ROB
Hey! What’s going on, man?

CLARENCE
Hello. Hello. What’s up, Rob?

ROB
Hey, how are you doing?

CLARENCE
I’m good, man. I’m good. How are you doing?

ROB
I’m doing well, man. Doing well. Did we schedule a full interview or is it just a meet and greet? I don’t know. I forgot what was scheduled.

CLARENCE
I really don’t know. I’m assuming it’s a full thing. But you know…

ROB
Okay. We could do a full thing.

CLARENCE
…we’ll figure it out.

ROB
So how did everything go? How did your competition go? All that stuff, how did it go?

CLARENCE
Oh it was phenomenal. It was phenomenal. The one thing that we weren’t sure about is how the pitches would go because… You know, we had four finalists. Those finalists all pitched for six minutes and they were all amazing especially considering that there was no slides. That all took place on Clubhouse and so… They literally had to be very animated. Some of them were comical. Yeah, it exceeded my expectations. P&G was very happy. We had about 800 people in the room at various points. It went well. It was great.

ROB
That’s good -- 800 people in the room on Clubhouse. So how far advanced did you promoted on Clubhouse? Like two weeks?

CLARENCE
About 10 days or so. But I don’t think that’s what drew people to the room. I made sure that one of our judges was a friend who has 2.5 million followers.

ROB
Oh that helps.

CLARENCE
That helped pull people into the room. We then implemented some behind-the-scenes tricks to make people keep coming up -- tricking the algorithm.

ROB
Okay. Oh I got to get some of those goodies about how that worked, definitely. So I guess we can talk about some of that, too. That’s pretty dope.

All right. You know what we’ll do? We’ll just roll, get into it, and just have a conversation about 30 minutes or so and just kind of go from there.

CLARENCE
Easy. Let’s do it.

ROB
Yeah. All right.

[START – 00: 04:45]

ROB RICHARDSON
Welcome to Disruption Now. I’m your host and moderator, Rob Richardson. With me is Clarence Wooten. He is a man of many talents. He’s been a serial entrepreneur, has reinvented himself over and over again, was in this game from internet 1.0 -- actually, the beginning when the internet was… not when it first started but when the internet started first being commercialized -- and is still doing, still reinventing himself, still doing a lot out here in Silicon Valley. And he’s doing a lot to really promote a more inclusive ecosystem. -- Clarence, how are you doing, brother?

CLARENCE WOOTEN
I’m doing fantastic. You made me sound like a real old man. But quite frankly, the internet is not that old, at least not the web portion of it. But I definitely feel like an OG when people introduce me that way.

ROB
Well you’re seasoned. You’re not an old man. The internet, in terms of how it’s commercialized and its use is not that old as you said. I mean it’s moving faster than the speed of light at this point in terms of how things are just changing and how fast they are changing.

Let’s talk a little bit about your journey. You first started off… You said you’ve sold two businesses, I believe, right? But walk me through the beginning when you were just kind of starting off. If you could talk to your younger self, Clarence, when you were just kind of getting into this entrepreneurial world, what advice would you give your younger self and what advice would you ignore?

CLARENCE
Wow. Okay. I think one piece of advice… and there’s a saying that goes, “A lot of entrepreneurs overestimate what they can achieve in a year but underestimate what they can do in 10.” I think that’s one piece of advice I would have given myself because there were a couple of opportunities where I think I could have built a more meaningful company before exiting. But things weren’t moving fast enough for me. And quite frankly, company-building is a marathon. It’s not a sprint.

And I think I would have started investing more earlier because of how the internet has taken off. Companies can go from zero to… since we were just talking about Clubhouse, Clubhouse in 12 months.

So I’ve had lots of opportunities to be angel investors in companies that became these unicorns, got to be billion dollars in valuation. And I wasn’t thinking like an investor. I was mostly thinking like an entrepreneur.

So I would probably do two things simultaneously a little bit more in both. And there’s probably so many more things I would tell myself but we could probably take the whole show up just on those.

ROB
Well I want to talk about that. At one point, you said “Thinking like an entrepreneur and not an investor.” What’s the difference between those approaches and how do you kind of think about those as a business person overall?

CLARENCE
Well when you’re an entrepreneur, you really are an investor. You’re investing in you, right?

