- Morgan DeBond is the founder of Blavity, the largest media company and lifestyle brand for black millennials.
- Blavity has a community of over 7 million readers and has raised $1 million in funding.
- Morgan started Blavity in 2014 after realizing the limitations of being a teacher and a politician.
- She previously worked at Intuit as a product manager in Silicon Valley.
- Blavity's original vision was to create products and experiences that celebrate black people and address the problems that the industry ignores.
- The company initially started as an email newsletter curating videos, but later switched to a blog format due to the audience's preference for reading over watching videos.

- Blavity.com switched to become a blog and videos.blavity.com became the video site
- The video site died, but the blog became successful
- Blavity focuses on helping others and providing useful content
- They empower creators and build a passionate community
- They have raised over a million dollars and faced challenges in fundraising as a woman of color
- The company started with a small team and bootstrapped for a year
- Blavity is now a media company and lifestyle brand with multiple websites and conferences
- They acquired a company called Shadow and Act focused on black Hollywood reporting
- They test different ideas and make decisions based on numbers and traction

- Blavity created a separate Instagram account to focus on women and their afros
- The separate account grew faster than Blavity and led to the launch of a separate brand
- The goal is to create a brand that represents and empowers black women
- Blavity plans to expand into music media and indie black creator space
- Advice for founders: have a big vision, be unapologetic, surround yourself with supportive people
- Advice for female founders: don't wait for validation or permission, pursue your dreams without hesitation.

Morgan DeBond founded Blavity, the largest media company and lifestyle brand for black millennials. Blavity started as an email newsletter but switched to a blog format due to audience preference. The company focuses on empowering creators and building a passionate community. They have raised over $1 million in funding and faced challenges in fundraising as a woman of color. Blavity has expanded through acquisitions and plans to enter the music media and indie black creator space. Advice for founders is to have a big vision and surround themselves with supportive people, while advice for female founders is to pursue their dreams without hesitation.

Morgan DeBaun is the founder and CEO of Blavity - https://blavity.com/

Kat Manalac is a Partner at YC.

Read the transcript at http://blog.ycombinator.com/morgan-debaun-on-reaching-20m-millennials-with-kat-manalac-at-the-female-founders-conference

And now I'm really, really excited to introduce you to our next speaker, Morgan DeBond.

So Blavity has, you know, grown into the largest media company and lifestyle brand for black millennials.

So Morgan started Blavity in 2014, and since then, they've built a community of over 7 million readers, and they've raised a million dollars, which they announced last year.

So I'm really excited to introduce her to you and hear more of her story.

I moved on to this couch so we could get real cozy.

Okay, so I want to, So for folks who might not know you very well, I'd like to just kick it off.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe where you're from, and what you were doing before you started Blavity.

And I actually started off wanting to be a teacher.

That was how I was going to change the world, and particularly like black youth and give me more access.

And then I got in the classrooms and very quickly realized that even the best principals and the best teachers were totally restricted by laws, regulations, et cetera.

And so I was like, I'll be a politician, no problem.

And so I switched my major, I became a policy major, I was in student government, and then realized that everyone was influenced by money.

That that, you know, we all know that now, especially after what's going on.

And so I was like, okay, well, this is interesting.

How do I both help the people that I care about in my community make enough money so that I can influence other people and make better decisions.

And technology and entrepreneurship is 1 of the best ways to do that.

And so that's kind of started my journey.

And then after I graduated from college, moved to Silicon Valley and to Mountain View specifically, and worked at Intuit as a product manager.

So I went, you know, big culture shock, I think moving from St.

Like at what point did you decide to leave into it and start?

I think part of it was I've always been tinkering.

Blavity is just the first 1 you've heard of.

Tons of side projects, websites, and I think when I was.

you tell us about 1 random 1 that didn't work?

Let's see, do we want the biggest failure?

that I think is still a really good idea.

Okay, the biggest failure was, so personal finance.

So basically, when you graduate, when you're in college, you have no money, right?

Like maybe you have like a couple thousand dollars, but like, you know, you don't really have any money.

Then you graduate and you go work at a Google or an Intuit and you're making $50,000 plus, like out of nowhere, right?

And a lot of people don't know what the allocation should be for savings or spending on rent or if you wanna buy a car.

And so it was a personal finance calculator.

It was like there's no differentiation or anything.

So it was a good idea, but like not really a business.

And then the 1 that I still think is a really good idea, I did in college with 2 other of my friends.

