Ep. 15: The Reparations Roadmap: Tre Baker's Multi-Billion Dollar Investment Thesis

Join us on this empowering episode of the Big Tech Energy Podcast as host Jarrett Albritton sits down with special guest Tre Baker to discuss black excellence and economic strategies. Explore the potential for transformative growth in tech and the broader community.

- Tre Baker presents his strategic plan to utilize federal reparations to bridge the wealth gap.
- Insights into Tulsa's booming tech scene and how it's becoming a hub for black founders and innovators.
- The unique approach of Techstars Tulsa in supporting underrepresented founders and Tre’s personal investment interests.
- The significance of compelling storytelling and addressing real customer problems when pitching to VCs.
- Tre Baker's perspective on the importance of collective investment and reparations in stimulating economic growth and reducing poverty.

00:00 Passionate about farming, technology, and proptech innovation.
10:09 Found opportunity, pivoted career, moved to Tulsa.
14:11 Financial empowerment, career growth, and ancestral energy.
19:46 Advice for black founders on securing funding.
22:04 Founders navigating tough market, solving real pain.
28:23 Seek experienced talent for growth and scalability.
35:02 AI tool at Brevity.com creates customizable decks.
39:00 Tech investing for Star Trek future, not Star Wars.
43:52 Minimum investments of $100; lack of funding.
51:43 Debate on reparations for stolen labor and access.
59:49 Reparations fund investments for long-term community benefit.
01:01:40 Transparent, democratic investment approach with voting rights.
01:07:18 Connect with me on social media, free resources.

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Transcript

0:00

So take your notes, stay tuned, and soak up this big tech energy. Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Jared Albertan with the big tech energy podcast where we focus and highlight on black excellence in tech. And I got a really, really dope guest representing tech stars in the building today. My man Trey. And I'm not gonna steal his thunder. I'm gonna let him introduce himself. Trey, thanks for being here. Appreciate you having me, man. Gave me a good excuse to get down to Florida. Miami, Fort Lauderdale. I know. That's why I love this location. Yeah, it's dope, man. I needed a beach in my life. So this is good fact timing, but yes, as I said, I'm Trey Baker, managing director of building Tulsa tech stars accelerator, also author of in the Black 2050, a blueprint for black economic leadership in the 21st century. So I've been a serial entrepreneur since I was 19 and made the transition into full time investing last year. So this is my first year as quote unquote, professional vc. But I've been angel investing since 2014. So, yeah, that's who I am. Awesome. So, I mean, I obviously know what Techstars is. Anybody in the startup VC space knows who tech stars is. But for those that are not familiar with techstars, how would you describe the organization? Yeah, it's a global accelerator platform. So we have 50 programs around the world focused on accelerating precede stage companies. We're global. We just launched our first program in Africa this year in subsaharan Africa. So we're in Lagos now, and the Tulsa program is one of the newest programs as well. So we've got around 40 mds. So some cities have multiple programs. We are one of the top tier accelerators in the world. And as of, I think last week, we are now the most prolific precede stage investor in the world. So we make the most precede stage investments out of all VC shops, all investment firms in the world right now. I think we're going back and forth with Y combinator, but pretty soon I think we'll be solidly, like in the lead. Got you. So, yeah, we write a lot of checks. So I think this year we'll do about 800 investments. Nice. A lot of people don't realize that scale. Even I didn't when I joined, I didn't realize how many checks we were writing every year got you. And then when it comes to the companies that you tend to look at and you tend to work with, what is that like? Or who are those type of companies? Yeah. So it's different for each program. Within techstars we have some vertically focused, industry focused ones, some industry agnostic. My program is agnostic, but focused on underrepresented founders. So I do not have a particular focus on industry. Obviously, underrepresented founders is kind of a broad term, but we focus a lot on black and brown and women founders. And I have my preferences on the kind of industries that interest me. But I try to keep an open mind when I'm doing screening. But my personal interests are around the metaverse, blockchain, web three, ag tech. So I'm a third generation farmer, so I've got an affinity for the land and nobody's interested in farming like my grandfather did. There's technology now, right? And I'm interested in solving big problems with technology. And everybody's got to eat every day, so agriculture is a big one. And then prop. So there's a housing shortage basically all over America. And every time I see a house being built the way it's been built for the past 100 years, or housing markets operating inefficiently or not changing because not keeping up with technological changes, I get annoyed. And so proptech is like kind of one of my passion projects. I've got a whole investment thesis around housing as a service and the future of housing and a whole other portfolio around prefab and 3d printed houses and stuff like that. So yeah, blockchain, agtech, proptech construction, those are like some of my pet areas that I like. But I keep an open mind. We've got some healthcare companies, we got ecommerce, fintech, edtech that have come through the program. If you're solving a problem that is relevant, you do it uniquely and it can show potential for ROI. Then it's open. Yeah, and I have a bias towards really big important problems too. I don't do much in recently I've in the past stayed away from gaming and things that are not necessary. But now that I have a different view on the metaverse and another thesis around the metaverse, I see how important gaming is to bringing that about. So now I do have a gaming thesis, but it's not around games themselves, it's about the infrastructure. Got you. Yeah. I have a bias towards things that like problems that really need solving. And I really don't enjoy unnecessary human suffering. So I like things that can solve those things. That's real. So I obviously could talk more about techstars, but I'd like to know more about you and your story and how you got to a place where you're a managing director of techstars and what motivates you and what drives you in this position beyond funding startups and making money? And I know there's a lot, so I'm kind of setting you up for that. But yeah, when it comes to your journey in tech or as a startup, founder or investor, whatever the case is, love for you to kind of walk through where you started and how you ended up where you are today. Yeah, you can give the clip notes. Versions if you want to. Right. How long we got. Yeah. So you can just kind of keep it high level. So the thing that will tie it all together. Well, kind of I bounced around a lot is a passion for black economic development. So I've been building my experience and my skill set to be best suited to add value when it comes to creating collective black wealth and how to allocate those resources. So earliest start off, I was one of those