ROB
Right.

CLARENCE
But you’re an investor who’s not diversified because when you go out to build your own company, all of your resources, your capital, your focus is on that, like a laser, which is what it should be. But if the company isn’t successful and you spent five years then you were not a diversified investor. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re typically in circles with a bunch of other entrepreneurs who are on that same journey.

So really, the smart play, if you can, is the final way to invest in some of the entrepreneurs that join in the journey with especially if you’re in a space like tech because one of you want to make it.

You know, almost like being in the minor leagues. So you’re in the minor leagues, you’re playing baseball with a bunch of other players, you guys don’t really know who’s going to get called up. But if you could invest in each other so that one guy gets called up and becomes Albert Pujols, you get a piece of his salary, right?

That’s kind of the analogy that I’m using because you’re kind of in that mix with other entrepreneurs, doing exciting things. And you’re not the only one that has the greatest idea. And even if your idea is successful, you might just end up being an average Major League player versus somebody who becomes the next Babe Ruth who you knew back when. And you could have very easily put 10k into what they were doing or less. And that 10k might be 10x what you make as an entrepreneur.

ROB
Yeah, that’s awesome advice. What advice would you ignore, advice that you thought that maybe yourself at that time was great advice or advice you just received from others that you didn’t know was horrible advice. But now with your experience… I didn’t call you “old” but the “seasoned” experience you have that you know, like you have a better perspective now, what advice would you ignore?

CLARENCE
Yeah, I had advice that I ignored pretty early. Believe it or not, that advice came from my dad.

ROB
I can believe it.

CLARENCE
Yeah.

ROB
Is your dad an entrepreneur?

CLARENCE
Well he was an entre-poor-neur.

ROB
[Laughter]

CLARENCE
[I’ll put it like that - 09:45]. So that advice was “Always own 51%, that way you always have control.”

ROB
I can see why he’d say that. That makes… I can see--

CLARENCE
I totally got why he said it. But once I really understood that when you’re an entrepreneur… I mean there’s two types of entrepreneurs. There’s small business owner which they kind of need control and then there’s entrepreneurs trying to change the world. They’re trying to get the scale. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t own 51% of Facebook but--

Percentage ownership is not the biggest control level, for one. Your goal is to turn a grape into a watermelon. So I can own 100% of the grape but that’s not nearly worth as much as 20% of a watermelon. But in order to get that grape to watermelon scale, I’m going to have to raise capital and bring in other investors along the way.

So I might sell off 20% of that grape to get the capital I need to turn that grape into a plum and then I sell 30% of that plum off to get the capital I need to turn it into a grapefruit in route to becoming a watermelon.

And then at the end of the day, I own 15 or 20% of the watermelon. But that watermelon is worth $500 million so my stake is worth $100 million when I could have owned 100% of the grape that was only worth maybe $3 million.

ROB
Right.

CLARENCE
Right? So just understanding leverage and understanding how to leverage other people’s time and capital to get the scale. And that doesn’t happen when you are trying to maintain 51% ownership.

ROB
Yeah. That makes sense. So what do you think, as you’re working to be a company… because it’s a hard balance -- the short term, trying to live day in and day out. And then if you have a business, assuming you have a business that is scalable, that can scale, how do you figure out that… What’s the best way to kind of measure that balance to make sure you can get to that level? What’s the central most important… If we had to say, what’s the most important essential skill set for a founder to have to become scalable at that level to really go to the next level?

CLARENCE
First, a couple of things. Market size is almost everything. So if you’re building a business to go after that has a very small market size, even if you do get to scale, it won’t be venture-fundable because if the industry is only a $50-million market and you bust home to get 100% of that market, which no one ever does, you can only ever have a $50-million business. But if it’s a $50-billion market and you only capture a small portion of that market, you can still have a billion dollar business. So that’s the first ingredient.

The next thing, as an entrepreneur, I think you got to recognize that you are an investor. You’re not just an entrepreneur. And you’re a shareholder in your company.

Very rarely does the skills that was required to go from idea to company and get it to that first $10-$20 million in revenue are the same skills to go from $20 million to $200 million in revenue. And you got to recognize that that might not be your skill set.

