YouSaid · the spoken record

Morgan DeBaun

lines on the record: 34
first: 2023-01-19
most recent: 2023-01-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That's right. So, for example, one of the guidance that our editors on AfroTech are doing is making sure that we are talking more about the venture funding that's happening in Lagos and Nigeria and venture funding that's happening in London because there's a huge connection between folks who are in America who are Nigerian and people who still have cousins and friends and family and go to Lagos three, four times a year. It's always evolving. Blavity Inc. has so many different routes we could build a podcasting network. We could try to buy a television network and raise a ton of money from private equity. The key is to staying focused on the fundamentals of business and making sure there's a business model to back us up along the way.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I made a last minute decision to go to Ghana in December, which is what Black folks call dirte december, because everybody goes and they party all night. And part of that was because at Afortech, I would say like over 40% of folks at Afrotech were not African American. They were people who were Nigerian, Ghanaian, Jamaican, Haitian, et cetera. And I said to myself, okay. This is a shift. I said, oh, I need to pay attention to this. I'm just going to go to Africa, go see what's going on, you know, and I'd been in 16 years, but it was a reminder of just the scale of a company like mine. There's no black company that's been able to be global. Like if you think about it, right? Like we don't have a BBC. We don't have a CNN. And I think Blavity Inc. over time could become a global media brand.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have more proof that I'm driving the ROI if I'm on travel noir and I'm inspired by an article about going to Ghana and I then look up the flights as travel noir should get paid because someone has taken an action as a result of being on our website.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I It's so odd, right? It's so terrible, and yet it carries so much power and influence. And so it's a weird tension there. If we make a decision on travel noir to feature a city or a country for two weeks, we will drive tourism in that country. That is a lot of power. The problem, I think, is just that media companies are the last ones to get paid in that power structure, right? You go by the flight, then you go buy the hotel and do all these things. I didn't necessarily get paid for that. Some media companies that are doing it very well, like Red Ventures, said, we're going to be a company for commerce and we're going to take our money first as a part of the value chain. And that is very inspiring to me. And that's something that will be pivoting at least three of our brands to be commerce first. That means I'm going to leave money on the table from advertising agencies temporarily, but I think over time it'll allow us to have a better position in the value chain.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just stay focused on our core business and then let's see what happens in two years. There should be a travel to our show on national geographic, right? There should be a Afrotech business show on CNBC. And so thinking more about how we take our brands to a wider audience is definitely somewhere in our roadmap in the next few years.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very profitable and we are growing at a fast rate despite the market. I have had to personally work on as a founder who's now executive and CEO is how to get out of the fight mode and more into the fast growth mode because during COVID, you know, you're kind of a wartime CEO during COVID. So we're on a road to 100 million in revenue in the next two years. Wealth creation in the black community and economic empowerment ultimately is the reason why we started the company and making sure that we can get more folks reskilled so that they can get some of these jobs that are coming out. There's a huge opportunity. On the media side, man, digital media is going through a thing. So in some ways, I'm kind of telling the team, just hold on and just coast for a second. Let's not over invest in video. Let's not try to pivot to TikTok.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get the question a lot about why you think you were successful, you know. I started my business at 24 by all normal standards of every single statistic in America. I should not exist, right? I'm 411. I'm a woman. I'm black. I'm not technical. My answer is that I ignored all the data. I didn't even look at it. And I just focused on progress every single day. And I think that if more of us spent less time thinking about and absorbing all of the reasons why we shouldn't do something, if we just looked in ourselves and then took a step forward and then took another step forward and wasn't dependent on someone else saying yes, whether that's a VC, a professor, your parents, whoever, I think more of us would live a more purposeful life and just be happier in our existence.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So we did have to make a lot of intentional investment to maintain our company culture. So we created a people engagement team. We have weekly rituals like weekly trivia and Slack. We have a really tight onboarding program because of all of the things in the last four years that say 50 to 60% of our company never was in the office. Our culture has been able to maintain despite the fact that they didn't have that kind of epicenter or ecosystem to stem off of. We're seeing great results. People are still naturally creating friendships. They're co-working together. We have people go on vacation together and co-work from Mexico or whatever. I think over time, what we will likely do is invest in a space for people to drop in for meetings, for sales executives to be able to sit with blabity branding all around them.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was also something that we decided against. It's actually not a financial decision because we now spend a ton of money on travel. So for example, we're doing a retreat for 35 people, everyone in a division. And everyone has a flight. Everyone has a hotel room, you know, everyone has food expenses, Uber expenses, everything, right? And so it's definitely not cheaper to do it this way, but I do think that in the long run, we have less churn and I'm able to recruit more senior executives who want to live in random places with their family and don't necessarily want to move across the country for a job.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had a beautiful office in downtown LA and the decision was twofold. One, as a workplace where we have more than 60% of our leaderships are women, it was important to me to understand how being remote would be a value add. It increased everyone's mental health, being able to have time away from commuting and have more time with their families and also more generational wealth that could be accrued because we kept our salaries the same despite the fact that people moved to Cincinnati or Atlanta or Dallas. The other thing is that there was a lot of data that was coming out that a hybrid workforce dramatically impacts women and people of color because of the social networking that happens in an office space that you don't get to take part in if you are at home. And so hybrid.