Editor’s note: Steve S. Rao is a Council Member and Former Mayor Pro Tem for the Town of Morrisville and served as a Board Member for the New American Economy, now the American Immigration Council. He also serves on the NC League of Municipalities Race and Equity Task Force. Steve is a regular contributor to WRAL TechWire.
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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Last June, President Biden addressed the citizens of Oklahoma to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Greenwood Massacre.
The thriving Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as “Black Wall Street,” was ruthlessly attacked by a violent white supremacist mob.
The destruction wrought on the Greenwood neighborhood and its families was followed by laws and policies that made recovery nearly impossible. The streets were redlined, locking Black Tulsans out of homeownership and access to credit. Federal highways built through the heart of Greenwood cut off families and businesses from economic opportunity.
And chronic disinvestment by the federal government in Black entrepreneurs and small businesses denied Black Wall Street a fair shot at rebuilding. These are the stories of Greenwood, but they have echoes in countless Black communities across the country. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/01/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-actions-to-build-black-wealth-and)
Steve Rao
The recent closing of Northwestern Mutual in Durham will also make access to capital/funding for black businesses and entrepreneurs in Durham, even harder. The pandemic has forced millions of small-business owners to rethink their models or to switch gears completely. For many Black-owned businesses, preexisting inequities have been compounded by the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.
The Biden-Harris Administration has announced steps to reinvest in minority small business ownership – in communities of color and disadvantaged communities. Their plans included using the Government’s Purchasing Power to Drive an Additional $100 Billion to Small Disadvantaged Business Owners, targeting Black and Latino business owners, which account for roughly only 10 percent of purchasing power.
Federal Dollars and minority set asides can help accelerate minority business ownership and wealth. However, an important part of any Minority Business Growth Playbook must involve looking to immigrant entrepreneurs as a resource to inspire other communities of color to grow successful businesses.
Immigrants get the job done
As mentioned in the Musical Alexander Hamilton, Immigrants Get the Job Done.
Meet Manoj George, an Indian American immigrant and the initial CFO of Red Hat, who lost his battle with Pancreatic Cancer. In February, many of us in the tech and entrepreneurial communities, celebrated his inspiring life.
Remembering Triangle tech legend Manoj George, a glass ceiling breaker
Manoj served as the first CFO of Red Hat, taking the tech company from $5 million to a $5 billion IPO, putting North Carolina on the map as place where global, market leading companies could flourish and grow. He advised and mentored start ups, venture capital companies.
I knew Manoj from my early involvement in TIE Carolinas, and also our daughters, attended Lucy Daniels pre school together.
Former Red Hat Chairman and CEO, Matt Szulik delivered a powerful eulogy at his funeral, reminding all of us that Manoj began his life in America in anywhere, Kentucky, and eventually took a gamble on Red Hat, leaving an accounting firm in West Virginia to achieve his dreams. It must not have been easy for an immigrant who looked and spoke differently from everyone around him, but Manoj, never let his minority status, affect his outlook on life and what can be achieved. Szulik reminded us that Manoj never considered a person’s race, or gender, when it came to achieving success and that his daughters and son, were so lucky to be raised in a home where this philosophy rang true every day in their home.
I first met Manoj in the early 2004 at Lucy Daniels School where our kids attended pre school and also worked with him as an early member of TIE Carolinas, a global entrepreneurial mentoring organization. Even after the Red Hat IPO, he advised start ups, venture capitalists, and inspired other entrepreneurs to take risks and to change the world.
On my way back from the Funeral, I started thinking about how many other minority business owners would be inspired to hear the story of Manoj George, an immigrant from India, who despite facing the challenges of racial bias, was able to achieve so much success.
MENTORING NETWORKS (TIE CAROLINAS)
If we are to truly grow and accelerate the success of minority businesses, we must provide more avenues for entrepreneurs of color to share their success stories with other minority groups.
One way to do achieve this goal is to establish more minority business mentoring networks in the region, like TIE Carolinas, a global entrepreneurial organization with 45 Chapters around the world. Manoj was a founding member of TIE Carolinas and he would often remind us that successful immigrant entrepreneurs, all got their starts by getting advice, and sharing their stories with other Silicon Valley and Boston entrepreneurs.
Angel loans, early stage capital, and deals were struck during an Indian meal, a glass of wine, and inspiring ideas. I fondly remember Manoj, and many of us, attending sold out TIE Carolinas events at the Sheraton RTP, when Vivek Wadhwa, Swadesh Chatterjee and others brought billionaires Subheer Bhatia, founder of Hotmail and Desh Deshpande, founder of Sycamore Networks to provide their feedback and insight to our local startups. TIE Charter Members are the more established entrepreneurs across the country and world, who can mentor other aspiring startups. In North Carolina, I see opportunities to connect TIE Carolinas Charter Members to the small business community in South East Raleigh, or other economically distressed regions of the state.