ROB
Right.

CLARENCE
But it doesn’t have to be. As the founder of the company, you’re the largest shareholder. You want to maximize your shareholder return.

So the company, if you get it to 20 million and you realize that it takes a different type of person who couldn’t have done what you did to go from zero to $20 million to now fly that plane and get it to $200 million then you should gladly maybe take a step back, take on the role of chairman or chairwoman and have that person scale your company. And you’ll learn a lot in that process and be a lot happier. At the end of the day, you’ll make a lot more money.

So I think just really being self-aware and understanding that you are a shareholder, first and foremost, before you’re an owner.

ROB
I think the word you said that really sticks out is “self-awareness” and I believe most people are not self-aware. I think it’s very hard to be self-aware because it requires a level of brutal honesty with yourself that most people are not comfortable having. Do you have any methods to help yourself become more self-aware? How do you go about becoming more self-aware?

CLARENCE
Methods to becoming more self-aware? I think that kind of happens over time. I know that I love the startup process. I love going from idea to 30,000 feet. I’m the guy who’s going to assemble the plane and get it off the runway and get it airborne but I don’t necessarily want to fly the plane for 10 years while it’s scaling. I enjoy the art of the start, and that’s really where the biggest value is created.

So if you understand that about yourself… which is part of the reason why I started Venture Studio because it enables me to roll up my sleeves, co-found companies with black and brown entrepreneurs of color and help them fly those planes and get them airborne as either a pilot or co-pilot and then monitor it from air traffic control. Just get a bunch of planes up in the air of which I have or my team has ownerships in those planes.

And then when it’s time to land those planes because a big company wants to buy them to sort of then get involved again because I have some experience there, too. Ultimately, I think that makes me happier and is a bigger way for me to personally build wealth because it’s what I like to do.

ROB
Let’s talk about what you’re doing right now with Venture Studio. What’s your mission and what does success look like for Revitalize Studio five years from now?

CLARENCE
So Revitalize, our mission is to change the complexion of tech by building breakout startups with black founders and diverse teams. We also kind of have this other piece where we want to empower under-resourced, under-estimated communities to achieve equity. But the core is in building breakout tech startups with black founders and diverse teams so we can change the complexion of tech. So really, that’s what we’re all about.

A lot of people wonder, “Okay, so what’s a venture studio versus a venture fund?” I think movie studio is a great analogy. You can make an independent film and you’re an independent filmmaker and you go through all the trouble of putting it together and trying to get distribution or you can pitch a film to a studio like Disney or Warner Brothers and they’ll take your script and work with you and turn that into a film and you’ll get a piece. That’s more of a venture studio model. We aren’t just investors; we are co-founding company builders.

And success for me is having a complexion of tech change so that there’s more black and brown CEOs because I think diversity starts at the top and it starts from the onset. So if you want to build a diverse company, when that company gets to scale, if the founding DNA wasn’t black or brown then by the time you get to a thousand employees, it’s not black or brown.

When you look at a company like Google, if one of those founders, Larry and Sergey, if one of those were African-American, you can’t tell me that Google wouldn’t have 20% black workforce versus less than 2%, right? So that’s my mission.

ROB
I want to challenge that statement a little bit. I agree, having a culture that’s there and having a leadership that’s there helps. Sometimes though, having people at the top that are different, it becomes the exception to the rule. But sometimes, it reinforces the old rule because sometimes, it’s harder for people if you’re at the top of a company because if it’s just you, I can tell--

I was chairman of the board of University of Cincinnati. I believe I did a lot there but it’s also very difficult if there’s not a system in place. So how do you balance that out between, obviously, being a black person knowing the systemic challenges that are there but then figuring out a way to move your company forward that’s intentional and inclusive in a way that actually gets that accomplished because it can be… I hear you but I think it could be very difficult, too. How do you balance those two?

CLARENCE
Well first off, I think a lot of it is about networks. When I look at the anatomy and DNA of how Silicon Valley companies grow, they grow every time they raise a new round of funding. Typically, the guys writing the check look a certain way...

ROB
Sure.

CLARENCE
..so they find entrepreneurs that look like that. They come from a similar background, similar schools. And they hire a management team from that same background and same schools. So every time you raise around $10-20 million, it’s time to go out and hire another hundred people, right?