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They should acknowledge it. They should acknowledge it and ask what else can I do to acknowledge it besides just saying thank you.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I talk to black employees who are in the 3% of the population at their company, their emotional labor and extra requests of can you mentor these people? Can you go to this recruiting fair when their core job is not to be a public figure for that company? And yet I also do tend to leave those conversations by saying yes, but if not us, then who? It's part of our responsibility to bring other people with us along the journey and not wait till we reach the sea level to do so or the director level to do so. We should be doing this every single day to be part of our purpose in life. But that's not for everybody.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“right yeah is there a big pipeline in comparison to other demographics in the tech industry no does it exist and there are plenty qualified candidates yes but they may not naturally apply to your company because your company may be very white and they don't want to We're acknowledging that we're a work in progress.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This example of forming an advisory council with folks that are part of the community that you're trying to reach is really smart yet, it comes back to taking action on the intention and then being really open and not defensive. There are some companies, they make a mistake and they disappear, they retreat instead of trying to actually fix the problem. Because in the long run, our country is going to continue to be more and more multicultural, right? It's important for any executive leading a large company to consider the growth that you could have if you actually expand your user base or your audience base.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“American Airlines is one that I'm particularly proud of because every 12 weeks we all get in a room virtually or in person with their C-level executives and we spend an entire day and a half together and we go through every single piece of data, everything from the diversity of the pilots and the flight attendants down to the upgraded system for their luxury customers to reviewing advertising campaigns and the commercials that are about to come out when I've seen be most successful is when the executives at the top, the very top, make a commitment of time because when you're a CEO of a company like that, all you have is it's how much time you're able to spend on different issues and different groups of people. And I'm probably the most chill person in that room. I mean, we are like pretty direct. There's no sugar coating things. If we see something we don't like, we will say it in the meeting. And I respect corporations.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Challenge. And for me, I've never wanted to be dependent on anyone to make our company successful, which is why we're not just a media brand. Like that's why Afrotech has its own division drives tons of value and profit for the business. It's also why we built out Blabity 360, which is our ad network, so that we could help other black and multicultural publishers collectively when we represent their ad inventory so that we can have more scale and more power with the agencies.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's definitely not getting its share. Blavity, as big as we are in our space, is nowhere near the size of vice or vox. And when you're a media agency, what is your job? From the corporation that's hiring you is to maximize the return on every single dollar and every single impression. So the media agency, their only job when they are working with the brand or media brand like ours is to say, How can we get more for less? Can you give us this discount? Can you give us this free added value brand study? So it's the constant arbitrage and race to the bottom in the advertising industry. So is it the fault of the random media planner? Of course not. They didn't set up the media industry, right? Is it the fault of the CMO of a big CPG company that's trying to win against other CPG companies? Also probably not. But this is the”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Within our community is by financing the media companies that actually write these stories. But what happens when black news is not financed? Then we're allowing white publications to have a white lens on black issues. And that perpetuates a narrative that oftentimes is harmful to black folks. We see spend go to companies that actually aren't black owned but have a black brand. And that is, in my opinion, worse.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I go back and forth on it. Do I think that there should be dedicated dollars to black-owned media? Yes, because I don't think that left to their own devices media agencies will then invest in black-owned media because they haven't. In my ideal world, people would just do what makes sense that gets the best return on investment for the dollars. And like it's on me as an executive, as a business, and an entrepreneur to make sure that our audience delivers to our clients. I agree with my peers, Byron Allen and Diddy, that it's important that corporations who have black customers make a dedicated investment to investing in black-owned media. And here's why. The stories and the information that we cover on our platforms oftentimes can't be found anywhere else. And the only way for us to be able to continue to report out on the people who are making progress.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that there's a lot of fear of not wanting to mess up. I think that if you're intentional and you're honest, then it usually is going to work out fine. But black folks can smell someone doing something for tokenism a mile away, and we will call you out on social media. We've tried to say, look, partner with us so you can do it the right way. But what people get wrong is just not investing enough. And my response to folks who are like, is it even worth the effort because it does require effort and intentionality? The answer is absolutely. Black consumers are also highly loyal. And so, yes, high investment, but also high upset.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our core demographic is and will always be black. I use multicultural interchangeably because the black doesn't always include people who view themselves as multicultural. It's a weird balance. I mean, it's the same thing with like Megan Markle saying she's not necessarily black. I'm like, you're definitely black, right? But it's like if I said multicultural, she might say, oh, yeah, I'm multicultural.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The black community, and there was no brand that was saying multicultural audiences are a core demographic. Our demographic one is multicultural audiences versus an add-on. And I say multi-ethnic as well because black people aren't even monolithic, right? So you've got people who are first generation American because they're Nigerian American. So they don't view themselves as African American. Or you've got people who are Jamaican but married to somebody who's from Canada.