Last November, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien explored Silicon Valley through the eyes of eight African-American entrepreneurs. All participants of the inaugural NewMe Accelerator class, the Black in America: The New Promised Land — Silicon Valley cast invited viewers into their journey as startup founders competing in an industry comprised of less than 1% of entrepreneurs that look like them. BlackEnterprise.com caught up with the tech innovators to see what they’ve been up to one year later.
AisleFinder, also known as the GPS of the Supermarket, is the brain child of Curtiss Pope, a former programmer at Microsoft and Yahoo. AisleFinder is a location-based app that makes it easier to find the items on your shopping list by providing the exact aisle numbers. The app is available in more than 6,300 supermarkets in the U.S. and Canada, including well over 100 Walmart supercenter locations. Over the last four years, Pope has been able to grow his user base from 40 to over 64,000, as of January 2012, and much of that growth is due to resources he attracted taking part in programs like the NewMe Accelerator. Although CNN only chose to cover a select number of NewMe participants, you can catch Pope’s story here as he reflects on the accelerator program and gives his take on Silicon Valley diversity.
For me, Silicon Valley is…
Home. I was born and raised here. I was one of the local startups selected to be in the accelerator.
Since NewMe ended…
AisleFinder is still my main project, but I have a few other ideas that I’ve been able to get off the ground. I’ve been building a Supermarket API , and GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) checker.
Since day one my company has been …
Profitable because of the Supermarket API, which we sell to developers and retailers. It is the company’s profit center. The business model for the company has changed quite a bit. AisleFinder is not the money maker; the API is the moneymaker. Because of it we have a more targeted way to generate revenue. We make enough to support our operations currently.
The best business advice I received from a NewMe mentor…
There are no rules. I don’t remember who said it but once I heard that I had to realign my thinking.
Blacks in Silicon Valley are…
More visible, but I’m not sure if the environment is better or worse for blacks here. There are still a lot of people crying bloody murder about racism in tech, but I’ve never had that issue and I have lived here my whole life. There are a ton of blacks here, but I query as to what they are doing and what companies they are involved in.
The solution for increasing the number of blacks in Silicon Valley is…
Ultimately: solving hard problems, which is something that people shy away from. They would rather spend their time and resources trying to invent the next twitter instead of building apps that help people track their blood sugar. Focusing on solving bigger problems is where it’s at. I always feel as though thinking big is the solution to [diversity].
When it comes to shedding a light on the problem, the Black in America documentary did…
The same thing as a walk for cancer does.  It increases awareness and gets people that are concerned or have been impacted to build stronger support networks. I never looked at it as something that would solve all the issues around the subject. When was the last time a tv show did that?
What could it have done differently? Not focusing on…
Participants who have raised substantial amounts of capital crying about how the world is against them and how they’re being discriminated against because of being black. I got two words for you: Shut up. I know that seems overly critical, but others were thinking it too. I feel its important to speak my mind.
As a NewMe Accelerator graduate, I gained…
A great network of determined people.