ROB
Yes.

CLARENCE
So they’re relying on the people who are the top to tap into their networks to hire that next hundred people. And that next hundred people looks exactly like…

ROB
Absolutely.

CLARENCE
…management team and so forth and so on after every funding round. But if the top management team was diverse… and I’m not just talking about diverse in terms of complexion, I’m also talking about diverse in terms of education. Like what if Larry or Sergey went to Howard or went to Morehouse? I don't think they would know any other black people who would have been senior leaders at Google and so forth and so on when Google continued to raise money and started to scale. So that's the way I see it.

ROB
I’m curious. You look at this moment right now, there's been more attention on racial justice than there probably ever has been within my lifetime. I’m sure you remember Rodney King and what happened then. I do think this is more directed and it's been more significant in terms of the amount of attention in time and just the intensity of it from what I’ve seen within my lifetime. I’m sure the ‘60s seemed to be more intense in other parts of America.

CLARENCE
I wouldn’t know about that.

ROB
I wouldn't know about it either. But I’m saying, right now in my lifetime, this, I think, is the most significant moment I have seen. What do you think is the opportunity in this moment at this time and how should people of color, black and brown folks, in the tech world, what opportunities should they take in this moment that may be different than prior moments, if any at all?

CLARENCE
Absolutely, I think it is an opportunity and the question is how long will that opportunity last? And a lot of it has to do with us, right? Anytime black folks have focused on civil rights, our movements have been co-opted by some other group.

ROB
Yep.

CLARENCE
So I think we need to be really, really careful and watch against that and make sure things don't get watered down. It continues to be about “Black” which is part of the reason why we started at Revitalize this competition called “PitchBLCK.” And if you want to know more about it, you can go to pitchblck.com -- “Black” without the “A” -- to check it out.

What we do is we're trying to build bridges to close the racial funding gap. There were a number of companies that came out with “Black Lives Matter” statements and pledged $50 billion to the Black community. But in the past year, only $250 million of that have been deployed. So we're trying to hold some of these companies accountable to help Black entrepreneurs by doing PitchBLCK where we give the winner $30,000. But we go out and get a sponsor. Our first sponsor, as you know, was Proctor and Gamble.

ROB
Absolutely.

CLARENCE
And one of our upcoming sponsors will be Logitech. But we want all of those companies who made these statements to step up and participate so that we can foster and push Black entrepreneurship.

ROB
Yeah. I mean I completely agree with that. I had this conversation on Roland Martin and we talked about this being like another opportunity for reconstruction and getting it right and making sure that… not only is their ask but the ask is significant enough that really makes a large impact because--

I mean companies are doing this, let's be clear -- “Yada yada. Right thing to do.” That's not why they're doing it. It's also the profitable thing to do. They see that this is where things are going.

And as you said, some are trying to figure out a way to get ahead of it in order to figure out a way to commoditize it, not necessarily for improving the lives of black and brown people but just improving the bottom line and using us as the leverage.

Right now as we speak, we're talking about the 100-year anniversary of Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre and there's been a huge movement there to really kind of popularize things and make it kind of like a tourist site which is okay but we need to make sure that we're doing stuff, that we're actually investing in Black businesses there, that we're changing opportunities and we're providing long-term impact because that community was decimated and has never been fully compensated for what happened to them.

CLARENCE
Absolutely. And something changed in me when George Floyd happened. I’ve been in Silicon Valley for over a decade, building companies, and for a long time, I just kind of bit my tongue because I didn't want to be “blackballed” by Sand Hill Road and not able to raise capital. But after George Floyd, I just said [F it - 23:28] which was part of the motivation for my partner and I, Andre Ford, starting Revitalize.

ROB
I think that's awesome. And we need more people like you. And as you said, we also need to work together more to hold people accountable because there's enough money out there. We're not poor. Sometimes, we're poorly organized as a community and really working and collaborating together. So I’m glad that you're doing this and I’ll make sure others are going to know about PitchBLCK and what you guys are doing.

