“I want to tell you a story about dreams.”

I’ll never forget that line in Paulo Coelho’s classic, The Alchemist. What followed was a parable explaining the multilayered approach to how history is
made, which resulted in the summation: “No matter what he does,” the alchemist said, “every person on earth plays a central role in the history of
the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.”

I remember reading over the documents related to the Forward Cities Initiative and thinking to myself (and later telling others,) “I believe, ON PAPER,
Forward Cities is exactly what we need in Durham.” I thought and said that because, unlike the parable in The Alchemist, the Forward Cities Initiative
Executive Summary provided a skeletal overview of roles, data obtaining research opportunities and cross-city relationships that, with enough vision,
any reader could assume that an “open knowledge platform for shared learning” could result in great inclusive innovation to the benefit of the targeted
community, Northeast Central Durham.

…and we signed up. After a discussion with our management team, iNvictus Office Center agreed to participate. In fact, we were excited at the opportunity
to join this initiative. At the time, almost five years into our mentor-based minority entrepreneurship curriculum and having already worked/working
with entrepreneurs across the southeast, AND having just cut the ribbon on our new six thousand square foot coworking facility located on the Fayetteville
Street Corridor leading into Downtown Durham, North Carolina, there was one dilemma. We had a business model concentration on national economic development
through helping to locate, develop, mentor and grow minority entrepreneurs and businesses. The biggest hesitation before us was how do we add a more
concentrated, single city/community, almost microeconomic aspect to our overall mission. The answer was obvious: HOW COULD WE NOT?!

At the time, our current macroeconomic approach was successful. Almost ninety percent of the companies we had worked with since our founding in 2010, were
still alive and doing well. At iNvictus, success is measured with a pretty high bar. We expect companies to be able to “zero out” all books at the
end of each quarter and save, invest and scale responsibly. Additionally, we expect all of the entrepreneurs and companies we work with to invest in
ethnic minority dominant culture communities. That investment can come in a myriad of diverse pathways; hiring from within those communities, providing
beneficial technical support to those communities, supporting organizations or other businesses whose primary mission is to positively engage and affect
the needs of those communities, etc. Economic development is difficult, but community redevelopment has its own set of concerns to overcome. There
has been a lot of research done on cities and the fracturedness of their existence, if you will. Many of the ills underserved communities face are
living, layered and systemic. A more common sense results oriented approach would include very living, layered and systemic offerings also. Too many
times help is extremely segmented.

One non-profit offers job training to a segment of the community that finds difficulty in finding sustainable employment. A church offers a food pantry.
A make shift women’s shelter provides a respite for abuse victims. A beautician doubles as a counselor while the community store and neighborhood restaurant
offers nourishment, sometimes through much needed credit allocations. And unfortunately, law enforcement and various financial lending institutions
have become equally predatory on these same communities. Two of the largest documented dilemmas found within these solutions revolve around “acknowledgement.”
The community demands acknowledgement of its sheer existence while many of those that attempt to provide aid beg for recognition for their work. Most
books have “Acknowledgements,” a section dedicated to giving public recognition to those that contributed to the greatness that resulted in the book.
Howard Zinn, in his classic account of America’s history told from the perspective of Native Americans, “A People’s History of the United States” stated,
“It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. …the very invisibility of women, the overlooking
of women, is a sign of their submerged status.” He would later go on, in a chapter entitled, The Intimately Oppressed, to compare the biological uniqueness
of women to skin color and facial characteristics for (Negroes) as a “basis for treating them as inferiors.”

“ON PAPER, Forward Cities is exactly what we need in Durham.” is the thought that repetitively bounced through my mind numerous times during the Durham,
NC convening of the Forward Cities Initiative as I physically made my way through the convening’s programming December 9-11, 2015. This work had to
establish a point of departure that reveled in the acknowledgement of the existence of the citizens of the community and their desires as well as their
needs coupled with a multifaceted, diversely innovative collaborative panacea. This elixir would have to be ushered in through a paradoxical understanding
by all involved; everyone is both part of the problem and should first accept blame for the state of these communities and that no one is worthy of
credit for the resulting successes of the work they contribute. Panel after panel, symposiums, table gatherings, networking luncheons, dinner and informal
discussions and confirmation plagued my mind. The Forward Cities Initiative IS exactly what we need in Durham. The opportunity to openly discuss, problem
solve and contribute across state lines all to the benefit of the previously underserved selected communities in Durham, New Orleans, Detroit and Cleveland
is dynamic in every capacity that word offers us. And I met, discussed and debated person after person, to whom I would acclaim have done what Carter
G. Woodson asked of us all in The Mis-education of the Negro: “abandoning the idea of leadership and instead taking up definite tasks and sacrificing
their time and energy in doing things that might accomplish something.”

– Edward Boyd Jr

I’ve done a lot of research on minority-owned businesses because of the work we do atiNvictus Office Center with minority entrepreneurs. We have worked with a lot of minority entrepreneurs over the past five years. And through those experiences, one number
stands out: Two thousand, nine hundred and thirty. That number should mean something. In fact, it should mean everything.

See, entrepreneurs are like economic artists. They carry with them the financial souls of our time. They have visions of creativity that they must bring
forth into creation to share with the world. The backdrop of their art is capitalism. Their works will never land in a museum to be interpreted by
history. They will either aid or detract from the United States gross domestic product. They will toil, suffer and be overjoyed with their work; many
times simultaneously.

