I am pleased to announce I am becoming a Global Advisor to the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center.
The Center and I have a shared mission of growing access to entrepreneurship, and we’re importantly – they are working with one of the largest data-sets on the planet around lived experience, trained on and for its community of 100,000+ entrepreneurs, and so I believe my data experience can really be an accelerant.
As I do, the Center focuses on ‘the whole entrepreneur’ – that balance and confidence are essential to success. They too believe that entrepreneurship uplifts communities – they’ve used data to spotlight the regions of the US that foster entrepreneurial access. They offer access-to-capital education and first-mile solutions that unlock the financial dignity that will change our world. Courses, mentorship, apprenticeships, toolkit, convenings – all driven by data.
The Center is out in front about crucial questions for founders: if your valuation hinges on using AI, does a core of only AI make it easily replicable and in turn limit your valuation potential? How do we redefine funding and entrepreneurial origin stories? The Center tells its entrepreneurs that LLCs are often not the way to start, and that venture funding is just one of many rivers for capital. And why haven’t we surfaced that there is a positive relationship between founders paying themselves and speed to break-even, and that age is another positive factor for ease of raising capital – experience and pressure tend to create better founders (the Center found that 40-49 years old is a sweet spot).
Additionally, Nasdaq and Operation HOPE share a longstanding relationship and partnership, and a shared passion for financial literacy, for which Nasdaq and its leaders — from its president & CEO Adena Friedman, and senior executive Jailan Griffiths on down — have helped to shape and to lead. I am deeply appreciative of their commitment, and of them. So leaning in here is the least I can do.
I am inspired. I am ready. And I’ll see you around the Center.
John Hope Bryant — founder of Bryant Group Ventures, Operation HOPE, Inc, publisher of the Bryant Journal and author of his coming book Capitalism for All: Inclusive Economics and the Future Proofing of America.