I’m curious to get your opinion on the current internet stage we're in right now. I would argue we've been in three different stages. We're in the third stage. The first stage was the tech stage. It was just the beginning. People just getting introduced to commerce. The second stage is where we are right now. But I believe we're moving to another stage -- the centralization, the Facebook, the googles of the world, just the centralization. And now what you're seeing with the blockchain and just the kind of decentralized blockchain and all the technology behind that.

What do you see in the coming years, given that you've been involved in Silicon Valley for a while, what do you see as the opportunities and maybe the points of caution with blockchain technology as we move into internet -- what I call “Internet 3.0”? Well a lot of people call it “Internet 3.0.”
CLARENCE
Yeah, you’re right. A lot of people think a ton of wealth was created over the last decade, and it was as we went from kind of that Web 2.0 to kind of Internet Everywhere on mobile. But I actually think more wealth is going to be created over the course of the next decade because we have a convergence -- a lot of things converging together. And blockchain is certainly at the… And decentralization is at the center there -- decentralized finance.

You know, people hear about bitcoin and they understand a little bit but until they really understand how blockchain works and what makes it kind of a game changer then it's hard for them to wrap their brains around it.

We've seen from 2017, when I first started investing in bitcoin and other Altcoins, the whole market cap of these alternative currencies, etcetera, was like $250 million. Now it's $2.5 trillion. And that's definitely continuing as more and more people take real dollars and buy virtual goods and virtual currencies.

When you hear about things like bitcoin, people are like, “Okay, I can't spend bitcoin really. What is it really about?” And then you hear about ethereum which is… It's a protocol but yet you still buy a token. Bitcoin is like gold; ethereum is like owning Microsoft stock.

ROB
Exactly, and people don't understand. And to your point, ethereum is like another part of the internet. It's like where apps are built on with blockchain technologies. People don't understand. It’s not just the fact that you can spend money and people value it -- and they do -- it's a whole another level of applications that are put on top of it.

CLARENCE
Yeah. And then there's a bunch of decentralized finance companies like Compound, etcetera. You can go DeFi Pulse and see those. And some of those tokens are taken off. And then you got Chainlink which is an oracle. We’re in a matrix, really.

ROB
Yeah, we are in a matrix. When people tell me… I think you know I’m in the NFT space. We started an NFT platform for diverse artists, collectors and social impact art. But I’ve heard people say that, “Well I just think the whole thing is a bubble” and I said, “Some of it is a bubble. You know what? The internet was a bubble 20 years ago. Asked Jeff Bezos about that bubble and a whole bunch of other people.” Yes, there are people that are just creating things that have no value so your goal should be, figure out those who are creating value and invest in them. That's what you should do.

CLARENCE
And even bigger than, “Buy and hold.” I had a ton of Amazon stock in 2000. I had sold my company in ‘99 and I had a ton of Amazon stock in 2000 and the bubble burst. I got out of all my.com stocks. So yeah, blockchain is going to be very, very similar.

ROB
That’s a great lesson that you had in that. That's a great lesson, Clarence. Sorry to interrupt you. But I think people need to hear that, right? You've been very successful but had you held on the stock to Amazon, just one stock, right--

CLARENCE
Yeah.

ROB
You've been very successful but you'd probably be enormously more successful had you held onto that stock and not panic in the middle moments. As you see crypto is going, there's going to be downturns. It’s part of it.

CLARENCE
Well if you look at the charts from bitcoin's inception, it would go way up and then go way down, way up and go way down. But that cycle started… it was usually in a three-year cycle. That cycle started with bitcoin at less than one cent and now it went way up to 60,000 and then down at 32,000. The next way up is probably going to be 120,000.

ROB
Yep. So hey, definitely stay in the market and invest. You said that earlier, “Be an investor.” I need to do that more as I found my company. You find yourself. You put everything in there. You probably should put more into investments.

I understand these investments and I understand how ethereum works and we should put money aside in things that we're investing in as we are growing. Not to say you don't believe your company will be that next level but… Your companies became very successful but you also could have been, and you still have been, a very largely successful investor. But you could have been more had you had that mentality. All right, so I got…-- Go ahead.

CLARENCE
No, no. I was saying I was just agreeing with you.

ROB
All right. Some rapid fire questions I love to ask people here. “You have a committee of three, living or dead, to advise you on life, business, personal. Who are these three people and why?”