kids, this is a surprisingly common thing in startups and founders. I was one of those kids who sold candy in middle school. It was basically the first time my parents told me I couldn't have something because of money, right? So I was like, I'm going to have to go get my own money. So middle school, selling candy. Fast forward to college. I was good at math and science, but actually I wanted to get into fashion design. So in high school I was like designing my own jeans. I took homec to a whole different level, like when they taught me how to sew, designing shoes, got into fashion, but I was good at math and science, so ended up going to engineering. I let people convince me to go to engineering school. First semester in, I was like, yeah, I definitely don't want to be an engineer. But I stuck with it. Got the degree immediately, went to business school afterwards, never practiced engineering, so got my MBA, graduated in 2008 in the middle of the great recession. Luckily, I landed a job like two weeks before graduation. So I worked at GE Energy in Atlanta in renewables, so commercializing wind and solar. Now, what they didn't tell me when I started was that although GE Energy's headquarters is in Atlanta, the renewables division was in Schenectady. So they wanted me to move to Schenectady, which I did for a little bit. And I was like, yeah, I'm going back to Atlanta. They were like, that's not an option. And I was like, but I'm going. And they were like, well, do you want the job? And I was like, I guess not. That was the end of that. I wanted to get back down south. Two years in Boston for grad school was enough. So that was around 2010. I started doing some consulting this whole time. So I started my first business when I was 19, like real one, not selling candy, doing custom t shirts. Ended up getting into ecommerce. So that's running this whole time. So that's how I wasn't too worried about quitting my job. I did have other stuff on the side and income, and then I would do consulting projects around business development, financial modeling for small businesses, startups in 2013, learned about crypto, got into that world, and used the money I made from that to invest in startups. So made my first startup investment in 2014, got my first exit in 2020, and after that. So six years of angel investing in 2021, I started kicking around the idea of starting a fund, a VC fund. So we launched HBCU Impact Capital, me and my good friend and frat brother, Isaac Hadai. He was a professor at TSU at the time, Tennessee State, not Texas Southern, and noticed a gap in the tech transfer market in hbCus. So the plan was to commercialize research coming out of hbcus. That's still a great opportunity. If anybody wants to steal that idea, go for it. Isaac might end up doing it, I don't know. Anyway, it was a good idea. So that brought me to Tulsa for the first time with the black venture summit. Shout out to building Tulsa. Hosted the first black venture summit in Tulsa in 2021. I went there, it was a weekend, had no intention on ever visiting Tulsa. That event just happened to be there. Definitely had no intention on moving to Tulsa. But by the end of that weekend, I saw tremendous opportunity in that city. So I came back for a visit two weeks later, and one of the last conversations I had before getting on the plane was with a guy at a local vc shop there, and he told me that techstars might be opening an office in Tulsa. So I happened to be at that event two weeks prior at the black venture summit with somebody, a representative from Tulsa. But we didn't end up having a conversation. So I reached out to her, said I was interested, and a month later got the position of managing director from November 2021 to December 2021. Decided to uproot my pivot my entire career path. Well, not entirely like I was in investing, but pivot how I was going to do it, and had a conversation with my wife about moving from a place we were perfectly happy and settled and love, Atlanta and going to Tulsa. So by February of 2022, I was in Tulsa. So that's as short sometimes I can do that story a little bit shorter, but that's as bad. That was good. That was a good Cliff notes version. I appreciate that. So I actually met you, listening to you at south by Southwest at a build Tulsa event, and you all talked about the energy in Tulsa, the history of Tulsa, and the opportunity to, like your shirt, rebuild Black Wall street. You know what I'm saying? So when it comes, know, obviously it must have had a huge impression on you. What was it about Tulsa that made you say, I'm going to uproot my family, and this is part of the mission that I want to take a part of. Yeah. So in the book, in the black 2050, in the intro, I talk about kind of learning the lessons from Black Wall street, but I never thought I'd actually get a chance to participate because that story is ongoing. Right. So it's not just history. So being interested in black economic development, my office is literally two blocks from historic Black Wall street, like Greenwood and Archer. So that was an opportunity that comes along once in a lifetime. Also, the ecosystem is unique in that it's very collaborative and focused. So it's physically, geographically concentrated and focused. Right. So all the startup activity is basically in the arts district, which is adjacent to Greenwood. All of it used to be Black Wall street back in the day. So there's three co working spaces. All the vcs, they're all in, call it five, six block radius. So that's unique. Right. If you're trying to pitch vcs or if you're a startup founder trying to check out the ecosystem, literally you just get off the airplane and go to the arts district and walk around, you'll find stuff. But most importantly, it's one of the few ecosystems I've been in that are extremely well resourced and have resources focused specifically on black founders. There's also an interesting history around Native Americans, and there's a strong tribal presence there that ties in as well. But most people, they'll play the whole underrepresented minority diverse game and lump everybody in the same bucket. And black folks tend to fall to the bottom of that totem pole. Absolutely. It was interesting to see an ecosystem that had a very strong focus on black founders and a bunch of money being thrown at it. Tulsa is an oil city, so there's a lot of oil money around. We have a $5 billion Family Foundation, George Kaiser Family foundation, that is very intentional about helping to rebuild Black Wall street. So when you got that kind of financial firepower behind a relatively small ecosystem, small and fast, growing, it just presented a very unique opportunity. I feel like I've made more progress in my personal career in the past year than I did in the past the five years prior to that. A lot of stuff is happening. I'm in a lot of rooms that I might not have got in in Atlanta. To politic and move your way up in a city like Atlanta was much easier, whereas now I'm pretty plugged in and I can get to anybody in Tulsa that I need to. And then there's a lot of energy. I'm a spiritual person, not a religious person, but I do feel like our ancestors are still actively involved in kind of guiding things. And there's a very real energy around Black Wall street that when you get there, you just feel it's like unfinished business there, and it's a stain on every black person that it's been allowed to fester this long. If we can't rebuild Black Wall street in the original Black Wall Street, I know there's been a