1 is now my CTO and the other 1 has gone on to raise millions of dollars in manual BAMFO.

And so it was basically, you could find free food on campus.

So this was before Facebook events really were a thing.

So we were like scraping all these campus calendars and then aggregating it.

And because at the end of the semester you run out of food, meal points.

And so you're trying to find all these free food events.

So if someone decides to do it, just let me know.

This is like a classic college student problem.

I'm surprised actually no 1 has solved it yet.

Okay, but going back to Blavity, what was the original vision for Blavity that you had?

Yeah, so the original vision, which is still actually the same today, is to create products and experiences in which we're celebrating black people.

And it's like, the problem that we saw, and the problem that I saw was a few different things.

1, like working at Intuit, what was really exciting was they're really great at designing.

They're really good at creating experiences.

Like TurboTax is supposed to be really boring, but it's like not that bad, you know?

Now that I'm on the other side, I'm like, oh, I love QuickBooks, right?

But that process of learning, like how to design for delight, how to be really specific about creating a product for a specific user and being like ruthless about who you're creating for.

What I've realized is that no 1 was doing that for me.

And so there's a thousand problems that black people have and people of color have and women have that this entire industry ignores.

And so with Blavity, we wanted to create different products and we wanted to create different experiences to kind of fix that.

And then the thing on the personal side is that Mike Brown happened when I was working at Intuit and I was actually at Demandforce, it was a startup that Intuit had bought.

And it's a great company, but it's very white and very bro and it's a sales company.

And so I was in business development, so I was kind of like sitting on the floor and I was like, okay this is interesting.

They didn't really know what to do with me.

They were just like, I don't really know where you came from.

I came from like the motherland, because I came from Intuit.

So it was just like, it was a lot, I think, for people.

And then when Mike Brown happened and my world was exploding, you know, being from St.

Louis and watching things happen on Facebook, and again, you have to remember that this was 2, 3 years ago, so this was before trending topics on Facebook, right?

So it was very difficult to find information, so you had to go to Twitter and Periscope and Vine, And there was a lot of things happening where there was no central, there was no central way to find out what was happening in a city.

And then things started to explode across the country.

Things were happening in Baltimore, things were happening in Cleveland, things were happening in St.

And so individual people became our sources of information.

Now these people, we know who they are, DeRay, Netta, Sean, right?

But back then they were just normal people.

And so to find them was really difficult.

And so Blavity had started, we had started to tinker a little bit, but that's when I ultimately quit and said, we need to do this.

Black media is moving too slow because they're antiquated in terms of magazines and newspapers, they never really made the switch to mobile first and digital first.

And then millennial media, they don't care.

You know, we care a little bit more now, but back then nobody was really paying attention, so that's the beginning.

Yeah, so since then, so basically, maybe going back to that first moment, how did you get your very first users?

Yeah, so we started as an email newsletter, and 1 of the insights was that black people and people of color actually over-index and watching television, so it's about 8 hours a day on average, it's a lot, the average person watches about 5.

And at the same time, we're huge content creators.

Like anything on Twitter, the funniest stuff on Twitter, probably came from a black person.

The memes, like all of that stuff, right?

And so it was interesting to me that you take both of those things and yet we don't really have a place to find that in 1 place.

You kind of have to be a cool kid and be able to find it.

And so Blavity, what we were doing was curating an email newsletter that was your top 10 things you needed to see this week, and they were videos.

And did it start out as just you curating everything?

Oh yeah, and like, there's probably some people in the audience where I just scraped your email and put it on the newsletter.

So yeah, and then We went straight to YouTube from the newsletter, and then we spent like 2 months building this really cool website.

It had all the algorithms and stuff, and so instead of from the newsletter to YouTube, you went to the website.

Again, this is back when Upworthy was a thing, and Facebook, right?

There was all these different things happening.

They did not like going to this other website.

They were like, no, we're just gonna go to YouTube.

But yeah, it was in the email newsletter in the beginning.

So how did you realize that people weren't into the video aspect of this and really wanted that text?

So I thought that it was just because the site was ugly, because it was, you know, you always launch things really ugly in the beginning because why make it pretty if you don't know if that's what they want?

Right, I was like, okay, fine, we'll go lighter, we'll add some call to action buttons, like all these things.

So then it was like, okay, how do we drive traffic?

Maybe people just need to learn how to type in Blavity.com, like they're not used to the brand.

