbox Grocers was mentioned by the White House as an example of this crowdfunding law and Stockbox Grocer was invited to the White House to be with President Obama when he signs the bill into law! Carrie is supposed to be there and check her out when you see this on the news and give her a shout out.

By crowdfunding, that means brothas and sistas can now pitch in $5 to invest in our own businesses in our own community – this eliminates the need for me to create a stock market exchange to raise funding which would have been a ton of legal paperwork and red tape and serious money to get going. However, we can use the stock market exchange to sell shares for successful firms but now brothas and sistas can now access the world out there to raise funding for their hustle.

Dream and Hustle can create a crowdfunding site and me and the 30 Rotten Dissidents already have the software and been testing it out and playing with it. Now when Obama signs this into law, it is possible we can implement a crowdfunding site where you cats can propose your business model and solicit investors to pitch in $20 or $5 to help launch your company off the ground. We not talking lightweight operations either as serious business models can be created with $1 million in financing.

That allows us to collectively pitch in to create food trucks in the hood, create micro-malls and pop-up stores in our hood, create security solutions for our hood and even better, we can create an nationwide Black-owned pay-per-view IPTV network owned by us as shareholders showing our movies and shorts in barbershops, churches, auto repair waiting rooms in the hood nationwide by just pitching in $5 and it don’t take $1 million to get something like that off the ground.

Even better, now we can back someone who got a clean record and financially capable and help them launch a Black-owned mobile money transfer network and we can do peer-to-peer transfers in the hood, pitching in $5 a piece in that business model, helping them get up to $1 million in funding and get it off the ground.

If it hasn’t sink into your head now, this is the best law President Obama will sign and will empower Black people to become real entrepreneurs enabled to do for self, their people and their community as well as our future. And we all can invest in our people and projects and create self-empowerment. So after President Obama sign that bill, call up one of these bigoted VC firms and tell you that you don’t want or need their damn money anymore to startup your empire and pitch your business to your future customers and the people who believe in you for real through crowd funding.