bunch of different ones. So, like sweet Auburn and Atlanta, Wilmington, North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina, but the biggest one was Black Wall street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And if we can't rebuild that there, how are we going to replicate that in other markets where we have the unfair advantage of a bunch of money and a very focused, collaborative set of people focused specifically on this goal? Like, if we can't do it with all that, then we got to go back to the drawing where there's something very fundamentally wrong with us as a community if we cannot do this. Yeah, that's some real stuff, man. I appreciate that breakdown. And where do you see Tulsa heading over the next five to ten years? Yeah, man, you're asking all my favorite questions, and we didn't even prep. Yeah. So personally, I still have my own personal wealth goals, and I'm trying to get to my. Are we allowed to cuss? Yeah, you can. Yeah, I'm still trying to get to my bucket number. So I went to undergrad in Nashville in the early two thousand s, and I saw Nashville go from what it was to what it is now, like a booming, fast growing metropolis. And I was just there before I came here, speaking at Vandy. And just the number of cranes and new buildings on the skyline just from three years ago. Last time I was there was. 2019 is amazing. So there's a lot of growth happening in Nashville. Very exciting ecosystem. But I missed that boat in terms of investing in the local market, especially real estate. Although I did try to convince my frat brothers to buy a frat house back then and everybody now admits that I was right. So I missed that train. Similar to like, Austin, Texas. Imagine Tulsa. I feel like Tulsa is on that same path. It's maybe ten years behind Nashville, 15 behind Austin, but it's on that path. We still have surface level parking lots in prime central business district. Right. So there's still plenty of real estate opportunity. And I feel like it's kind know I like to play in emerging markets. So I'm very interested in the Caribbean, very interested in Africa, but I feel like we have a bunch of emerging markets within America that are still relatively untapped. So just like, personally, I feel like it's a good place to put down some roots, make some investments. And yeah, I feel like it's definitely on that growth path. And unlike other cities where it kind of happened organically or through traditional economic development means, by attracting corporations and whatnot, Tulsa's taken a somewhat unique approach. And during the pandemic, they actually just started paying people to move to Tulsa. Yeah, I saw them do that in Tulsa. Strategically, it's a good location geographically, it's good for logistics. Middle of the country, 40 minutes away from the largest inland port in America. Got a lot of cool organizations doing good work. The family foundation. But there's like 1500 other foundations. Just a bunch of oil money. The state is investing in innovation, in tech, but they just need more talent and more people. So they just started paying people to move there. So when you do that, people move. So now they're experiencing a lot of rapid growth, which is why anybody who's listening to this is a real estate investor or real estate developer. We have a serious housing shortage. You might want to look into tulsa. But, yeah, that's kind of what I'm seeing and why I uprooted my family to get right. Dope, dope, dope. So it's a bunch of money for black founders in Tulsa. Now let me do a little expectation management. Of course, when you show up, nobody's presenting you a check. Like, you still have to go and do the work, meet people, build something worth funding. Facts. It's available, it's not free, right? Whereas other places, it's just not available. But you still got to do the work and still got to have a compelling value proposition. So that's a good segue into my next question is for the black founders that are out there, because when it comes to big tech energy, I do talk about how to break into tech in terms of getting tech roles. And I know that's really popular in terms of podcasts and TikTok and Instagram influencers. But I really wanted to highlight how black founders can get funding because that's how we can have real economic shift in terms of big black organizations hiring us, setting up roots in our communities, et cetera. Right? So it's super important that more black founders get funding, but if they're not approaching it the right way or thinking about the right things, they're going to consistently get denied those checks for those that are talking and doing the right things. So for all the black founders out there that might be hitting roadblocks or just kind of confused as to why they're not having as much success in terms of acquiring funding from groups like techstars and others that are out there, what advice do you have in terms of how they should approach creating their startup and then pitching their startup when it comes to finding funding? Well, easier said than done. It's hard. Get really good at prompt engineering and be a chat CBT super user. I love that. No prompt engineers will probably be the most important job in the next two, three years. Part of it is structural. There's just not enough money for black founders. So there's a little bit of, no matter what you do, there's not enough yet. Got it. We still got to do some work at a systemic level on organizing more black lps if we don't have enough black investors. And I'm not talking about people who write the checks, I'm talking about the people who write them checks. So I'm still funded by other people, right? So it's not my money I'm investing. So we need more of those people who fund people like me to be black and give us the mandate of go out and fund black founders. And since George Floyd, that's been happening more. But it's still a drop in the bucket. So there's a lack of capital supply issue. So that just makes it a very competitive environment for founders, especially in this market when VC capital is drying up. But that being said, it's still like, I mean, it sounds basic, but it's still fundamental business, right? You've got to create something that the world needs and solving a problem that is so painful for the market that you're serving that they have to find a solution with or without you. Like they're doing something about it now that something is either inadequate or it doesn't exist. Maybe they've been looking for a solution that doesn't exist. So identifying very real pain points, especially with technical founders, they get into this habit of building things because they can and because it's cool and they have a good idea versus starting with somebody's pain. You always got to be centered around pain, annoyance, problem that somebody is already actively looking for a solution for. Right now, there's something to be said about creating things that people don't know they need, like the iPhone, like a touch screen based phone. Nobody knew they needed that until they saw it. So there was still some of that out there. But most of the ideas that I fund and most of the good pitches I see the founder is very connected to the problem, and that problem is very real for the customers that they're serving. So that's just fundamental. You got to be really connected to the problem, and it has to be a problem worth solving for it to be interesting because we're seeing dozens if not hundreds of pitches, right? So I need a compelling story