5 Black USA Founders Working to Make the Financial System More Equitable

By Gabrielle Bienasz

GROWING UP, DENNIS CAIL didn't have any banks in his Monroe, Louisiana, neighborhood. He saw payday lenders charge his father and uncle, who both worked at the local paper mill, 30% fees to cash their checks, plus exorbitant interest rates if they needed to borrow money. So after a career in M&A advisory, Cail decided to try to remedy these all-too-common issues--and help people pay their bills.

In 2018 he started Dallas-based Zirtue, a fi ntech platform that helps people lend money to family or friends at a 0% interest rate for loans with a term of less than one year, or 5% for longerterm loans. Peerto-peer lending, which accounts for an estimated $184 billion annually, can be applied to any expense. So Zirtue structures lending agreements between friends and family members and automates the repayment process, making it easier for its individual customers to pay their bills and for its corporate customers to collect payments. When you arrange to borrow money from a family member to pay your heating bill, for example, Zirtue's new service sends the funds directly to the energy company. The app "helps keep the lights on, the car running," Cail says. Starting in February, customers who use Zirtue to borrow money to cover a bill will also have access to a bank account and debit card.

Cail is one of a wave of Black entrepreneurs attempting to address the racial wealth gap and build more equitable access to fi nancial services. According to the Federal Reserve, in 2019 the typical White family in the U.S. had eight times the wealth of the typical Black family. "Less wealth means Black Americans are underrepresented in the market for fi nancial products and services," states a 2020 report from McKinsey. Here are four more Black founders who aim to fi x that.

1. Kelly Ifi ll, Guava

Brooklyn, New York-based Guava helps Black-owned businesses bank and build community, and has plans to off er assistance with access to lower-barrier loans. Founder and CEO Kelly Ifi ll grew up in a family of immigrants and entrepreneurs in Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood. She had a job in venture capital but quit to start Guava when she saw how hard the pandemic hit Black-owned businesses. (Guava wasn't her fi rst startup--she had previously co-founded a venture fi rm, Seneca Network, to help diverse founders get capital.) "I am trying to enact change for people I love and care deeply about, she says. "And that's hard." She's taken on a huge issue: the lack of access to startup capital Black business owners often have. The average Black-owned startup has $500 in outside equity upon founding, compared with $18,500 for a typical White-owned business, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Guava has raised $500,000 to date, and in mid-January completed an invite-only launch. Ifi ll hopes to have a couple thousand users by the end of the year and be able to lend to small businesses on the platform by early 2023.

2. Craig J. Lewis, Gig Wage

Gig Wage makes it easier for companies to get money to gig workers, with instant payment options and easy integration into company software. "Our vision is to be financial infrastructure for the gig economy," says founder and CEO Craig J. Lewis,

pointing out that Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than Whites to do gig work. Formerly a payroll technology executive, Lewis founded the Dallas-based company in 2014. The hardest part, he says, was getting funding.

The company now has almost 300 enterprise customers and has garnered more than $15 million in capital, but things only got moving when Lewis swapped traditional venture fi rms for corporate venture. Austin-based Green Dot, which among other things provides fi nancial products to low and middle-income families, led Gig Wage's Series A round. It was a good fi t. Lewis grew up with those products. His dad was a contractor, so he intimately understood the importance of getting paid quickly when it came to building Gig Wage. "I've lived this," he says. This is who I am."

3. Wole Coaxum, Mobility Capital Finance (MoCaFi)

Wole Coaxum, a former J.P. Morgan executive, founded New York City-based Mobility Capital Finance (MoCaFi) in 2015 to help provide access to banking for underserved communities, in addition to other financial services. He was motivated by the protests of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. "You have to have, in my mind, an economic justice plan that goes along with a social justice plan," Coaxum says. Eventually, he came to realize that it's one thing to build a service to help people get banked-nearly half of Black households are unbanked or

underbanked, according to McKinsey--but it's an entirely other issue to persuade people to use it.

Things shifted in 2020 when the BedfordStuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a local community development nonprofi t, reached out to MoCaFi for help distributing payments to hardto-reach residents. In response, the company created new partnerships to reach customers, fi rst with the city of Honolulu to distribute COVID relief funds and later with Los Angeles, Birmingham, and New Orleans. When people start using MoCaFi to receive payments from government programs--no social security number needed--they can also open a bank account, and access the platform's other products, including rent reporting to credit bureaus to improve their credit scores, cash back rewards for shopping with local Black-owned businesses, and private coaching and documentation support for purchasing a home.

