A mind without barriers creates ideas without limitations.

Indeed. This was 20 years ago while building my first tech startup company. It was a streaming company. Our 1st vertical was churches. Our 1st livestream was the homegoing of Dr. Hosea Williams @ebenezer_atl. Our second livestream was @BishopJakes @tdjmegafest in Atl. Then @TBN.

In the first picture, I was coding. I was debugging a custom HTML media player for @Creflo_Dollar’s 24/7 channel built on our proprietary Digital Media Management System. In the 2nd, I was doing demos of our platform & tech at @RevJJackson @RPCoalition #PeachtreeProject.

One of our use cases @brandontalk @joshuadubois @mcuban for streaming in 2000 was “virtual worship in a pandemic”. We wanted every church to be setup to stream live, archive, create member profiles, organize aux groups, receive prayer requests & receive donations & sell products.

In those days, we created custom media players for churches & tv networks in HTML with a .NET backend. We used @Microsoft @RealNetworks QuickTime, On2 & then @_Flashplayer as streaming codecs. We bought bandwidth from STN, Limelight & @Akamai.

The company purchased a 14,000 s/f old post office in @lagrangegaGOV and converted it into a state of the art data center that serves as our broadcast origination hub. We furnished the space with @HermanMiller furniture we picked up for pennies on the dollar from a failed startup

I left the day to day after creating $2M in ARR, a little after two years in and began work on my next startup. This startup was acquired by Kit Digital, https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2010/03/multicast.html

One of my failed startups was too early to market. It was a text based giving & subscription platform. Today, a lot of nonprofits, including churches, are using this tech, b/c of COVID-19. Here’s a press release that was released about our product launch, http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/330792178.html

Here’s the lesson from this brief walk down startup memory lane. Black people have been & are creating game changing tech. Black institutions & people are very slow to adopt, invest, purchase & amplify. For those of us that succeed, we make a lot of for non-Black communities.

So, when crisis hits as it has w/ COVID-19, our Black institutions are real time driving billions in new revenue & wealth to tech platforms that aren’t Black owned or Black invested. Crisis isn’t an excuse, it’s an opp. Before you buy, search “Black “founded” [product,service].

Together, let’s identify every product or service based organization, for profit & non-profit, that is adding value to our community, America, the African Diaspora & beyond during this pandemic & new normal; and inquire about adopting, using, consuming, purchasing & investing.

Here’s the exercise:

1. Follow on social
2. Visit website to learn about the entity, products and/or services & founders
3. Sign up or buy if able
4. Invest if possible
5. Donate if applicable
6. Amplify, refer
7. Hold accountable with empathy
8. Rinse, repeat

Now, please drop relevant people, entities in this thread for us to support during COVID-19 and beyond.

I’ll start:

@kingonomics
@theohubs
@BoddleLearning
@musicbuk
@donlward
@TheGoodrCo

Corey Shaw, Founder, https://seeyousoon.io/