to even get my attention, to focus on it. And that story is usually around solving a compelling problem and giving me example of what a day in the life of the person who is experiencing this problem looks like and how it affects the world and all that stuff. So fundamentally solve an important enough problem. Second founding team is the most important thing that we look at, right? Especially at precede, because there's really no business to fund. We're funding people. So founder problem fit is a very important thing. And I tend to gravitate towards founders who have to solve this problem because they have a personal experience with it. So you hear that a lot in the healthcare industry. Everybody has a healthcare horror story and they have a problem. They've experienced something that inspired the solution that they're building. But more than just having the idea and the need to solve it, you also need to be able to build a team that's able to execute around that, right? So every VC, the first thing we're going to look at is who the team is and does it make, well, the idea and the market size. So is the market big enough? Let's say your projections are 10%, right? So you're 90% off and you only get 10% of the market you were expecting to get. Is that still big enough? Like, is 10% of 10% still a billion dollars or whatever? Is the market big enough that you can be wrong and still make a ton of money? Right. One thing that founders that I didn't appreciate because I've been in the game so long, it's kind of like second nature to me, but it's not intuitive. This is specifically for VC investing and angel investing. If I make an investment in a company and they produce a three x return for the founder, that sounds great, right? It's like I tripled your money, you should be happy about that. But when I make an investment in a company, I'm not looking at you to make a good investment on the investment I gave on the money I gave you. A good return on the money I gave you. I need you to make a return on the money. I've given ten other companies in my portfolio because I know nine of them are going to fail. So I need you to subsidize the losses of nine other companies and still get me a three x return on all of that. Right. So I don't need you to make a three x return, I need you to make a 2030 40 x return, because you're subsidizing the losses, essentially. Right. So I need the market to be big enough to allow that to happen. So where even if we only get 1% of the market or a half percent of the market, you can still be a billion dollar company. Right? And that's just VC math. If you don't take VC dollars, your calculation can be different. If you're doing like, revenue based financing, that's a different calculation. But I'm talking specifically pitch VC. So that's what we're looking for. We're looking at, will this check return the entire fund? Like, if this one thing hits, can it return the entire fund? Now, I kind of don't view it exactly in those same terms. I'm not expecting to take nine out of ten losses. I'm thinking I'm going to do a little bit better than that, because I have another strategy around supplying my own demand. So I make investments that help other investments and kind of give the portfolio an unfair advantage. So every single one doesn't have to return the fund, maybe every two or three companies does. But anyway, the opportunity needs to be big enough, the founder needs to be connected to the problem or be very connected to the customer. Like have a very customer centric view and be able to build a team around them to plug their gaps. So if you're not a technical founder, you need some technical help somehow. Like, you need to figure that out now with chat GBT and chat GBT being able to write code, I think this is a good time for non technical founders to be able to level up their skills, but you need to have somebody who can technically build the thing that you're trying to build on the team. And then people who are proficient around go to market. So one of the team dynamics I like to see this is not a rule of thumb. I've invested in plenty that don't fit into this category. But I like, obviously, multi time founders, but even first time founders who are able to attract talent from a more established corporation. So, like, a bunch of people are getting laid off right now. Google, Twitter meta. If you can attract some of that corporate talent to help plug your knowledge gaps specifically around when it comes to scaling, right? So one thing that I learned about myself is I'm a very good zero to not even one, like zero to a half founder. I'm really good at starting something from scratch, getting it to hiring the first two people and getting the initial revenue in the door. And then once it gets past the first 1015 employees, then I lose interest and I move on to the next project. Right? That's not the type of founder I want to back. I need somebody who can go the distance and build that team and then bring people on around them who have seen what it looks like at scale. So somebody who you can get from Twitter or Apple or Facebook or whatever, they've seen what it looks like at scale, and they can maybe point out some landmines that you might avoid. Like, hey, the thing that we're doing now works cool at 20 people, but as soon as we get to 50, there's going to be a problem right here. And first time founders, especially from my background, I didn't have a bunch of corporate experience, typically fall into those traps of scaling traps, right? So people who either proven that they know how to scale or can build a team that has been around scale, a market that's big enough and a problem that's important enough, and then being able to condense your story into a compelling couple of minutes, which is why our demo day pitches are three minutes. That's even too long. But we've got your attention because you're at demo day, so we know we've got at least three minutes. But if you're pitching me and it takes you more than 60 seconds, my mind has already started to wonder. I'm already thinking about what I'm about to eat. Go see getting home to see my kid. You got to get very good at talking to people like they have no idea what you do, because most people don't. Right? Even if they do technically have the technical experience and knowledge to understand what you're talking about. Still, dumb it down. Like I said, going through this last application cycle, we had 300 applications. If you're not getting me in the first few slides. I already lost it in the description. So for these type of customers who have this problem, we are a SaaS platform that does this. I need to get it in that, right. So you got to get real good at telling a story and making it personal. So if you've got a product demo that helps, just let me see it. You could try to describe it all day, but let me see it and play around with it. But if you don't have that, tell me a story of how it affects the user, not what it does. What are they using it for? What was the example that everybody uses from McDonald's? They don't sell burgers. They sell what? Well, I know they own real estate, but I don't know. No, it's like, we don't sell burgers. We sell convenience, or I can't remember what it is. It's probably a bad example. But you are not selling somebody a product. You are selling them a solution. So another good time saving solution maybe. Because it's so fast. Yeah, something like that. Black and decker doesn't sell drill bits. They sell holes. I buy the drill bit because I need a