Our economy needs these artists. Innovation begs to be brought forth through their visions. Social and environmental change transitions to us through their
works. Entrepreneurs, like all artists, are a necessity. They are the economic mirrors of our culture. They create ways for us to financially express
ourselves. In economics, we’re taught that you can tell what is important to a society by the way it spends its monies.

Entrepreneurs being the cornerstone of capitalism, it makes sense that policies would be enacted to ensure their viability. Their necessity warrants our
help. And so when post recession lending from mainstream financial institutions had all but ceased, Congress sent entrepreneurs a gift. Four numbers:
2930.

What was the gift and why exactly was it necessary?

Entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses were being overlooked by conventional lenders (local banks or venture capitalists, angel investors) and were
having a hard time accessing credit in the marketplace. As a result, United States capital formation and entrepreneurs suffered. The gift was HR 2930,
more commonly known as the “Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act.”

On November 3^rd, 2011 HR 2930 passed the House. The Senate never passed it and eventually was rolled over to become part of the Jumpstart Our
Business Startups (JOBS) Act in March 2012. One April 5, 2012 President Barack Obama signed the JOBS Act into law. The impact goal of this law is that
a new class of personal “investment” would be created. Many have long speculated that between $250 and $750 million would be invested from the various
alternative investment platforms such as crowdfunding.

What is crowdfunding?

The basic idea is to raise money through relatively small contributions from a large number of people; combining the best of microfinance and crowdsourcing.
Today in the United States, internet-based crowdfunding is utilized to raise millions of dollars for charitable organizations and non-profits. Other
nations such as Great Britain, Hong Kong and the Netherlands already offer equity-based crowdfunding opportunities to investors and startups to spur
capital formation.

The entrepreneurial community was estatic! Those four numbers, 2930, for entrepreneurs would be as significant as 1776 is for the country as a whole. The
lofty expectations of the impact of the law loomed heavy. And for minority-owned firms, it felt more like impending relief toward the goal of combating
the discriminatory barriers to funding that minority businesses face.

Capital Access Disparities

Minority-Owned Firms Are Less Likely To Receive Loans than Non-Minority Firms – Among firms with gross receipts under $500,000, 23 percent
of non-minority firms received loans compared to 17 percent of minority firms. Among high sales firms (firms with annual gross receipts of $500,000
or more), 52 percent of non-minority firms received loans compared with 41 percent of minority firms.

Minority-Owned Firms Receive Lower Loan Amounts than Non-Minority Firms – The average loan amount for all high sales minority firms
was $149,000. The non-minority average was more than twice this amount at $310,000. Conditioning on the percentage of firms receiving loans, the average
loan received by high sales minority firms was $363,000 compared with $592,000 for non-minority firms.

Minority-Owned Firms Are More Likely To Be Denied Loans – Among firms with gross receipts under $500,000, loan denial rates for minority
firms were about three times higher, at 42 percent, compared to those of non-minority-owned firms, 16 percent. For high sales firms, the rate of loan
denial was almost twice as high for minority firms as for non-minority firms.

Minority- Owned Firms Pay Higher Interest Rates on Business Loans – For all firms, minority firms paid 7.8 percent on average for
loans compared with 6.4 percent for non-minority firms. The difference was smaller, but still existed between minority and non-minority high sales
firms.

The United States ethnic minorities made up close to $5 trillion of the country’s buying power.
With such power, minority entrepreneurs are trusting that they can convert some of that buying power into minority business crowdfunding. They are
expecting its capacity to enable minorities to “recycle” their monies back into their own communities.

Why such disparities in business funding? Over and over, from reputable sources, I have been told that the biggest problem is that minority-owned firms
don’t create enough jobs that pay well and subsequently don’t increase their market’s tax base like majority culture owned companies. Then, I learn
this:

Minority Businesses Create Jobs with Good Pay – The average payroll per employee was not substantially higher among non-minority employer
firms compared to that of minority-owned firms. In 2002, payroll per employee was $29,842 for non-minority employer firms compared to about $26,000
for minority-owned firms, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Minority-owned firms are employing workers at similar wages as non-minority
firms, and are the backbone of many minority communities across the nation.

Obviously, 2930 isn’t as important as $3,842, the miniscule difference in wage creation between minority-owned and non-minority-owned firms.

Edward R. Boyd, Jr.
Managing Partner, iNvictus Office Center, The HUB of Minority Entrepreneurship
www.iNvictusOffice.com
EBoyd@iNvictusOffice.com

Edward R. Boyd, Jr. is a native of Durham, NC and raised in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. After graduating high school, he returned to the Triangle. Over the past 25 years, he has completed degrees and other formal educational programs in Religion, Philosophy, Tonsorial Science and a teacher’s certification in middle grades social studies from Shaw University (Raleigh, NC), Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ), Harris Barber College (Raleigh, NC) and North Carolina Central University (Durham, NC.) A serial and lifelong entrepreneur, Edward has also taught in public and charter schools and served in the nonprofit sector working with urban adolescents and focusing on national and neighborhood gang prevention, intervention and sustaining. He served as Area Director of Urban Younglife of Durham/Chapel Hill, NC and is co-founder of the Durham H.A.W.K.S. While still very active serving on boards and volunteering with organizations dedicated to lowering the prison recidivism rate, he currently serves as managing partner of iNvictus Office Center – A CoWorking Community Space highly regarded as the HUB of Minority Entrepreneurship. iNvictus Office Center offers coworking, meeting, conference room and event space to the public and via month to month and annual memberships. Their mentor-based curriculum is the central focus of their service to the minority entrepreneurship community. Their work in this area has led to the sustainability of nearly two hundred minority owned businesses since 2010. Their success in this arena has quickly made them a giant in the field.