CLARENCE
Wow, that's a really interesting thing -- a committee of three, living or dead.

ROB
It could be a mixture thereof.

CLARENCE
Okay. Well Jesus Christ would be one.

ROB
That's a good one.

CLARENCE
Okay.

ROB
What would you ask Jesus right now [if you heard “Boom” - 29:45]?

CLARENCE
Keep mind, body and soul balance, right? He would be a spiritual advisor. I think I would focus on that there because I believe in those things. You can have all the money in the world but if your mind is not right, if your spirit is not right, you won't enjoy it and you won't get the most of your time here.

ROB
It'll come crashing down one way or another. If it's not financial, it'll be spiritual. If it's not spiritual, it'll be physical. It'll likely be a combination in some way of all three. I agree with you.

CLARENCE
That's right. You know, maybe Reginald Lewis.

ROB
Okay. That's a good one.

CLARENCE
Okay. I read a book about Reginald Lewis. He's also from Baltimore. I’m originally from Baltimore. It was called “Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun” -- when I was young in my career. It was transformative because--

You know, you can't be but you can't see. And he was a brother who was doing it at a much, much bigger level as the first black billionaire in the early ‘90s… late ‘80s pretty much when he bought Beatrice Foods. Yeah, I’d like to get his perspective because I feel like he was ahead of his time.

The last one is interesting. I don't really have one that comes to mind as clearly as the first two…

ROB
Okay.

CLARENCE
…because… yeah.

ROB
If you got two, that's good. That’s fine.

CLARENCE
Yeah. Let’s go with those two for now.

ROB
Okay.

CLARENCE
I’m sure number three would be also incredible but I would need more time to think about it.

ROB
Oh no problem. No problem. All right, what's the time you failed but… it seemed like a failure at that time but later on, it became really a good learning lesson and helped set you up for greater success?

CLARENCE
I failed a thousand times like that. Whenever you're doing a startup, you got to--

ROB
What stands out? What particular moment stands out? So there's got to be one or two that’s really like… Okay, this moment was like, “Man, this was enough.”

CLARENCE
All right, here’s an example. It might be a little controversial.

ROB
I like controversial. This is Disruption Now. Go. [Laughter]

CLARENCE
Of course. I did a startup called “Arrived.” And I moved to Silicon Valley… I moved my entire team to Silicon Valley in late 2010 and we launched on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. And I had already had some success as an entrepreneur so I figured we would be able to go to the VCs on Sand Hill Road and raise money easily -- you know, at least get a series A done. So I was confident that we would be able to continue to pay payroll.

We had raised maybe a couple of hundred thousand bucks to get the company to where it was. I thought we had enough traction to do that and we couldn't raise the money. We couldn't raise the money.

And that's the challenge of being black in America. You don't necessarily know. Could you not raise the money because your stuff wasn't good or because could you not raise the money because you weren't the right hue?

ROB
Right.

CLARENCE
Right?

ROB
My guess is the second one if you've already had traction. -- Go ahead. [Laughter]

CLARENCE
Yeah. So I started to look around. I realized that the guys who were raising money were young -- 20-something white males. Unfortunately, that company went under. But I learned a variable lesson from that so when I started my next company, Progressly, I played a little differently. You know, after Progressly had traction and we had an early product, instead of me doing the pitching, I went and found a young white male who was connected to the Valley and he did the pitching. And guess what? We raised $8 million.

ROB
Wow. And you say that story in 2010 and it's both depressing but not surprising.

On another show, I had Chauncey Mayfield. He was one of the first brothers to raise a billion dollars in real estate and he had a similar tactic. Like they would go in and have the real estate just about closed and the deal will be done and then they see that… They look on paper, recognize that was a black [college - 34:04] or see him in person and then not do the deal, not do the deal.

So finally, he just started… He had a person front that was a white person and then he started closing deals. He had like $2 or 300 million. These people didn't even know that he was the person that owned all this stuff.