hole. I don't need the drill bit. I just need the hole. That's the thing that gets me the hole. So they're buying a solution to a problem. Get me to there, get me to understand why they need to do this thing and what it does for the customer, not what you're selling. Like, oh, we're a SaaS platform that helps collate data and create a dashboard. Okay, but why does the customer need that? Right. What problem does it solve? Like, I have a problem right now, ended up using. I have a problem with collecting data from my portfolio companies after I make the investment. Right. So I was actively looking for a solution for that. Ended up finding one and using this product now because I don't really care about what they do or the features. I care about this very specific problem that I need solved. And does it do that for me? Right. So just being able to dumb that down and explain it in simple terms, especially the more technical your product, the harder it is to simplify it. But if you can't simplify it, if you can't explain it to somebody who's not familiar with their industry at all, then you got to get better at that. It's like they say, the best professors are able to simplify things the most. Right? Yeah. Something make it seem very simple. Yeah. You broke that down, bro. That was some good stuff because I definitely hear a lot of pitches, see a lot of pitches, and they'd be really long, confusing and talking about stuff that does not matter. So I'm glad the people that listen to this that are putting together the pitch deck utilizing chat, GBT and other things he's talking about. There's a local company that I think is moving to or one of the Tulsa based BC shops invested in called brevity. Brevity.com. I'm not invested, but they have an AI enabled tool to build decks for specific things. So either a sales deck, sales presentation or demo day, or investor pitch, and they have a cool tool to structure it for you. And then basically you're just like filling out a form and it just creates the deck rather than trying to do it from the good decks typically fall. They're structured about the same. Maybe they put the team slider earlier versus later, you might move the stuff around, but they have the same like five, six elements, right? So tools like that. And then I think, I don't know how to pronounce it. Tomi to me Tome AI, it's like an AI enabled presentation builder. So it's like build me a presentation about a B, two B SaaS product in healthcare space and I'll just lay. Out the template for you and start. To fill it in. You just go in and edit. But yeah, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Just look at examples of pet pitch decks from companies that are successful now or use brevity and then just. Yeah, I don't know if you heard of presentations? AI. Yeah. And beautiful AI as well. Right? There's a bunch of presentation software. If I see a bad, even one that's poorly designed, I'm not a stickler for that. It could look ugly. I don't really care. But if it's, like, super whack. You didn't even try. There's so many tools. Right. Why would you put. Yeah, and also, I got my start in graphic design, so I do have, like, an eye for stuff, but I try not to let that sway me. It just says something else to me. Do your sales presentations also look this bad? Yeah. Is your coding sloppy? Like, what's going on? Yeah. Another resource. Have you heard of GPTE AI? No. Yeah. So basically it's a site where 1500 AI platforms, you search in by keyword, and it just lists out all of the AI platforms that match that keyword. Gpte AI. Yeah. Keep me honest. Does it pull up when you. All right, cool. Yeah. Because, I mean, I can nerd out, too on AI and list out, like, a million AI tools, but whenever we talk AI on this show, I just put that at the bottom, and I just want people to really dive into the different type of solutions that they need. And there's about five different AI platforms for everyone. Yeah, man. That's probably the biggest piece of advice I'm just piling on here because I think this narrative has permeated the tech easer, but. Right. Everybody has the potential to be ten x more productive now. It's wild, the stuff that I'm seeing come out since Chachi BT. So it's worth, like, one of the problems being a founder is your attention is needed in so many different places. This is one of those things that's worth contributing an hour or two a day to just being proficient and learning all these different tools and really how to apply them to your specific situation. The impact on productivity, I don't think is like, this is definitely what Andrew Yang was talking about in the fourth industrial revolution, the reason why he was running on a platform of universal basic income, because we're very close to being in. So one of the things that I say why I got into tech investing is I want to build a Star Trek future, not a Star wars future. We're very close to being able to be in a system where we're so productive that a large percent of the population doesn't need to work. Now, we don't have the economic system to handle that. So now we got to rethink our economic system. We're still operating under the industrial mindset of jobs equal value. Your value and worth as a human is tied to your job and your career. Right? So we're going to have to break that down in people's minds of, it could be perfectly acceptable to be like, everybody is a trust fund baby basically in the future, right, when we get replicators and antimatter energy from antimatter or whatnot, why does everybody need to work? But anyway, I think we're reaching the level of productivity where the difference between the lowest performance and the highest performance is going to be like God level. Yes. Right. And what's good about Chat GPT and why I want our community to really get on it now is there's very low barrier to entry to utilize it. But eventually they're going to create stronger chat GPTs that we're not a part of, in my opinion, or we're not. A part of building the models. And the models continue to reinforce biases and whatnot. And gaps are only going to. If you think inequality is bad now, what happens when you give people God powers that are not equally distributed because not everybody even has access to the Internet? Or inequality is going to get much worse. Yeah, that's why when it comes to Microsoft that just acquired OpenAI, I'm all up in their face, all in the organization trying to figure out how can we get Chachi BT prompt engineering into underfunded communities, black communities, brown communities, et cetera. Because it's like basically racing a car against a bike. The car is always going to beat us to the destination. It's a Falcon nine rocket against walking pretty much, man. That's why it's really important that we talk about it. So I want to turn this into clips. So why should people invest in prompt engineering and learn Chat GPT? The short answer is to increase your productivity, like ten x your productivity. A beginner junior coder can be like a senior 20 year experienced software architect almost overnight. Right? So there was a whole thing about coal miners losing their jobs and, well, if they just learn coding, obviously that's stupid. There's a lot of things that need to happen. But it was always just teach everybody coding. Teach everybody code. Well, now chat TBT can code. So the next thing is teach everybody prompt engineering and how to use these copilots and these tools. So if you don't know how to use it, you will not be able to compete. Like, it will