I'm sure that many of you caught the CNN documentary, Black in America 4, about African-American tech entrepreneurship. Over the last 30 years, billions of dollars of wealth have been created in the computer and Internet booms, but for the most part African-Americans have been left out. The documentary quotes the CB Insights’ Human Capital Venture Report that surveyed companies that had just secured their first round of venture capital funding (i.e. Series A funding). They found that of the 185 Internet startups receiving series A funding in the first half of 2010, only 1% were by African Americans. There will be a new wave of wealth generation in the coming mobile boom. Will African-Americans again be left out?

The next wave of wealth generation is mobile. Top-grossing apps are already earning $3 million a month (http://bit.ly/tVHaiX) and contrary to the best intentions of Michael Arrington there are Black tech entrepreneurs. What? We are developing the web series to prove it. What? That there are Black tech entrepreneurs. What? Say what again, I dare you, I double dare you! What? There are Black tech entrepreneurs and we speak programming motherfucker!

In the documentary Vivek Wadhwa, an Indian-American tech entrepreneur and professor at Duke University said, “Can I be critical about the community? You folks don’t help each other. In some parts of America you have this entitlement attitude like we’ve been discriminated against, ancestors came as slaves, therefore America owes us back, and so on and so on. And that’s what’s holding the community back. You know my community did the exact opposite. We didn't -- we basically said, all right, there's a problem here. We'll fix it ourselves.” There is definitely merit to this criticism.

Robert Scoble posted a podcast about the documentary where he stressed the culture problems, especially the lack of exposure that young African-Americans have to the tech community. I tend to agree. Many African-Americans believe there are wealth opportunities in sports and entertainment because of the examples of success. This year Forbes listed Tyler Perry as the highest paid man in entertainment and Oprah Winfrey as the highest paid woman in entertainment, both African-Americans. Tiger Woods, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are among the highest paid athletes.

The stories of African-American athletes and entertainers are well-known. Young people need good stories about tech entrepreneurship to inspire them to enter the field. So, we are developing a web series about African-Americans entrepreneurs in New York City. As Mark Turner writes in The Literary Mind:

Narrative imagining—story--is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend on it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining.... Most of our experience, our knowledge and our thinking is organized in stories.

Very few people in the entertainment industry really understand technology and very few in technology really understand entertainment. That was one of the gifts of Steve Jobs. He learned a great deal about the entertainment industry through his investment in Pixar. In addition to many of the elements of future Apple products being inspired from what he learned from being involved in the entertainment industry, most of his wealth actually came not from Apple but from selling Pixar to Disney. According to Forbes both the highest-paid man and the highest-paid woman in entertainment are African-American, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey respectively. There may be great opportunities for African-Americans to integrate entertainment and technology.

According to a TED talk given by Ken Robinson, "All kids have tremendous talents and we squander them pretty ruthlessly.... We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children." Robinson also gave a talk at the RSA where he pointed out that our education system was designed in the 19^th Century and is not properly preparing our society to meet the challenges of the 21^st Century. So we are also giving back to the community by holding a summer program to teach young people how to develop mobile apps (http://bit.ly/pO0IpJ).