4. Ashley M. Fox, Empify

There's plenty of information about how to build wealth to be found through Google, but that's not enough help for many people, according to Ashley M. Fox, CEO of Empify, a fi nancial education technology company based in Philadelphia. "It's about someone saying you can do this, we can do this, and I'm going to be here by your side," says Fox, who prior to founding the company was an analyst at J.P. Morgan and a fi nancial adviser. Empify--the name is a portmanteau of empower and modify--got its fi rst contract in 2017, with the Philadelphia school district, to teach wealthbuilding skills. It now has partnered with more than 75 school districts, companies, and other organizations.

Empify's classes typically focus on subjects like brokerages and annuities, and help people develop mindsets that support wealth-building, Fox says. "It's really about changing how you see money in America," she says. "My students think being rich in America means being a Caucasian man in a trenchcoat." The company also has developed an app and courses for adults, and aims to integrate its courses into school systems all over the world in common core curricula. www.inc.com/gabrielle-bienasz/black-foundersfi nancial-equity-wealth-gap.html

Image credit: Dwolla, Guava, PitchBook Data, nylaunchpod.com, linkedin.com

3. Find a Great Co-Founder:

Rules for Success From Zimbabwe’s Richest Man

Content Curated By Victor Oluwole

ZIMBABWE’S RICHEST MAN, Strive Masyiwa, who is the Executive Chairman of Econet, with roughly 27 years as CEO, has regularly shared advice and lessons learned in interviews and his annual letters to Econet Global’s shareholders. Here are some of the best examples of what Masiyiwa, 61, has shared over the years.

1. Know Your Numbers:

According to Masiyiwa, knowing your numbers as an entrepreneur is the number one way to grow a business and keep your dream alive. You don’t need to become an accountant or bookkeeper, but you certainly need to have a basic level of understanding of the key fi nancial metrics. “Businesses are based on numbers, and the entrepreneur must always function in numbers. Make numbers your best friend,” he said.

2. Become a Master of Process:

According to the Zimbabwean billionaire, the three pillars for a successful business are Product. People. Process. However, to maintain a good product and sell to the right people, entrepreneurs must build the necessary structures and systems to make businesses grow quickly. In one of his interviews, Masiyiwa said, “The best way to do this is by mastering the process and respecting institutional framework. Focusing on the idea isn’t enough to grow your business. As an entrepreneur, having the understanding and the ability to build a process around the business is what makes it scale faster.”

This is another important rule to having a successful business. According to Strive, fi nding the right people to complement what you cannot do is essential for a business to succeed. “I understood this early on when I launched Econnect. In the early days of the business, I tried to raise about $10 million, but I didn’t know how to do it. Before that time, the highest amount I ever raised was $300,000.

So what I did was employ someone who could do what I couldn’t do. I had to negotiate to give him 10% of the company, but he got the job done for me.” I’ve also discovered over the years that good people function at their best when trusted. This is something African entrepreneurs must practice. “Giving the right people the room to function at their best.”

4. Become a Master at Pitching:

Suppose you bump into Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, and you have to say something to him about your business that will make him stop and listen to you. What is it that you’ll say in your pitch? Well, according to Masiyiwa, there are two key principles in a pitch: First of all, as an entrepreneur, you must do your research, and you must understand your product and the service you off er so well that you can unpack it in 2 mins.

Secondly, you need to understand what the investor wants and who the investor is. The investor is not your donor or your grandmother. They may

fi nd what comes from what you do benefi cial, but that’s not what’s driving the investor’s approach to things. So as an entrepreneur, you need to make sure you are pitching to the right people, telling them what they need to hear, as well as the risks you present to them that you need to lower if you’re going to be making pitches throughout your entrepreneurial journey.

5. Learn the Art of Networking:

As an entrepreneur, you have to be creative about networking. “If you’re a small entrepreneur, don’t always try to get to the CEO or Chairman of the group. Do some research on the organization and try to fi nd out the person making the decisions on the issue you’re interested in.”Also, network much more eff ectively. Attend industry events and conferences, and register yourself for every business association if possible. Because that’s where you fi nd the Chairman walking along the corridor and you can have a chat with him.

6. Learn to Trust Other Entrepreneurs:

Stop looking upwards, but focus on looking sideways. “While building my businesses, I never sought after big players. I was always about reaching out to people around me who I needed to help me build my business. That’s not to say it’s a hard and fast rule. But pay a lot more attention to the passionate young guy or girl sitting next to you. They’re usually more driven than someone outside your circle.”

7. Look at the Challenges as Opportunities:

It is important to learn how to look at challenges as opportunities to succeed as an entrepreneur. For example, there is an entrepreneurial opportunity for somebody in your challenge in the cost of electricity or a particular commodity. So never feel frustrated because of the challenges you’re faced with. Just look at it as a step that you have to climb.

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