So we created a blog and then wrote stories about the people actually behind the videos.

And I hired bloggers, we didn't hire them because we didn't have any money, but I brought on bloggers.

And then the blog was getting like a thousand times more traffic than the videos themselves.

It was like blog.blavity.com backslash blog.

And so I was looking, I mean I track everything religiously, like everyday, Google Analytics every hour, looking at real-time analytics, and you can see the difference, and I just didn't ignore it.

And so we switched it, so Blavity.com became the blog, and then videos.blavity.com became the video site, and not just site, just died, just like dead.

But the blog, I spent a weekend making a WordPress site versus another site that we spent 2 months and hard-coded everything, it was supposed to be this big tech thing.

So how do you, I have to say, how do you kill your darlings?

Like something you spent 2 months birthing, basically, and then suddenly you realize it's not gonna work out.

I mean, I think failing fast is like part of how you move in this world, particularly in technology space, and especially consumer, social media engagement community.

So yeah, I am agnostic about how we reach people.

So you have built this incredibly passionate community.

I see people tweeting about Blavity all the time.

And like, how did you go about growing and nurturing that community and keeping them coming back?

So the first thing, which is part of our values, is that we don't make it about us.

So at Blavity, we always try to ask ourselves, how does this help someone else?

Is it a video that's gonna make them laugh while they're sitting at work feeling lonely?

Is it information in the morning that they would never get if they were just scrolling through their Twitter feeds, unless they followed us, of course.

And once you remove yourself from what do I think people need versus what is it that will help them, because they've said that they need this or they've indicated through behaviors that they need it, that it actually becomes really refreshing and easy because you just have to listen.

So in the beginning with Flavity, what we heard was that creators, like young people who have these amazing products, or creations, weren't getting the press and weren't able to get on stage and do the things that they needed to do to get to the next level and to really ultimately monetize.

And so we said, okay, we're going to be about the culture, like we're going to promote the artists in Brooklyn, we're going to promote the EP that just launched that the Fader's not gonna cover, we're gonna give them cameras, we're gonna give them resources, and we're gonna try to train them and give them money even, and that was the beginning.

And then what's interesting is as they've grown, we've grown, right?

So Quinta B, who's huge at BuzzFeed, well 3 years ago we put a camera in Quinta's hand and we're like, go run around, it was a GoPro, we're like, go run around and just show us your life and then we'll make a video out of it.

Right, and now she's 1 of my best friends and so she's got literally millions and millions of followers.

But back then she maybe had like 50,000, right?

So I think focusing on the community and focusing on the building from the ground up as opposed to from the top down was really fun.

So it's really about empowering the creators and the community and it's not about like your editorial vision anymore.

Right, and so we've invested a lot of time and money on building out the platform of Labity.

We're not on WordPress anymore, we've built our own website and our own CMS, a content management system, so that we can enable user-generated content.

So about 50% of our content today is actually from the community, which has its own problems, but in the long run, you know, it does.

It's scalable, it's empowering, you can build systems and processes that make it efficient and frictionless for people to share their stories and their ideas.

Yeah, I had another round that hasn't really been announced.

And so, you know, as we've been talking about, it's particularly difficult for women or people of color to raise, and so did you, you know, feel like there were barriers that you faced, and what was your strategy for getting around them?

So I think I made the mistake that a lot of first-time founders make which is you raise You go and look at your competitors, right?

You go look stock someone Angelus you look at them on crunch base You're like, okay.

We're like them but for us and so I'm gonna go talk to them, they're gonna get it.

No, that's not true, they might get it, but they're like, well I already did that, or they're gonna compare your numbers to their numbers.

And so for me, like thinking about Mike, or Hello Giggles, or Refinery way back in the day, like they had already raised money, some of them even before they launched, right?

So my numbers and their numbers not gonna match up, right?

So I'm like, well, can you take out all that money they spent on Facebook ads and then compare me?

You know, no, investors, that's too far down.

And so in the beginning, I definitely made the mistake of going after, and I'm sharing my mistakes intentionally so that you guys, we all make mistakes, right?

And then quickly realized that I wasn't ready.

People couldn't understand the ecosystem that I was trying to build with Glovity.

They just saw, So you're a blog on WordPress.

Right, and I'm like, I mean, like yes, technically that is what I am today, but the vision is this entire world of products and websites and brands and experiences, and I can't tell you what those are yet, but because it's in such an underserved community and because we're gonna work really hard, we're gonna figure it out.