So one day, he just decided to show up. -- Clarence, you’d love this. -- He decided to show up. They knew “Chauncey Mayfield.” They assumed he was a white guy. He decided to show up by the corner of his building. He told the building manager he was coming out. He stood there. The guy was looking around, looked past him. He kept seeing him. He kept looking. He was looking like… He was like, “I’m looking for somebody…” Like he said, “Have you seen anybody out here?” “No.” And the Chauncey said, “I might be able to help you. Who are you looking for?” He said, “No. You probably wouldn't know.” He said, “Oh give me a try. What's his name?” He said, “Chauncey Mayfield is his name.” He said, “That’s me.” [Laughter]

The fact is he had to tell that story in the ‘90s and you have to tell that story in 2010, I would like to believe that 2020 made people more enlightened but I’m also not [crosstalk - 34:59].

CLARENCE
Well… And then you look at the ‘40s… And I think there was a movie on Apple TV called “The Banker,” right?

ROB
Yeah.

CLARENCE
They pretty much did the same thing in the ‘30s or ‘40s. Unfortunately, that song goes on. So hopefully, post-George Floyd, all this “Capital committed” to black businesses and black founders will change some of that discussion. But unfortunately, it's a reality.

And for me, you tell me how to play the game. I’m going to play the game according to those rules even if I don't like the rules.

ROB
Yep, and then break them when you get in the game. You can break the rules once you understand the game and understand the rules.

I look at this moment right now, I think this is a window in time just like reconstruction was, just like the post ‘60s was and I still think--

You know, I love America but also understand where I’m at, too. People will regress to the mean because it's so in our DNA to do this, that we -- I’m talking about black people right now -- have to take advantage of this moment to create as much opportunity and as much wealth and to build from this moment going forward. That's what I think.

CLARENCE
Yeah, and to be vertically integrated. I mean one of the things I love about Tyler Perry is that he built an entire studio kind of his way outside of Hollywood, in Atlanta, and knows his market. So we're trying to do something similar with Revitalize.

ROB
And you guys can do that through crowd… You talked about through crowdfunding. I know you're talking about… Talk a little bit about--

CLARENCE
Yeah.
ROB
That's a great point because we didn't talk about this moment right now of crowdfunding and being able to invest not just in--

You know, just like in 2010, you didn't have many other options. Now you have the option to go out and go crowdfunding with people that understand who you are. And you can, just like a campaign, go out there and build. Talk about what you see is the opportunity with crowdfunding going forward and what you guys are doing in that moment.

CLARENCE
What we’re doing at Revitalize, we want to democratize… I mean it's not only the entrepreneurs who are getting wealthy in Silicon Valley when they get funded. It's the investors who are getting wealthy when they get funded. And historically, investors couldn't invest in a private company unless you're accredited which means you already have a certain amount of work.

ROB
You're already rich pretty much, yeah.

CLARENCE
Yeah, exactly, which left out lots of black and brown people. But when Obama was in office in 2012, he implemented the JOBS Act. And a piece of the JOBS Act was about crowdfunding -- allowing non-accredited investors to be able to write checks, even $250 checks. And they've updated those laws and they made them even more favorable recently.

So we're building our studio, Revitalize, on that notion. We don't just want to make a bunch of already wealthy investors more wealthy by having them back our startups, we want to bring our startups to the people and democratize access as investors. So instead of us having like 10 investors, we might have 10,000. And we administer that through a platform called “Republic.” So we typically use--

ROB
Republic is great, yes.

CLARENCE
Yeah. Ultimately, it allows our people to become investors. So when we create these black CEOs who are running black billion-dollar unicorn startups, those earliest investors who do the best will be people who look like the founding teams they're supporting. So that's a big chunk of what we're doing at Revitalize.

Now you can't just invest in any crowdfunding campaign. You really need to be part of a community. So we're creating a community of what we call “Revitalizers.” So if you go to revitalizeventures.com, you can give us your email address and join our community and we'll educate you on the whole space and give you opportunities to invest in companies that have the potential to be unicorns.

ROB
That's awesome. We'd love to work with you on that to get more people connected to what you're doing. I think it's great work. It makes all the sense in the world. I mean we have to look at ways to--

CLARENCE
Yeah, I’ll hold you to that.

ROB
Oh don't worry. I will definitely follow up. We’ll definitely work together on that because I think it's so important for our community.

I’ve been involved in a long time trying to find ways to change constructs and really have a collective impact and I’ve come to the belief that while it's important to make sure you hold government accountable, that you understand what's going on and you vote, nobody's coming to save us. Superheroes are for the comic books. We have to collectively come together and save ourselves because nobody's coming. At the end of the day, it's not going to happen.

I’m not saying don't get involved. That's not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that by itself is not going to resolve all the issues for us. We have to get involved, make sure we vote and most importantly, and collectively, organize. And that means more than just voting for people. It means also investing in each other. So I think what you're doing is so important.

CLARENCE
Absolutely. I appreciate that, bro. And I’ve always subscribed to that. Social security isn't even going to save me, right?

ROB
No.

CLARENCE
So I’ve never [done anything - 39:58] on that. It's part of the reason I’ve been an entrepreneur. And nobody's coming to save us. And quite frankly, we shouldn't want that.

ROB
No. Look, I agree. I mean it's not going to happen anyway. You might want to. You might think it's a good idea. I don't care what the model looks like. It is not going to save us. It's not going to work.

All right, so another question I like to ask is a controversial one. “What's an important truth you have or conviction that very few people agree with you on?” It's a hard question on purpose.

CLARENCE
That very few people could agree with me on? You know, I’m an agreeable kind of guy. What I say is pretty logical. Most people agree except for my kids half the time.

Let me think -- “A truth or conviction that very few people agree with me on?” Can you give me an example? What’s yours?

ROB
I’ll give you my example. So most people like to believe that they are good people, collectively. I would say human history and science say that that's not true. The truth is it's easier than you think to become Nazi Germany. People look at Nazi Germany, they're like, “Oh my god, how could that happen?” My question to people is, “How can you not understand how that could happen?” And it's because people are easily influenced by crowds. People lack real self-awareness almost without exception because it's very hard to become self-aware.

Robert Greene, one of my favorite authors says this in his book, “The Laws of Human Nature.” His first law is about the law of irrationality. The first rule of becoming rational is to recognize that you are irrational.

Again, people like to believe that they are rational, that they're autonomous. The truth is you're not as autonomous and as rational as you think you are. And you have to work, night and day, to make sure you're fighting against your own irrationality and your own biases in order to be that good person that you hope to be. That's my theory.

CLARENCE
Well I put it this way. Here's one. When I first got to Silicon Valley, there was this whole thing going around that Silicon Valley was a meritocracy, right, meaning, you excel based on your own merits. And a lot of my white friends or very educated friends believed that to be true. They weren't black, obviously. They believed that to be true. And now those same folks understand that it's not true. And part of the reason why they believed it to be true is because Silicon Valley is… They think it's diverse. It's not diverse. It's international, right?

ROB
That’s correct.

CLARENCE
It’s international but it's not diverse. You could come to America from India with a strong tech background and make it in Silicon Valley faster than if you come to Silicon Valley from east Baltimore with a strong tech background, right, because they're baked in biases of people who write the checks, that a person from India is more likely to be a successful tech founder and technical person than a person from east Baltimore who is brown. So Silicon Valley, by no means, is a meritocracy and I think George Floyd showed us that America is certainly not a meritocracy. Yeah, so that was it.

ROB
Yeah, that's good. Final question: “You have a billboard or a Google ad, to be 21st century, that has your theme or saying. What does that say and why?”

CLARENCE
21st century to be theme… a big billboard or Google ad? It would be about becoming a revitalizer, right, because I think that's how we change the complexion of tech. And we got to do it in a vertically integrated way, right?

The money needs to come from people that look like us and allies. When we can prove that we can invest in us and build things at scale… I talked about turning grapes into watermelons. Everybody can get a piece of that watermelon, right? We just got to focus on getting it to a watermelon. And some of us know how to do it and I feel like I’m one of those people but it takes a community to do it together.

So it would be about going to revitalizeventures.com, giving us your email address. We getting ready to launch a new website that really speaks to this and becoming a revitalizer.

ROB
All right. Clarence Wooten, we're definitely going to… I can tell you, Disruption Now will become a revitalizer. We'll talk about how we do it. And we look forward to seeing all the great work that you will do. Clarence, thank you for taking time to come on the show.

CLARENCE
Thanks, Rob. It's been great.

ROB
All right. -- Let me stop the recording really quick.

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