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Faster because the black consumer in our community values trust and trust over time. So if I have to build something new, I know it's going to take me three to five years to build trust with our demographic. If I can buy a company or a brand that's been around for five to seven years and has a great brand and a trusted loyal audience, then that's much easier for us. We have built brands like 2190, our women's brand where it does fine. It's not the best in the marketplace and it will take us another three to four years to get it there. So I would definitely prefer as a CEO to buy, if possible, the home decor brand that's launching, when I looked at the market and how are we spending our money, home decor, hospitality, hosting friends and family. That's actually some of the interests that are increasing dramatically.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So travel noir was an opportunity. I said, look, travel is a huge part of aspirational life for all millennials. And yet there was no travel brand at scale for our demo despite travel and leisure and Conde Naz and others. So that was a no-brainer. I would prefer to buy like hands down every single time.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What am I wearing? What does my hair look like? What is Joe going to say when I walk into my hair is curly all of a sudden? I had to spend 10 to 15% of my brain power thinking about all this other stuff instead of just doing my work.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was working there again. This was 10 years ago, and I was a product manager and was on the more technical side. And there was maybe one or two other black women on the entire headquartered campus that weren't EAs or assistants. And I think that as someone who was super ambitious and wanted to climb the career ladder and work at these big tech companies, I also had a vision of myself where I'm like, do I want my biggest accomplishment to be that I'm a group director and I'm the only black woman that's at the group director level? Like that can't be it. That's not my future. That's not my legacy. And I think that since then, a lot of companies have made big strides into it's one of our biggest clients for Afrotech. And there's tons of black women running around into it now, which I love and hope that I'm a part of inspiring that. But at the time, it was not pleasant. And I felt like I had to think extra hard every day about.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They've never seen that many black people in one place. So Afrotech was designed and is designed to be a community where you don't need permission from anyone else. Do whatever the heck you want to do, whether it's build a company or go work for a big tech company. That's fine.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just kept getting the call us later, but we'll give you advice. And I'm like, I don't need advice. I need a check. At the point I already had a million monthly unique visitors. So, you know, I had to lick my wounds for a couple of months and cry under the bed. And then I went back out. And this time I went after social impact investors, investors who I felt like were going to care about this business existing because of the impact we could make. And that experience showed me that there was still a disconnect within the black tech community because we should all be helping each other. And so Afortech was created to create at least one moment of time in which all of us can be in one place and use our collective power to advance more quickly. We started off in the Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco with 300 people. And now we are in Austin this last fall with over 25,000 people. The city didn't know what to do with them.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I first started the business, I bootstrapped the company the first time I went out to raise money. I got rejected by everyone. I made the assumption that I should raise from black VCs. I also had a very purist perspective on wanting all black cap table, you know, all black company, black audience. And that, of course, has evolved since eight years ago. But that was my original intention.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't necessarily want to make a media company. Media was not a fantastic industry. And yet I did know that content and narratives and storytelling was a fast way to grow a brand”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Audience actually, I'm glad that they underestimated this audience because that leaves a blue ocean opportunity for someone like me at a very young age to say, great, this is going to be my mission and my purpose in life.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I graduated from Washington University in 2012 and moved out to the Bay Area to work into it. And I loved working in Silicon Valley. I was completely enamored with this idea of building products at scale for millions of people. And so I learned the idea of designing for a specific customer and then designing for delight. And as a product manager, I said, okay, I get the framework of Silicon Valley, but no one is making black consumers their target audience. No one is designing for delight for black consumers despite the fact that we are super users of the internet. We're driving the culture of social platforms like Vine or Periscope at the time. And we drive all of pop culture, whether it's through athletes or music or whatever it may be. So how is it possible that the most innovative place on earth, right, is ignoring the”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have a diversified business. That's one of the things that's been really helpful for us. Our company is set up with a DE&I recruiting business through Afrotech. And then we have our media side of the business, which is a portfolio of brands and an ad network that powers that behind the scenes. Why I think we've defied the odds, I didn't raise that much money in comparison to some of these other companies like Vice or Vox or BuzzFeed. And that discipline allowed us to scale in a way that was profitable versus a huge vision that you're taking big leaps. And then if you mess up, you have to lay off 20% of your employee base. And then the fact that we serve an audience that many people overlook and we super serve them allows us to really be the domain expert. I don't have many competitors in the black media space that target the young generation of black consumers in this country.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started my business at 24 by every single statistic in America. I should not exist, right? I'm 411. I'm a woman. I'm black. I'm not technical. I ignored all the data. I just focused on progress every single day. Silicon Valley. No one is making black consumers their target audience despite the fact that we are super users of the internet. We drive all of pop culture, whether it's through athletes or music. So how is it that the most innovative place on earth is ignoring this audience? It's important that corporations who have black customers make a dedicated investment in black owned media. The stories that we cover on our platforms oftentimes can't be found anywhere else.”
2023-01-19 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Finding untapped value in multicultural consumers, w/Blavity CEO and AfroTech founder Morgan DeBaun · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT