Why I became a VC
Professional Athlete, Startup Founder of SneakrCred Inc. & General Partner of Sneaker VC
Why sneakers are the next alternative financial asset class as collectibles. Sneakerhead dads pass their sneakers down to their offspring and invest in them like your grandpa’s stock portfolio. When did sneakers take the form of investment and what brought about this status on the level with traditional stocks?
Black Athletes get exploited financially so much that there’s a show about how the myriad of ways Black Athletes & Entertainers “Blow their Bag”
“According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, 60 percent of former NBA players are broke within five years of retirement. By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress. Sucked into bad investments, stalked by freeloaders, saddled with medical problems, and naturally prone to showing off, many pro athletes get shocked by harsh economic realities after years of living the high life.” Source: http://www.espn.com/30for30/film/_/page/broke
Yet based on the regularity with which media flaunts young black men signing million-dollar sports and music contracts. Instead NBA commissioner Adam Silver hands black teenagers million-dollar deals and ESPN This veil is trimmed with million-dollar sports contracts. As black celebrities invited us into their homes through shows like MTV cribs. It is this new veil of economics that has allowed for a broad swath of America to become not just desensitized to black poverty but also hypnotized by black celebrity. How could we not? Our channels from ESPN to VH1 are filled with presentations of black Americans being paid a king’s ransom to entertain. As black celebrity has been shown to millions of people, millions of times, the story of real lives have also been lost, and with it, the engine that thrust forwards the demand for social justice by the masses. With each presentation of Kobe Bryant’s 25 million dollar a year contract, the overall American economic psyche about the immense black wealth disparity. Source https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-decadent-veil-black-income-inequality_b_5646472
“Anyone who watched basketball during that short arc was certainly influenced by the style and swagger put forth by Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, and Jimmy King”-Source: https://www.complex.com/sneakers/2020/10/jalen-rose-calls-out-nike-over-fab-five-sneakers-full-size-run
I grew up in Chicago on the South Side during the Jordan era of the ’90s where I played basketball on the playground and I painted on my Air Force ones and sold them to other kids. I excelled academically and scored in the 99% percentile and took an interest in Apple Computers when they had the color cases I was fascinated with working on them. In high school I played well at sports and eventually caught the attention of the press and was offered a scholarship to play at Division I Top 25 School, after being a standout high school basketball player.
What I learned from being a student scholarship: sports taught me that I needed to be more in charge of learning about finance. Being an athlete that achieved the relative success I have in my career I saw myself as the person who could dare to be different. In the sports world, there is a program and an agenda that I observed that actually seemed to keep the athlete dependant on the organization.
We have the opportunity now to seize the new day now utilizing new technologies that can bring forth value in the intersections of Sports and Investing. As vast swaths of the wealth generated by athletes need a home to not only generate wealth via traditional management strategies, athletes need familiar anecdotes when it comes to implementing the new tools available to leverage technology.
I’ve taken the same skills I’ve learned on the court with me into the entrepreneurial world as I’ve founded my startups in Silicon Valley. I’ve used the work ethic and strategic thinking that comes from winning basketball championships translated into successful innovations. I will begin to detail my inspirations into the founder route that led me to Venture Capital.
Damien Hurst $12 Million Dollar Phremeldahyde Shark & Diamond encrusted Skull “Victory over Decay: There is the enigma: resplendent apparition, a glittering effigy of death, cryptic reliquary, science fiction warrior mask — immaculate and grim in a cubic case of cold glass on a black pedestal, at eye level, black all around.
From reading this book as a student-athlete in my last red-shirt year I became fascinated with the intricacies of how wealth is management via Art as an investment asset class. I researched deeply the ways in which Art as an investment is a unique method for leveraging creative intellectual property valuation of digital assets.
I studied George Soros’s Alchemy of Finance and his reflexivity principle with regard to how the market is moved by the news cycle. In the social media age, digital art and media move the financial needle arguably more than mainstream media in which hip-hop and rap artists hold influencer roles.
Liars Poker is a book I read about an Art history major that ends up being hired at Salomon brothers and participating in Capitalism on Wall Street. This insight inspired me to believe that I could have a chance to participate in Capitalism.
I painted a logo for Immerman's Angels Art Auction that was based on the Bentley Logo and I met DePaul Alumni who worked at Goldman Sachs Chicago Office. I asked him for a coffee at Starbucks and an internship at Goldman Sachs back in 2009. Goldman & Sachs:
We’re deploying $750 billion across investing, financing, and advisory activities by 2030. Impact investing Chicago “At Goldman Sachs, we believe that strong communities are the foundation of a prosperous society.
Chris Gardner spoke at DePaul at the time about his life and career being depicted in the film “Pursuit of Happyness”
Gardner returned to San Francisco…after a sales call to a San Francisco General Hospital when he encountered an impeccably dressed man in a red Ferrari. Curious, Gardner asked the man about his career. The man told him he was a stockbroker and, from that moment on, Gardner’s career path was decided.
Gardner gained a position in Dean Witter Reynolds’ stock brokerage training program. Gardner worked to become a top trainee at Dean Witter Reynolds. Gardner passed his Series 7 Exam on the first try and became a full employee of the firm.
The stockbroker in the red Ferrari was a man named Bob Bridges. He met with Gardner and gave him an introduction to the world of finance. Gardner bought a Ferrari of his own from Michael Jordan. The Illinois license plate of Gardner’s black Ferrari reads “NOT MJ”.
In 1987, Gardner established the brokerage firm, Gardner Rich & Co, in Chicago, Illinois, an “institutional brokerage firm specializing in the execution of debt, equity, and derivative products transactions for some of the nation’s largest institutions, public pension plans, and unions.”-
The only other two black men I knew from DePaul that were investing in businesses and endeavored to enter Venture Capital were Clint & Elbert Clayton III. At that time I was an intern when I wrote an article on Bitcoin in a Magazine based out of Chicago and then I founded Direct Creative Capital to leverage Creative IP as a bank with SVC Pre-Paid Debit-Credit Cards backed by Art.
The reasons why I started a bank backed by Art as an Asset class with a Debit-Credit Card while I began my Bitcoin journey into becoming a self-taught blockchain engineer. I knew that we needed a bank that served the needs of the artists and now we have the capability to make this a reality with NFT’s & Defi.
- The SEC has broadened the definition of “accredited investor” to include knowledge, not just wealth
- This could allow educated but low-income individuals to invest in cryptocurrency ICOs by proving their credentials
- Commissioner Hester Peirce believes that the rules should be broadened further to include “mom and pop” investors
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has broadened the definition of “accredited investor,” a change that could allow more investors to participate in cryptocurrency ICOs and other offerings.
The SEC’s new rules mean that individuals can become accredited investors by proving their “knowledge, experience, or certifications.” -Source https://cryptobriefing.com/sec-raises-fundraising-limits-small-businesses-crypto-startups/