In addition, The TIE Young Entrepreneurs (TYE) is now embarking on efforts to mentor our youth entrepreneurs in the region. High School Students can connect to experienced business leaders, who coach them on the marketing, sales, finance, and the legal aspects of forming a business.
What can be more motivating than a young minority entrepreneur listening and learning from someone who may better understand the challenges they face? We need to connect the TYE Program to more entrepreneurs in the region.
SHARING IMMIGRANT SUCCESS STORIES
Immigrants create jobs. Manoj George’s stellar career at Red Hat certainly did that for all us here in the Triangle.
In fact, 44% of the Fortune 500 were started by immigrants. New American Economy studies reveal that immigrant-founded and owned companies employ nearly 6 million people. Many immigrants are employed in the tech sector and as entrepreneurs (www.newamericaneconomy.org).
One of the most astounding details in the report shows how influential immigrants’ innovation has been in Americans’ everyday lives; 60 percent of the most highly valued tech companies were co-founded by first or second generation immigrants. These include Steve Jobs, a second generation Syrian immigrant, and Sergey Brin, the Russian immigrant who co-founded Google.
Here in the Triangle, we see immigrants support our economy every day as high-skilled workers, driving innovation. More than a quarter of our region’s immigrants hold graduate degrees in areas such as coding, engineering, and the life sciences.
Many of these entrepreneurs like Manoj George are Indian American.
Fighting labor shortage, inflation: Immigrants can get the job done on both fronts
Rajesh Rao and Harvi Singh founders of Mindlever.com, exited to Centra Software in 2001. Mr. Rao, former TIE Carolinas President, is now CEO of a growing Health Care Services firm, Indus Health.
Morrisville resident Anil Chawla, sold his company, Archive Social to a private equity firm in 2019.
As an elected official, every day, I meet and engage with Tech Companies, led by Indian American and Asian business leaders. These companies share with me ideas on where we can grow our Smart City Initiatives and many of them serve on our Smart City Advisory Committee. For instance, SAM IT Solutions, owned by Samudra Vijay, is working with the us on our Smart City Initiatives.
IT Serve opening Raleigh chapter
This week I attended a dinner meeting of the IT Serve Raleigh Team, which plans to launch a Raleigh Chapter next month. The room was packed with Indian born Tech CEO’s and business leaders. IT Serve is an alliance of Immigrant Tech CEOs, and companies, focused on supporting tech companies, start ups, and driving policy changes at the state and federal level to help grow the technology industry. Skilled Immigration reform, which we have talked about before is a major goal of the organization. We must invite other minority business leaders to join these organizations so they can learn from the growing number of successful Indian American Technology Entrepreneurs. In addition, mentoring networks, like IT Serve and TIE Carolinas could also benefit from the insight of successful Black business leaders, like Tony Marshall, CEO, Innovative Systems Groups, and Charles Francis, founder of North State Bank and former Raleigh Mayoral Candidate.
A final component to the Minority Business Playbook is to have more minority investors and Venture Capitalists in our region. Successful minority business leaders can pool their resources and establish more angel funds to invest in start ups. I know that the TIE Carolinas organization has been discussing establishing a TIE Angels network in North Carolina and others exist in other parts of the country.
We must have Venture and Angel Funds, whose Partners better reflect an increasingly diverse population. Manoj would often mention this fact to me during some casual conversations over coffee. Today, there are only a handful of minority investors in the Triangle, including Keith Daniel at Resilient Ventures, Karen Levert, and Dr. Victor Shi at Pappas Capiital and Peruvian American Lister Delgado at Idea Fund Partners. These investors may better be able to understand the challenges other minority entrepreneurs face.
Here’s a challenge
As we end Black History month celebrations and acknowledge the remarkable contributions of Black Americans to our nation, I challenge the successful immigrant entrepreneurs to reach out to other aspiring Black and Latino business owners and provide them feedback and guidance on how they were able to break down racial barriers to achieve success.
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Alliances with other minority groups as well can lead to a healthy exchange of ideas on how all of us can accelerate the success of minority business ventures and like Manoj, demonstrate that all of us can achieve our greatest dreams regardless of the color of our skin.
Bringing Immigrant owned and minority owned businesses together with entrepreneurs can and will accelerate business ownership and strengthen the foundation of our innovation ecosystem here in the Triangle and around the state.
I know the best way we can honor Manoj, is to not only remember his stellar career, but also his inspiring humility and unending willingness to encourage other minorities to reach for the unreachable star, and to take the leap of faith to start companies, grow jobs, and change the world.
It would have been what he wanted.
We will miss him dearly but let us work hard to make sure that his legacy will never die.
Let’s get to work.
