2021 Was the Year of Resiliency — 2022 Will be the Year of Rebuilding

The word survival comes to mind when I think back on 2021. All of us entrepreneurs continued to live on and exist despite a pandemic, social change, and many other ordeals that resulted from a highly traumatic year. The power of a collective purpose taught us a lot last year, and the beauty of all of us humans putting one foot in front of the other during the metaphorical and sometimes literal storms that overtook 2021 was inspiring.

The world feels like a different place as we step out of 2021 and into 2022, but our new way of living will be restructured during these next few critical years. The question is, are we really building back better or just re-building the same, and what can we do differently this year to reinforce the many changes that are beginning to take root in America today?

The Advancement of Minority and Women-Owned Businesses is Vital to America’s Economic Resurgence

The tragic murder of George Floyd seems to live in a time capsule and was carried over as a defining part of 2021. The trial of Derek Chauvin was a powerful reminder of the events that sparked a global movement, and the commitments that many businesses made to change and inclusion were revisited. Ultimately, I sat back and watched my fellow Americans care a lot more about the Black experience. For what felt like the first time, people wanted to know the whole story of oppression and systemic racism, and for the first time, big business was pulled into the fight. This has caused us as a nation to move towards inclusive capitalism, which means that purposeful economic equity is starting to funnel down to minority and women-owned businesses. Boards are now getting serious about DEI, organizations are funding more minority-owned businesses, and people are intentionally looking to support Black companies. Although we are in the early stages of seeing sweeping change, these small movements reveal a very different America.

The Brookings Institute issued a report that compared the impact of COVID-19 to the inequity that currently exists in the small business market. Here’s a snapshot of what they discovered. “The COVID-19 small business crisis has inspired a historic policy response because the nation is facing a massive potential disruption to a well-known status quo. Structural exclusion that limits entrepreneurship is no less insidious than COVID-19’s impact on small businesses, but because it is already a status quo that’s been built up over decades, there is not the same urgency to address it — even if closing these disparities would result in millions of new small businesses.” Staying on this course of empowering Black, Brown, and women-owned businesses is how America will move past the economic impact of the pandemic. Continuing to break down structural exclusion has the power to launch America into an age of equitable prosperity like we’ve never seen before.

What We Did at Fearless to Uplift Black Entrepreneurs in 2021 & Why We’ll Do it Forever

When it comes to supporting Black businesses, our goal at Fearless is to set an example and to do more than our part. It’s never been part of our belief system that we need to make a certain amount of money to start giving back, and this mentality has brought us success in more ways than one. We’ve had the privilege of supporting only a handful of the innovative and groundbreaking Black-owned tech businesses and other initiatives that are out there, and I’d like to share these incredible stories with you because this is something that we’re going to do as long as Fearless is in existence.

Hutch

Hutch, founded by Fearless, is an intensive 24-month program that provides underrepresented entrepreneurs with a blueprint for building successful and impactful government digital services firms. The program equips businesses with the tools, mentorship, and peer-to-peer support they need to thrive in the world of government contracting. Even as a small business ourselves, our goal is to raise up 25 women and minority-owned companies by 2025 and cultivate not only successful digital services companies but impactful ones.

The Downtown Partnership of Baltimore’s (DPOB) Black Owned & Operated Storefront Tenancy Program (BOOST)

The BOOST program is an initiative created to support the long-term success of creative, Black-owned Baltimore businesses in Downtown storefronts. Fearless had the pleasure of underwriting the program and working with DPOB’s President, Shelonda Stokes. When Fearless first moved to the downtown Baltimore area, we received a grant from BOOST, and it was an honor to be able to give back to a high-impact program that helped us grow our business. You can check out the BOOST program and all of the incredible companies moving into the downtown area here.

MindStand Technologies

MindStand Technologies began with a long-standing goal to foster healthier online communities. The company’s mission is to improve online communities with its artificial intelligence-driven software for employee engagement, burnout, and positive employee interaction. It also detects online harassment, hate speech, and other troubling interactions. MindStand won our 2021 summer Minority Innovation Weekend pitch competition, which we invested in because of the lack of capital available to minority founders.

The Black Brain Trust

Led by CEO Angel St. Jean, The Black Brain Trust’s Equity in Action Score™(EIA) helps businesses empower leaders who are serious about equity to track the data they need to create a more equitable company. The EIA Score™ is based on over 100 industry-validated data points that support fair decision-making across all business operations. The company is currently in the pre-revenue stage and are well on their way to completing its first round of funding in which we were one of the first investors.

Hey ZRO

The future of e-commerce is here, and we could see very quickly that CEO Tee Lee Cooper’s virtual reality e-commerce experience is needed in the new era of online shopping, so we made a seed investment in her company. An integrated virtual reality and e-commerce experience are becoming the norm, and this fusion will completely change the way we shop online. We’re super excited for the launch of Hey ZRO which is coming very soon.

The Challenge: Let 2022 Be the Year of Fearless Giving

Supporting minority and women-owned businesses creates more opportunities for property ownership, credit building, and generational wealth. Being part of this movement is not about how much you give. It’s about turning giving into a habit no matter what you do, how much you make, or what phase your business is in. . The key to living a life of giving is radical altruism. So dare yourself to make giving something you do as often as brushing your teeth, and keep in mind that giving comes in a wide assortment of kind deeds. Need some ideas? Check out the list below.

• Mentor
• Teach
• Coach
• Train someone
• Fund or invest
• Use someones emerging product
• Volunteer
• Pay full price
• Share
• Tweet
• Post
• Livestream

We’re still attempting to climb out of one of the most challenging times we’ve faced in America and in human history. The road ahead requires that we rebuild what we’ve lost, but we must improve upon our foundations and let equity and inclusion ground our efforts in rebuilding our businesses, our country, our economy, and our communities. Let’s rise together. Here’s to 2022.