Opinion
DeBaun: The tech industry ignores the problems of Black people and women
“There's a thousand problems that black people have, and people of color have, and women have, that this entire industry ignores.”
Opinion
DeBaun: Legacy Black media failed mobile while millennial media ignored Black audiences
“Black media is moving too slow because they're antiquated in terms of magazines and newspapers. They never really made the switch to mobile first and digital first. And then millennial media, they don't care.”
Opinion
DeBaun: Tech and entrepreneurship are the best ways to build community influence
“How do I both help the people that I care about in my community make enough money
so I can influence other people and make better decisions and technology and entrepreneurship is one of the best ways to do that”
Assertion Partly supported
DeBaun: Black Americans watch 8 hours of TV daily while driving content
“Black people and people of color actually over index and watching television, so it's about eight hours a day on average, it's a lot, the average person watches about five, and at the same time, we're huge content creators”
Insight
DeBaun: Pitching competitor's investors is a mistake for founders
“I think I made the mistake that a lot of first-time founders make, which is you raise you go and look at your competitors, right? You go look stocks on AngelList, you look at them on Crunchbase, and you're like, okay, well, who invested in them? We're like the…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
DeBaun: Few Music Media Brands Focus on Black Culture
“There's not many music media brands that focus on Black culture, which is ironic, considering how much black musicians run the music industry, right? Are the creators of the music industry.”
Insight
DeBaun: Black Female Founders Must Not Seek Outside Validation
“I would say it's so, you don't have to ask for permission. Like, I think sometimes we wait for other people to validate us because we've spent a lot of time not being validated and not seeing ourselves in places.”
Insight
DeBaun: Consumer founders must be channel-agnostic and fail fast
“I think failing fast is like, part of how you move in this world, particularly in technology space. And especially consumer social media engagement community. So, yeah, it, I am agnostic about how we reach people. I just want to make sure that we do.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
DeBaun: About 50% of Blavity content comes from community
“About 50% of our content today is actually from the community, which has its own problems but in the long run, you know, it does.”
Disclosure
DeBaun: Blavity raised an unannounced funding round beyond $1M
“Yeah, I had a, I had another round that hasn't really been announced.”
Disclosure
DeBaun: Blavity left WordPress and built custom CMS for UGC
“We're not on WordPress anymore. We've built our own website and our own CMS, a content management system, So that we can enable user-generated content.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
DeBaun: Blavity's women's vertical grew faster than core brand
“And then that was actually growing faster than Blavity.”
Morgan DeBaun