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BRIEF #5

The Foundation

Business, Innovation, and Lifestyle through the lens of The Culture.
Welcome to The Foundation newsletter.  After covering entrepreneurship, leadership, innovation, and social impact for Forbes, I've decided to try something new.  The Foundation is about curating unique content with a blend of business and cultural undertones that will be published weekly.  

Rich Winley
40 Acres And No Mule

What happened to the farmers?! They’ve gone from nearly 1 million to 45000 since 1920. The farming industry is about $132 billion industry, and black farmers were given a wheelbarrow full of rocks in their uphill battle for equality.  

So what happened? 

  • Conscious bias happened. The Offices at the USDA basically wouldn’t approve blacks for the loans they needed to keep their farms afloat. 
  • “Heirs Property,” one estimate says that 80% of black people didn’t create wills due to the lack of legal resources, therefore, designating their property as a "heirs property" and their descendants inherited land without a clear title. Without a clear title, your options are slim. You can’t get a mortgage, apply for state or federal funding, or conservation funding through the USDA 
  • Industrialization lured farmers in with “jobs with benefits.”  

John Boyd Jr. has been on a crusade to save and help other black farmers nationwide for decades. In 1997 Boyd and 400 other black farmers sued the USDA in a landmark discrimination lawsuit and won.  But his work wasn’t done yet.  Other black farmers started reaching out to him about their complaints and how they were left out of the lawsuit.  So, Boyd hit the streets in Washington on a search for a congressperson to reopen the case.  Eight years later his persistence paid off when he got then-Senator Barack Obama to lead the charge, and Congress set aside $100m to asses late claims.  In December 2010, President Obama signed a bill giving $1.2bn in compensation to late claims.  

Boyd founded the National Black Farmers Association back in 1995 and now holds a free annual conference to equip black farmers with the tools, exposure, connections, and knowledge they need to take advantage of government programs and funding.  We won’t recoup that land, but at least now we have the knowledge on how to grow and not lose it.
 
Read more here (est. read time 17 mins)

"If you don't stand for something then you'll fall for anything."


 
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Bout To Call Myself An Uber... I Got Somewhere To Be

Wallstreet is more hype about the UBER IPO than the sneakerheads were when those Off-White University Blue J’s came out.  If you haven’t heard… Uber will launch their IPO tomorrow.  Uber has been riddled with challenges of discrimination, an ousted CEO, and driver strikes. 
 
Regardless of all of the missteps, Uber won’t need a Lyft on its valuation that’s expected to be between $80-$90 BILLION.  Shares should launch at $45 a share but will rise soon after the bell rings.  My gut is saying that Lyft will take a dip on Friday and Uber will end up around $70 a share by the Friday’s close. 
 
Let’s talk #FACTS

  • Uber isn’t making any money right now.  They have tons of revenues but have yet to reach a profit.
  • The drivers are their most significant expense.  Hence why the drivers protesting in hopes to get paid more.
  • Like most ride-hailing companies the big bet is on autonomous cars. 

Uber has expanded beyond rideshare to products like Uber Eats whose revenue grew from $587 million to $1.5 billion.  They also have Uber Freight, bikes, and Uber Health.  Uber has had constant challenges, but investors are still throwing money in it.  So, I’ll probably have my finger on the buy button for a few shares myself. 
 
I would read the link below before you gas your friends up to purchase Uber stock with you.
 
Read more here (est. read time 10 mins).
 

"Without struggle, success has no value."

 

— Andrew Lauritsen
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Disneyland For Capitalist

Call it Burning Man, Coachella, or Woodstock for the capitalist, I call it making money. 
 
Every year Berkshire Hathaway has its annual meeting to talk about how much money they made their 40,000 investors. 
 
Buffet at age 88 and his Vice Chair Charlie Munger at 95 still know how to throw a party. It might not be the Mardi Gras style, but their numbers will make you want to turn up for sure.  Earlier this year they reported that between 1964 and 2018, the company produce annual gains of 20.5%.  Just to give you a point of reference most retirement accounts return about 8-10%.
 
Passing the torch
 
Warren and Charlie aren’t getting any younger, so they had to create a succession plan to keep the party going.  Their two lieutenants Ted Weschler and Todd Combs each manage a $13 billion equity portfolio and an $8 billion pension fund, and Buffett gives them free rein on how they manage that.  They’re the ones who brought Apple and Amazon in as investments for BH so I would say that they’re doing a pretty good job so far.
 
Investing in Berkshire Hathaway will literally cost you a house, but you can invest like Warren by investing in some of the companies that he’s either acquired or invested in.  Here’s a portfolio tracker for his investments.
 
 
Read more here (est. read time  5 mins.)


"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

 

— Warren Buffett
 
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Diversity: Show Don't Tell

Startups have disrupted many industries that have helped propel industry change.  It seems that startups will have to be the ones to disrupt diversity as well.  It’s already happening, people of color are starting more companies, and startups are looking at diversity earlier instead of waiting until their company culture is broken.  

You might have heard of Ellen Pao through her high-profile discrimination case in 2015 against the legendary VC firm Kleiner Perkins.  She lost that case, but it helped shine a national spotlight on the Valley’s lack of diversity.  

Numbers

  • The tech industry is 75% male, 70% white and 20%
  • Blacks and Hispanics make up about 5% of the employees at the big tech companies
  • A recent survey said that 78% of startup founders said they had no formal plans to promote diversity and 15% said they had no plans to institute one. 

Poa’s Project Include is trying to get founders to treat diversity as a business unit that affects the bottom line versus something that you put on the back burner.   

Read more here (est. read time 8 mins).
 

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, 
Your thoughts become your words, 
Your words become your actions, 
Your actions become your habits, 
Your habits become your values, 
Your values become your destiny.”
 

— Ghandi
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More Than What They Say We Are...

I'll show you how to do this son...


NFL player Brandon Copeland saves 90% of his salary, and now he’s teaching a financial literacy class at the University of Penn called “Life 101.” Copeland signed a one year, $1.2 million contract with the Jets in 2018, but he says you don’t have to be rich to pay yourself first. 
 
Read more here. (est. read time 2 mins)

 

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

— Pierre Omidyar
Something Good...
 

Street officially renamed Obama Boulevard in Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw ceremony


I can't wait to hear what our creative music artists come up with on this one. 


Learn more here. 
Interesting Reads 
- Black people are helping make Game Of Thrones as popular as ever (link).

- Fortune 500 companies are trying to get women who left the workforce for a family to come back (link).

- How activists used photography to help end slavery (link).