The Quest for Equitable Entrepreneurship in Oakland
ESO Ventures has a dream to make entrepreneurship “accessible and worthwhile” to Black and Brown communities in Oakland, Calif., by ending the inequitable distribution of venture capital in certain neighborhoods and socioeconomic localities.
To make this happen, ESO’s co-founder Alfredo Mathew III and his partners have architected a unique concept that connects entrepreneurs in East Oakland to capital, mentoring and procurement opportunities supported by public-private partnerships. Eventually, Alfredo hopes to roll out this model in other local California communities and ultimately, become a strategic way for similar cities nationwide to benchmark and advance economic progress.
ESO Ventures was founded during the Covid pandemic, which was also a time of tumultuous protests for the Black Lives Matter movement and greater awareness of the plight of Black and Brown communities. Was the inspiration timely or just coincidental?
It was in direct response to the pandemic and the racial reckoning of 2020, but its seeds were planted decades, if not centuries, before we arrived on the scene. What the pandemic and the global protests created in response to George Floyd’s death was a disruption to the status quo that allowed people to come together in novel ways and dream of new possibilities. We seized the moment and put all our energy into creating access to wealth and community well-being for Black and Brown communities through entrepreneurship.
Tell us about your approach to helping neighborhoods like East Oakland address the lack of access to regular venture funding.
Our pioneering approach and the long-term sustainability of our work is to cultivate public-private partnerships that help us to build a regional Equitable Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (EEE) for Black and Brown entrepreneurs. We need healthy local business ecosystems in East Oakland and every other disinvested community in America. By design, the innovation economy exemplified by Silicon Valley is exclusive and optimized for a small group of people to drive exponential growth. It’s an incredible economic machine that has produced tremendous wealth and technological progress, while weakening our democracy, exasperating wealth inequalities and tearing apart our social fabric. We believe it’s possible to pursue entrepreneurship without exploitation of the planet and our people. In fact, we launched ESO Ventures because we believe anyone can become an entrepreneur, live with purpose, create value and generate wealth. A human-sized vision of entrepreneurship that values shared prosperity and community well-being is at the heart of this network.
What do you offer to startups that engage with you?
First and foremost, ESO is a community and an experience. We’re a seed that has become a garden and aspires to be a rainforest that will heal the planet. The ‘how’ will change, but for now we offer businesses our incubation services, and we have a debt investment fund. New products and services will come with time, but whatever we do will be guided by the principles we espouse in committing to a core set of beliefs and values that guide and drive our mission to create wealth and community well-being through entrepreneurship.
Who are some of the private and public partners that support ESO and are aligned with your cause?
We received early and vital support from the Irvine Foundation, and more recently, JP Morgan Chase. We’re not a non-profit organization but we have fiscal sponsorship, and these philanthropic resources are critical for us to do mission driven work and provide our resources free to the entrepreneur.
We haven’t partnered with any corporations yet but see natural alignment with companies focused on offering services to small businesses and growing more inclusive economies. Sponsorships of our incubators may be an option, but the biggest opportunity is to align our incubators and entrepreneurial communities to contracts and procurement opportunities. Industry sector business incubation and investment is an important growth opportunity we want to explore. Folks want revenue and a hand-up, not a handout. If you want to send us volunteers or your financial literacy curriculum, thanks, but no thanks. Our main investors to date have been the people of California, and our focus has been leveraging underutilized public assets to create an equitable entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our stakeholders include the City of Oakland, Santa Clara County, the Bay Area Community College Consortium and the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, or GO-Biz. We would love support from the Federal government and to find a sustainable model to replicate and grow this unique public-private partnership model.
Can you explain your “Build Where You Are” philosophy?
‘Build Where You Are’ means start where you are, in your local community, with the resources you already have. We believe we all have abundance. The resources are all around us and we have the confidence, the competence, and the social, financial and intellectual capital, but we need to activate it. ‘Build Where You Are’ is a mantra to get started today, to build your business and improve your community. You do not need to wait for permission, and you do not need a certain pedigree to own your future. Be fearless in your pursuit of wealth and community well-being.
Many people now view Oakland as one of the new ‘cool, creative hubs,’ and a more affordable alternative to San Francisco across the bay. Has this helped the Black and Brown communities that you’re targeting or or has the growth not been equitably balanced in neighborhoods and minority groups across your city?
In the last decade Oakland has seen one of the fastest rent increases in the nation and the Black population here has decreased over 50% in the last 20 years. Oakland remains a dynamic, artistic and creative hub for Black and Brown communities, but I would not say that gentrification has helped the cause.
ESO Ventures started as East Side Oakland Ventures with a dream to make entrepreneurship in our home community accessible and worthwhile. We’re part of this nation’s historical movement of building community wealth through business ownership, and we believe progress without displacement in East Oakland is possible. Our goal is to create a more sustainable economic system that reinvests the wealth in the community and circulates resources in the local community.
Surely this is a challenge faced by other similar neighborhoods or third-tier cities. How does ESO Ventures look to engage with other underserved areas?
We need to land the plane in Oakland before we can expand, and right now our focus is only on the Bay Area. We’re focused on creating the deepest community of Black and Brown entrepreneurs in the nation, putting the needs of the entrepreneur first, and creating a replicable model that includes learning, financial investments, business services and marketplace opportunities. Once we have delivered our 3C MVP of confidence, competence and capital in East Oakland, Santa Clara County, and the greater Bay Area, we welcome the opportunity to grow.
What kinds of startups do you work with, and how do you measure success today?
We know there will be million-dollar businesses and a handful of venture backable businesses that grow from a concept first discussed in an ESO growth pod. But right now, we measure success by the stories of entrepreneurs who take the courageous step of formalizing their business, getting that liquor license to operate legally, paying themselves a living wage for the first time, leaving the dead end job and going full time on their business; because, for the first time they are not alone in the journey, and if they fall, which they will, there will be a community to lift them up.
We want to empower our Black and Brown entrepreneurs to create their own products and open their own businesses to provide products and services that are staples of their own cultures. From food cooperatives, hair products, African-inspired sangria and palm wine to wellness and strategic consultants, creatives, and cannabis companies, the breadth and talent of our ecosystem, including our latest cohort, is awe-inspiring. To date, we’ve incubated over 200 Black and Brown businesses in the Bay Area. Our big goal is to establish a business every day for the next 10 years creating over $3 billion in revenue and 60,000 new jobs in underinvested communities.
How can we follow some of their journeys?
My colleague Akintunde Ahmad, an ESO entrepreneur himself, will be launching the ‘Build Where You Are’ podcast with the stories of our entrepreneurs next fall. And we’re planning our first public facing Handshake Summit in October 2023 to grow deeper with our entrepreneurs and the wider community.
To sign up for ESO’s monthly newsletter visit https://www.eso-ventures.com
Alfredo also has his own Build Where You Are newsletter on LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6995875245702221825/