And I just need a little bit more time, a little bit more space.

you were like, here's where we're at today, but you didn't have that, like, and here's the bigger vision.

I had some ideas, but then they said, oh, you're doing too many things, you're not focused.

I mean, flat out, I did not sell the story very well.

And so I went back into my little cave with our team and kept building and built to a place where it was so ridiculous that we had not raised money.

Where it was like, we walk into the room and people are like, those cannot be your numbers.

And do you think that this is a business that's worth over 2, 3, $400 million or not?

And there was no ambiguity there, and some people the answer was no, right?

And they're like, no, I don't believe it.

Because I believed it, and I think now, obviously, 3 years later, there's some people who have been like, hey.

No, you don't get in this deal, absolutely not.

So you made it so good they couldn't ignore you.

Which is hard, when you're bootstrapping it's expensive.

Bootstrapped for a year, living in San Francisco which was really hard.

Unpaid, we had probably around 6 or 7 people.

Or paid via what I could pay them at the time, $100 a month, $500 a month.

I mean, it was very much a community and mission-driven company.

You had to really believe in it to be here.

But yeah, and so when I raised our first round, it really went to just pay for all the things that I was already personally paying for and to hire the people that were already working for free.

But it was a success indicator that I think the market could sit there and say, okay, now we can go give them some more money.

So how has your job changed from the time you were bootstrapping to now?

Yeah, I mean, I would have never done this when I was bootstrapping.

Yeah, I think that now it's very much about people and hiring and sharing the story of Lavity because we are so different than a lot of companies.

We're a mix of media, we're a mix of tech, we're definitely a lot of culture and trends.

And so, yeah, I spend a lot of my time just trying to remove barriers from my team, make it easier for them to do their jobs, and then storytelling and making sure that people know what we're up to.

Yeah, so just to kind of share a little bit more about what we do.

So Blavity is a media company and lifestyle brand, like you said.

We have 2 conferences, AfroTech, which is a tech conference here in San Francisco, and we have EmpowerHer, which is a women's conference, which moves around, it was just in Chicago a few weeks ago.

So we have Blavity.com, 2190, which is a new brand that we just launched for black women specifically, lifestyle brand, and then the conference ladders up underneath it, And then we actually acquired a third company that we just announced last quarter called Shadow and Act, which is focused on, it's like a black Hollywood reporter.

What's the trailer that just got released?

But also because of such a huge kind of energy around video creation and black creators, we can curate, engage with people, with web series, all the new web series releases and things like that.

And then we've tested a lot of things like e-commerce and others.

So that's kind of the world that we are right now.

you decide what to test out or what to sort of keep and what to kill?

Yeah it's very much based off of numbers.

It's very much based off of like speed of traction and then comparing different things at once.

So what, for example, with our women's brand, which started off called Blavity Lifestyle.

So it was just a separate Instagram account because we knew that, you know, if we posted women and their afros and all this stuff on our Blavity account, all the guys would be like, ah, right?

And so we're like, okay, cool, we'll create a separate brand, it deserves its own space, it deserves its own voice.

And then that was actually growing faster than Blavity.

So, and we're like, oh, of course it is, right?

And we're very much like, you know, do you, and I'm a woman, right?

And so then we're like, okay, well, we'll launch a Twitter account, right?

And We didn't have separate websites at all.

It was all going back to Blavity.com, but we had separate voices on social.

And then from there, we're like, okay, well, maybe we should start writing content specifically for this demographic.

And then we said, okay, well, maybe we should just launch a separate brand because some of the things that we wanna do really don't fit under the Blavity brand.

Like if I wanna release, like make a notebook that's like a day planner that's talking about living your best life for women and like put Afros in the cover and all this stuff, that's not going to work on Blavity, it warrants its own brand.

And so we went back to the drawing board and said, okay, what would a company for black women look like?

What would a brand for black women look like?

And then we went back from the scratch and designed it and launched.

So you have all these from properties, and so kind of longer term, are you just gonna keep experimenting and see what works, or are you driving towards a specific, 1 specific goal?

Yeah, so the future of Blavity, like way far away from now, is that Blavity is a brand that when you see it, or you feel it, or you're around it, you know exactly what you're gonna get and it's positive impression and energy around black people.

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Morgan DeBaun on Reaching 20M Millennials - With Kat Manalac at the Female Founders Conference