be impossible. No, that's real. That's well said, man. So we talked a little bit about how founders can find funding. One thing I want to also talk about is how can more people in our community be the funders? So what ideas do you have around that? And, yeah, we'd love to get your thoughts on that. Well, I'm glad that you have. So, yeah, this is another one of these things that I've got decent at condensing, but it's a big problem. So it stems from the fact that the black community specifically has less than 1% of the wealth in the United States, and we're 13% to 15% of the population. Right. So we don't have the level of individual concentrated wealth to be able to make an impact as individual investors, we have to collectively pool our resources, which in the past has been wrought with all types of strife and shenanigans, because systems have been put in place to prevent us from doing these things. But with technology now, it's so easy to start an investment club, to pool money together, crowdfunding campaigns, all that stuff. And the minimum investment, the barriers to entry to invest in illiquid assets like startups, private equity, art, real estate, are low, lower than they've ever been. Right. You can get started with minimum investments of like $100. Like the first angel check I wrote, I think, was, I don't know, $10,000, which was still small. Then I got in through a syndicate, but now you can get in for $100. So the first thing, part of the reason why black founders get so little funding is because, not necessarily because of gps. So, like, people in my position who are writing checks, it's the people who fund them, right? So the rot in the system is at the lp base, and a lot of the lps are institutions that we've not typically been in leadership positions, think pension funds, corporate venture, large foundations and family offices and things like that. Sovereign wealth funds that we typically not had a seat at the table in these institutions. That's starting to change, but not fast enough. So we don't have access to or personally the individual wealth. We have to start cooperative economics, so we've got to start organizing our existing groups. So we've got fraternities and sororities, we've got professional organizations, we've got community organizations that already bring people together. What we need to do next is just tack on another layer of investment, an investment component. So if I'm already paying membership dues, add another $100, and that$100 is not a donation, that is an investment. I will see a return on that investment, but we pull it collectively together. I was pitching this to a lot of the NPAC organizations. So the black fraternity, fraternities and sororities and I had done the calculation for each organization. And it pretty quickly snowballs into a sizable fund. If all MPHC organizations combined participate in this. And with only, I think my assumption was ten to 20% participation rate. So like ten to 20% of the members of those organizations actually participating, you quickly get to like 100 million dollar funds within a few years. It snowballs pretty rapidly. And that's not with any compound interest, that's just the invested principle. So collectively, we have enough to get the ball rolling and get into some pretty substantial investments, especially when you think about more athletes and entertainers are starting to get into this space because typically a lot of the wealth in our community has been locked up into entertainment. So if you think about most of the black billionaires, they have something to do with entertainment. With the exceptions being people like Robert Smith and Robert Smith. I can't remember the Roberts brothers. They do real estate in like, St. Louis. Yeah. The other black billionaires are super low key, which is smart. Yeah, I was going to say one and I'm hesitant to even. I'm not even going to say his name because I know he likes to stay low, but he's from my hometown, Louisville. But, yeah. So phase one is organize our collective investment capital. Even though it's relatively low, it is in absolute terms, pretty large. Like, we spend a trillion dollars a year. If we diverted some of that spending into investing, it's not an insignificant amount of money, but then also using our numbers and political power to start getting access to public dollars. Right. So there's minority contractor programs and then the government. Most of that money is unspent because we don't have the businesses to actually get access to it. But that's a political thing. So we can force elected officials into making more of those public budgets available. So collectively investing our own personal capital, getting more access to public dollars, all to build our productive capacity and our essentially capacity building. Right. So all the black businesses combined in America make up less than 1% of GDP. Walmart has 16. I can't remember the exact number. It's many times more in revenue than the top 100 black owned companies combined. I think the number is 16 times. Got it. So one company, Walmart, has more revenue than the top 100 black owned businesses. So we need like World War II level effort around increasing the scale of black owned businesses. So not necessarily the quantity, because the problem right now is we got a bunch of small mom and pop businesses that can't scale. We need more businesses that can. We need companies that could create towns around them. Like Hershey, Pennsylvania. Right. Like, the company is so big and employs so many people. An entire region develops around these companies. This is how we one tackle the employment problem. Black unemployment is constantly about twice that of national average. We've got to focus on building capacity to create jobs and deploy capital, deploy resources. Also funding more black fund managers like me to be able to have enough people who know how to evaluate businesses and do portfolio management, portfolio construction, things like that. So all of this is building towards creating the capacity to deploy capital, because the only way to really close this gap is reparations. There's no other solution within any of our lifetimes. I ran the numbers. I'm actually preparing for a speech on reparations. So I like to tie things to real numbers because a lot of people talk about the wealth gap, but don't actually say the number. It's interesting to me. I was actually at a very fancy dinner with a prominent black investor, and they talked about racial wealth gap, and they talked about entrepreneurship and stuff as a solution. But nobody ever said the number, which is $14 trillion.