Yes, You Can Be an Entrepreneur Too | Saamra Mekuria-Grillo | TED

My name is Saamra, and I’m an entrepreneur.

But I didn't become an entrepreneur until I was 39 years old.

Before that, I was fascinated by innovation and entrepreneurship,

but I didn't see myself as an entrepreneur.

This is despite the fact that when I was in middle school,

both of my parents had started small businesses,

my mom as an independent filmmaker and my dad as a solo lawyer.

But if you had asked me then if I knew any entrepreneurs,

I would have said no.

My parents didn't talk about themselves as entrepreneurs

or to me about entrepreneurship, so I didn't see them as entrepreneurs.

They talked to me about college and getting a good job.

They were overjoyed when I got an internship in finance.

But when I got my first full-time job at an early-stage startup

that perhaps you have heard of, Google --

(Laughter)

they were worried.

They said,

"Do real people actually work at that company?"

(Laughter)

"What do they do?"

I went through most of my education and career

believing that entrepreneurship was a pathway for some.

But not for me.

When I was at Stanford Business School,

I saw all of these eager entrepreneurial types around me

who seemed to know how to be an entrepreneur already.

They spoke the lingo,

they knew which classes to take,

which people and professors to hang out with

to make magic happen.

That's what it seemed like to me.

Magic.

There was this talk of unicorns

and this mystique around what would lead to success.

And the magical playbook seemed to have been shared with a very specific group.

And that group did not look like me.

These people had the confidence and the connections to make things happen.

Manifesting new companies from ideas on napkins.

I did not understand how to do that type of manifestation.

So I kept working to get good job after good job,

and I told myself

I was not entrepreneur material.

I learned how to do jobs.

But I didn't learn how to make jobs.

It wasn't until I saw other Black women around me launching new ventures

and calling themselves entrepreneurs

that I really began to believe I could do it, too.

And by that point, I was 39 years old.

My journey is far from unique.

Even now, when I talk to young Black folks

about who they see as entrepreneurs,

I hear Mark Zuckerberg,

Elon Musk,

Bill Gates.

And when they do name Black entrepreneurs, there are very specific lanes.

In sports: Michael Jordan,

Steph Curry,

Serena Williams.

In entertainment:

Beyonce, Jay-Z.

Maybe Nipsey Hussle.

I want to change the narrative

around who becomes an entrepreneur in this country.

So this is the work that I do.

I work with young Black folks to help demystify entrepreneurship

so they can learn how to make jobs and not just do jobs.

We should all care about this.

Entrepreneurship has driven extraordinary wealth in this country.

Of the 100 wealthiest people in the United States,

63 of them built their wealth in their own lifetimes

through companies they founded themselves.

Only one of those 63 is Black.

We should all care about this.

And it turns out there is a way to move the needle.

We have an opportunity to demystify entrepreneurship for Black young people,

and if we get this right,

the potential for all of us is enormous.

So what should we do?

First, we need to share the multiple pathways to entrepreneurship

with young people

so that they can see themselves reflected in them.

There are so many different ways to be an entrepreneur,

from side hustling to small business ownership,

intrapreneurship

building a high-growth tech company

and many more.

But one of those pathways, the high-growth tech one,

gets way more attention than the others.

There’s a whole culture and a guy-in-a-hoodie persona

that goes along with that pathway.

(Laughter)

It's not really very inclusive.

So in our work,

we share all of the pathways to entrepreneurship with young people,

and we help them find what feels like the right fit for them.

We share the origin stories of other entrepreneurs

who have walked a path

that our young entrepreneurs might want to explore.

We help them understand that they can show up as an entrepreneur

in a way that feels authentic to them,

and that there's no one way to be an entrepreneur.

And that leads to the next thing we need to do.

We have to intentionally provide

a much more diverse set of role models to young people.

We can talk about Mark and Elon,

but we also have to highlight Tope,

who founded Calendly,

or Shontay, who created Black Girl Sunscreen.

There's Robert, who started Compass Real Estate,

and Julia, who launched Planet Forward, a decarbonization platform.

There is a deep legacy of entrepreneurship in communities of color,

and there are countless Black innovators across every industry

that we can and should be raising up as role models.

And we need to make those role models feel proximate

so that young people can say,

"I can see myself in this person and their journey,

and I don't have to wait 20 years to get started."

One of the best ways to make role models proximate

is through near-peer mentorship.

Our near-peers are young entrepreneurs

who are just a few years farther along in their journeys,

like Ahmed who's a freelance filmmaker,

or Jada who has her own lash tech business,

or Florence, who's an emerging product designer.

She helped design these shoes I'm wearing.

Each of these mentors can bring their own authentic identity

as a young entrepreneur

to demonstrate what's possible for other young people.

Finally, when I think about the biggest drivers of entrepreneurial inequity,

in the end it all comes down to relationships.

Who has access to the relationships

who will help them achieve their goals,

and who doesn't.

This is social capital,

and it's just as critical to entrepreneurial success

as financial capital.

Every successful entrepreneur I've spoken to

can point to an introduction or an opportunity

that came to them through their relationships

that changed the trajectory of their journey.

And accessing and mobilizing your social capital

is a skill that can be learned.

It's not just something that some people know how to do and others don't.

So in our work,

we help young people understand who is in their networks already.

We help them build the confidence

to reach out to those who might be willing to support them.

We help them build fluency with tools like LinkedIn.

We help break down what can feel like a really complex and scary process

around building your entrepreneurial network

into more approachable pieces.

And we take an asset-based lens

affirming that young people already know people

who can help them achieve their goals.

I've seen young people go from tentatively curious

about entrepreneurship

to seeing themselves as entrepreneurs in the span of 10 weeks.

I've seen the spark that grows

when young people see identity-affirming role models,

often for the first time, who are innovators.

And I've seen the feeling of power and agency

that comes from recognizing the social capital that you already have

that can help you achieve your goals.

This is the real magic.

This is the work that I do.

But we should all care about this

because it matters well beyond the young people we serve.

If you care about equity,

the median Black family holds only 15 percent

of the wealth of the median white family.

If we're only teaching Black young people how to do jobs and not make jobs,

then we will continue to see that wealth gap persist.

If you care about the economy,

closing the earnings gap

could add over eight trillion dollars to the US economy by 2050.

That's a T, trillion.

And if you care

about the resilience of our workforce,

especially given technologies like AI,

it's imperative that we teach young people how to make new jobs.

By one estimate,

people in the lowest income brackets

could be up to 14 times more likely to need to change jobs due to AI.

If we're only teaching young people how to do jobs that exist today,

then we're not actually preparing them for their futures.

I'm proof that you can start to see yourself as an entrepreneur later in life

and still do something meaningful.

I started my organization four years ago at 39,

and while we're still early,

I believe we have big things ahead.

But I also believe that if I had started at 19 or even 29,

I would be at a different stage as an entrepreneur today.

I'd probably be on my second or third start-up.

I'd have already learned some lessons that I'm learning right now.

I'm also working to unlearn decades of not seeing myself as an entrepreneur.

Imagine the magic that would be possible not just for them, but for all of us

if our young people could start to see themselves as makers of jobs

and not just doers of jobs earlier on.

Thank you.

(Applause)