NexCubed focuses on HBCU’s growth and success

BY SOLOMON HAYES

This week, the UNCF Summit for Black Higher Education was held in Atlanta. Over the years, the summit has provided a space for hundreds of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and PBI (predominantly Black institutions) leaders, practitioners, advocates, stakeholders, or anyone who is interested in learning more about higher education. With many of the participants coming in with hopes of supporting HBCUs through building a black network, one in particular stood out as a pioneer in his own right with a solution to bridge the racial wealth gap.

Marlon Evans is the CEO of NexCubed, a global accelerator that invests in startups during the seed stage, providing early-stage capital, corporate relationships, access to a global ecosystem, and most importantly, a four-month acceleration program. Evans has always had diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of his investment ethos. However, a few years ago, in 2020, Evan desired to find a way to create an even bigger impact on HBCUs.

“When we decided to really figure out how we can add an even bigger impact on the top of the funnel, like opportunities that are just getting started, we said, why don’t we open source our acceleration curriculum and provide it at no cost to HBCU students and alums, and so it started off really just as a pilot project within NexCubed” Evans told The Atlanta Voice.

He proceeded with the project, focusing on HBCU students and alumni who were cre- ating their own startups centered around developing technology-enabled solutions that close the wealth gap, ranging from increasing access to healthcare, education, and financial services. Thus, the HBCU Founders Initiative (HBCUFI) was born, and once it had taken on a life of its own outside of NexCube, the initiative soon partnered with UNCF to support the HBCU entrepreneurial ecosystem.

“So we started in 2020, running programming at HBCUs focused on helping students and recent alums, if they had an idea for a business, really helping them understand how they take that idea and turn it into an opportunity where they could get funding and support to help them scale their business,” Evans said.

To date, over 750 students and alumni from over 80 HBCUs have participated in the initiative. This partnership has expanded to create an 8-week Fall and Spring Pre-Accelerator program at 12 HBCUs across the country. These even include Atlanta-based schools such as Morehouse College and Spelman College, along with many others throughout the country, and HBCUFI is looking to expand to even more like-minded institutions. The program goes over topics such as validating the idea, building a prototype, customer discovery, marketing and branding, legal operations, and fundraising. By the end of the program, participants will take part in a pitch competition where they will have the opportunity to receive non-dilutive program awards in support of a minimum viable product (MVP) development.

As an investor, Evans encapsulates the meaning of the old Bible verse from Luke 11: 10-13, “If you give a man a fish, he will be hungry tomorrow. If you teach a man to fish, he will be richer forever.” Evans, in this case, has created a program that teaches HBCU founders how to create long-term sustainability while providing funding. Leveraging advisors who have started companies and who