$14 trillion is the gap we're trying to fill. That's not us getting more college education, college degrees. That's not us being more responsible with our money. That's not having more traditional two parent households and making all the right decisions. Right? It's beyond all that. If we do all of that, let's say so right now, the gap is growing. During the pandemic, the gap grew by $9 trillion, or white wealth grew by $9 trillion during the pandemic. So the gap is not a static thing. And even if they stopped growing and just stopped time and did nothing, and we closed the gap by, let's say, a billion dollars a month, that will take 83 years to close. I don't have that kind of time. I'm not trying to wait that long. I want my check now. And if you're wondering, the number is about $350,000 per individual who would qualify for reparations. So I've got a proposal on who should be in that. But I'm not trying to have that debate here or get any of the people who get very upset about these conversations. You don't distract from the over. Yeah, that's a debate we can have as a community. It is a large contingency, call it minimum, 30 million people in America that would qualify, and it's worth about $350,000 individually. So, like, if you have four people in your household, you're talking about $1.4 million. That is not charity that you are owed, that your ancestors worked for, and their labor was stolen, their intellectual property was stolen, their access to public investments and public infrastructure, public socialized, everything was stolen from the homestead act to GI Bill, slavery itself, all that stuff. So we are not asking for a handout. We want the debt that is owed and is the only way to close the gap. It is also good for everybody in America. If you give, like, it would be the biggest stimulus since World War II, probably, and it would eclipse World War II. The activities and the infrastructure we need to build just to even get reparations, would be a huge boost to the economy, because it would mean that essentially the least productive people in America, black folks, like, objectively, economically, we are the least productive people. We would become vastly more productive then. We're already the source of most of the interesting cultural trend. Like, we set the agenda for America and culture, we just don't capitalize on the value that we create. But unemployment, poverty, things that disproportionately affect the black community are a drag on the entire economy. Solving it for us will help one. It'll help reduce poverty for everybody. It will help boost GDP to a level never seen before. So there is a capitalist argument that it is in their self interest to do this. That's not why I'm in it. I'm in it because I selfishly want my money that I'm owed, that my great great grandfather worked for, and my grandfather and my dad. I want it. I have goals. Like we said before, I have a fucking number. Government's holding on some of my money. I want it. And the only entity in the entire planet that is capable of making that happen is the United States federal government. So we have to have a plan for reparations at the federal level. That is the only way to close the gap. Everything else we're doing around wealth building racial equity is just to build the infrastructure to make that happen, because if we do all this and don't make that happen, the gap will not close. I already told you the math. It's not possible. We're not going to do it. Definitely not in either one of our lifetimes, and probably not my son's lifetime right now. Man, that's deep. So when it comes to how do we get the legislation to actually happen, what do you think? Yeah. So, first of all, I'm going to preface this. I need as many people to hear this as possible. I'm not suicidal. I don't have any dangerous habits or vices. So if it looks like I committed suicide or any accidents happen to me, I was killed talking about, I'm also not going to take it that far. Look, I'm telling you all right now, I'm not trying to die for this. I have a plan. I publish as much of this stuff. I have no intellectual property around it. I publish as much of it as possible. So if for some reason I do decide to retire or remove myself from all of this, it's publicly available. So for any government agencies listening, I'm not your problem, right? It's already out there. You can't stop it. So the short answer is there are 22 congressional districts with over 50% black population. You start there. The other part of the short answer is 848 or$868,000,000. That's how much it costs to buy the Congress, the people in the House and the Senate that we need over the next. I'm giving it three Senate election cycles, which are six years each. So 18 years. So my reparations plan is 18 years. I think we can beat it, but I'm trying to be a little conservative and I think we can do it for an investment of $2 billion. So $2 billion to try to get 14 trillion. But say I'm 90%. Remember what I said before? Say I'm 90% wrong and we only get 1.4 trillion. 2 billion to get 1.4 trillion. Not a bad return on investment. I think this is the highest return activity that any of us could do, could be engaged in. So how that breaks down is about half of it is the amount of money it would take to essentially buy the politicians. I don't know a better way to say that. We know they're all for. Enroll them in our vision. Yes. Get buy in from them and lobby the correct people for the appropriate amount of election cycles. Because the main thing people get caught up is how we're going to pay for it. Right. So how you pay for it is, which is why you have to go after federal reparations. The federal government prints the money. We saw that during COVID Literally Congress authorizes spending. Somebody at the Fed types. In some numbers, money is created. That's where it comes from. Now the question is how to do that without making it inflationary. Making the price of fucking Louis Vuitton and Maybax go up. That's where the capacity building comes in. So essentially the process of getting the reparations is the easy part. It just requires organizing our votes in very strategic locations. We don't need 51%. We just need enough to swing votes in the House and the Senate. Right, which in the House right now I think is like, ten people, nine people, you can make that happen. The Senate, I think, is one or two. So we just need to be able to do essentially, like, what Mitch McConnell did to Obama, just obstruct. Like, nothing gets passed unless you put this bill on the floor for a. Yep. We want to see who votes against it. So as soon as we put it on the floor initially for a vote, we know it's going to get voted down. But now we have a list of everybody who voted against it or abstained, everybody who did not positively vote for it. Now we start flooding their districts with money and making their lives very hard. We do that enough times over three election cycles. Eventually we get a bill passed. That's the easy part. How you operationalize reparations is that budget allocation gets made, and it's not going to be. Even if it was 14 trillion, which I don't know whether we'll get that or not, it wouldn't be immediate. Budget cycles are ten years, so maybe it takes two budget cycles. Maybe they break it down over 20 years. Ten years, 1.4 trillion a year, or 700 billion a year. However they break it down, it's not going to come immediately. And my proposal is that this is not a new thing. It's not my idea. I am not in favor of just writing everybody checks, which I wish we were in the place to be able to do that. And I would love that to happen, because I think I can invest my money better than any other entity. But as we determined, we need more capital to create capacity, specifically like manufacturing service capacity, like more business capacity. So when individuals do get the money, they have a place to spend it without sending it right back out the door, out of the black community. So the structure would be essentially like a pension fund. So reparations get, the budget gets authorized, the funds get sent to, essentially a pension fund. That pension fund makes investments that are strategically good for the black community, specifically around capacity building. Some of it goes towards nonprofits to plug some of the holes that the government is not filling in our communities. And then the returns that we make from those investments, those