Collab Capital co-founder Barry Givens,Barry Givens, spends his time helping and advising emerging Black entrepreneurs. Through his Atlanta-based company, he works to launch projects that bring racial parity to the economics, education, and workforce of the tech industry.
Givens spoke with rolling out about becoming an investor, building generational wealth, and technology curiosity.
Why did you want to become an investor?
I became an investor not to find the fastest way to build generational wealth, but innovation has definitely been a more opportunistic way for people who don’t come from money to find their way through to build the right skills to create generational wealth for their families. It is the ultimate equalizer in my eyes, and all we need to do is put the opportunities in front of our community and in front of our people.
For me, the fastest way to do that is to create examples, so if I can invest in Black founders who are building innovative solutions for big problems, and they become the next Mark Zuckerberg or the next big thing, we can put them on Front Street for our kids and youth to see to want to gain those skills and be the next Black innovator of their time.
How would you define technology curiosity?
I would take the technology focus out of it, and push people to think about ways to innovate in spaces that they know and that they’re comfortable in. Technology can be applied to pretty much anything, the start is what are you good at? What do you know? Where’s your expertise? What problems are you having every single day, and understanding what that problem is, and then bringing it in? That’s where the curiosity comes in. It’s figuring out and finding those things, and then figuring out how can we weave technology into that problem to create a solution for it.
Whether it be creating an app that creates accessibility to something to a problem that you’re having, or to a community that can help solve a problem that you have, or it’s creating a mobile app that allows people to get to and from in a community where maybe that’s lacking, or finding healthy food options in the community that has a food desert … these are all things that can be solved by technology.