get distributed. So instead of getting a one time check, we essentially get quarterly or yearly checks for life. Right. And then get the ROI and then disperse that. Yeah. Okay. So, like, 95% gets dispersed, another 5% gets or 90% gets dispersed, 5% gets reinvested, 5% goes to nonprofit social services or something like that. Awesome. And we would collectively decide those numbers right. Got you. Now that actually makes sense. That's the first reparations plan that actually seems feasible that I've ever had. And then we have tech. So essentially it would look like a Dow. This whole thing is managed with a Dow, from voting and governance to payments, investments and disbursements. Yeah. And for those that aren't familiar with the Dow, what does that stand for? Decentralized, autonomous organization. So it's a blockchain enabled way to collectively manage capital. You can also manage votes. Voting. So you have blockchain enabled voting, which we would need because this needs to be super transparent. So we cannot have a situation where anybody could possibly embezzle money from this thing because you know that's going to. Somebody'S going to want to do it. So it needs to be impossible. It needs to be super transparent. And then we also need to be able to vote. Do we collectively agree that we're not going to invest in. This is a bad example, but like countries that are sanctioned by the US government or we're not going to invest in fossil fuels or whatever, we'll vote on big things like that. And then there would be an investment committee that would do the more specific day to day blocking, tackling these fund managers and balancing portfolio and all that stuff. But it would need to be relatively democratically managed, this whole thing. Awesome, man. We could talk about this for hours. I know. But for those that really want to learn more about your plan and the information that you've been putting together, where can they go find it? Yeah. So right now, the first part of that building the capacity is in the book. So in the black 2050 dot is where you can get that working on a second edition with the reparation specific stuff. And then I have some blog posts on that website. Maybe somebody transcribes this and puts that out as well. But right now it's just a word doc. I mean, a Google Doc. There's nowhere specifically, but the best place to start is in theblack 2050 dot and then sign up for the email list on there so you can get more updates. But yeah, that was the verbal plan that I just gave you, so now it exists here. Awesome, man. Well, I'm glad this is the first place you've been able to verbally put it. You have the clips, let's distribute it, and let's make this seed grow. So, man, I appreciate you for coming on the show. This is going to be hard. I know, man, I got nervous when you said that because I was like, that's just real. You know what I mean? Because that is a very feasible plan. But that being said, it's good for the economy. And as long as they understand that it's good for the economy and we're going to be doing it responsibly and not like wreck inflation and all kinds of stuff, then maybe they can get behind it. Yeah. I mean, the only people who would not agree with this plan are people who are like diehard libertarians who just don't believe in any type of government program that big and overt racist. Right. This is in everybody's self interest to make this happen. Yeah. There's no reason not to do it, especially like, I've already quashed the inflation thing. The main thing would be inflation. What do you do about that? We figured that out. Inflation, embezzlement, all that jazz and the blockchain I looked at for that purpose of keeping it. This is raising the bar for everyone versus. Because another common objection would be reason why I haven't mentioned taxes this whole time. As soon as you mention taxes, it's a wrap. So the plan is not to raise taxes. So if it's a redistribution, then if I'm taxing somebody to give it to somebody else, even whether that's right or wrong, that's a political non starter. You're not going to win that battle. So mine is create new money towards new capacity that creates jobs for everybody. Right. Because black people are typically not racist. So we will end up employing non black people when we start these black owned businesses. We also can't be racist. But anyway, yeah, that's a whole nother thing for sure, but definitely accurate. We can be biased. Awesome, man. So we're running out of time, so I'm going to go ahead and ask you to let the audience know how they can stay in touch with you and any final thoughts on the topic, whether it's what we just talked about or tech stars, startup founders, whatever final words you want to give and then let people know how to get in touch with you if you want them to. So I'm mostly active on LinkedIn, so it's Trey Baker on LinkedIn. I'll probably be the first thing that pops up. It's T-R-E with no y. And then I'm Baker II. All words all written out lowercase Baker II on Twitter. So that's how you can keep in touch. Yeah. And if Black founders want know, pitch to tulsa. Oh, that's pitchtrade.com. Got it. And then techstars, well, that's just me in general. And then to pitchtarst, Tulsa specifically, go to accelerators slash Tulsa. All right. Perfect. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you for coming through, bro. Yeah, appreciate you having me. Yeah, man. And to the audience, I appreciate y'all for coming in and watching the show, listening on whatever audio platform you're listening on. We love for you to share this episode, especially if you resonate with that second half. Let's share this information. Let's see how we can make this thing happen. But also to all you startup founders, make sure to relisten to this. Take notes. He really dropped a masterclass on the mentality, the structure and the way you should pitch your solution, how you should think about solutions. So definitely make sure you relisten to that part. And there's going to be a lot of great clips from this episode. So yeah, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube, download the episodes, like comment, all that good stuff. Also, I have a passion project called Blackhire.com. Basically like upwork and fiver. That's where you can get freelancers, but it's hard to find black freelancers in particular. So I'm creating a site where if you are looking for freelancers that are black, you can come there, put your roles up there the same way you do on fiver and upwork. If you're a black freelancer, we'd love for you to highlight your skills so that folks that want to employ you can find you. Also, if you want to connect with me on other social media platforms, you can go to direct me, Bigtechenergy, where you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those great places. I have a free ebook, 70 pages about my path into tech, my advice on breaking into tech, but more importantly, how to have a long successful career in tech with resume guide and LinkedIn completely free. And then also I have a free community called tech Careers where I post tech roles, tech resources, tech events, et cetera. And also like pitch competitions and funding and grants for startup founders. So all the dms that you guys would send me, asking me where the jobs or where the events are, I put it all in tech careers, another free platform. And yeah, love for you to continue to watch the show and share with your people. And until next time, this is big tech energy. We'll see you. Peace.