City Startup Labs, Inc.

City Startup Labs’ (CSL) is applying for the Elevate Prize to provide new career options through inclusive entrepreneurship for formerly incarcerated persons (FIP). In particular, our ReEntry Entrepreneurship Program (REEP) plans for FIP to design, develop and deliver customer-centric digital technology services within digitally divided communities in Charlotte, NC. The lack of access to technology services within these communities was amplified during the COVID-19 crisis, where the supply of multi-service providers did not effectively meet demand. This prize will allow CSL/REEP to train and deploy a new class of entrepreneurs and innovators to create new business opportunities for delivering robust solutions to address this challenge within communities and among populations presently experiencing a digital divide. 

This investment will allow CSL/REEP to jump-start a social enterprise centered on the aforementioned digital tech services initiative, which includes the training, apprenticeship, entrepreneurial activity and employment of FIP to meet the digital divide challenge in Charlotte and elsewhere where service lags demand. This divide goes beyond mere access and adoption of broadband connectivity or the availability of tech devices. We imagine REEP playing a pivotal role with end-to-end support of citizen-customers, who are often undervalued and underserved - think Geek-Squad in the 'hood.

After over two decades working with amazing Black media entrepreneurs and witnessing first-hand the power of Black business development, I started CSL initially to get Black male millennials off the sidelines and into the game of entrepreneurship. As a Baby-Boomer, I wanted to bridge the generational divide and bring my experiences from the Black Power movement, the Golden Era of Black media and a long lineage of social justice dating back to my Great Grandmother from the early 1900s, to bear on behalf of this generation of new business owners. 

I frame this work as “context and continuity” — the context has everything to do with why Black folks were the backbone for the wealth built in the country and are unable to make up any ground in realizing their representative share of that wealth. Continuity is about the legacy that these young entrepreneurs inherit from a long line of builders, makers, inventors and business owners stretching back before the country’s founding.

I envision a future of experimentation with new ideas and innovations, fostering entrepreneurship, where it can be a tool for developing human and social capital and a direct path to wealth creation and restorative justice. 

FIP face a myriad of obstacles to successful reentry due to the stigma of a criminal record. In spite of "ban the box" efforts to remove the prior convictions question from job applications, a criminal record reduces the likelihood of job callbacks by nearly 50%. Furthermore, the unemployment rate for FIP is nearly five times higher than the rate for the general population. Additionally, in the first full year post-release, approximately 49% of former prisoners earn less than $500, and 32% earn between $500 and $15,000, while only 20% earn more than $15,000.

CSL is closing the entrepreneurial divide, with returning citizens as well as with young black men and women who are often overlooked in the conversation about cultivating and nurturing entrepreneurship and innovation. CSL has created a new class of entrepreneurs through its Center of Excellence for Entrepreneurial Competency, Leadership and Innovation (CoE), and REEP by providing a rigorous, accelerated, progressive and disciplined approach to developing entrepreneurial talent, on-trend skills training and new venture creation.

At scale, we want to demonstrate that REEP can accrue benefits over time to communities beyond Charlotte alone, including a measurable economic boost, reduced FIB unemployment, and increased neighborhood safety.

This solution has the potential for the socio-economic transformation of FIP, and a new model for restorative justice, where FIP are at the vanguard of providing reconciliation through the restoration of trust and creation of economic vitality within the communities they return to. 

This model includes delivering training (with micro-credentialing), apprenticing and enterprise deployment through social ventures across several verticals (e.g., digital tech services, logistics, renewable energy, etc.). Each vertical can potentially scale beyond the prototype, by addressing similar needs across multiple markets.

Resulting enterprises can be cooperatively developed, owned and operated by FIP entrepreneurs in partnership with CSL, which provides templated frameworks for the enterprise, technical assistance, management, and consolidated back-office services. Each social venture onboards, trains and provides opportunities for returning citizens to work as employees or independent contractors. Others may instead choose to work with 2nd chance employers utilizing the learned skill.

This transformative approach carries the responsibilities of running businesses as social enterprises or cooperatives, which provide training, apprenticeships and employment opportunities within a supportive infrastructure. They are operationalized under a philosophy and employment model whereupon FIP take ownership, governance and responsibility for their own rehabilitation and supports a new idea of restorative justice.

Since 2014, CSL has been the preeminent accelerator for aspiring African American millennial entrepreneurs in Greater Charlotte. Nearly 80% of the participants confirmed that the CoE helped them reduce or remove barriers to starting or expanding their business. Early this year, CSL acquired the digital assets of Black Tech Interactive/Black Tech CLT in order to recalibrate our work with millennials to specifically focus on developing Black tech talent and incubating high-tech commercialized ventures.

With seed funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the United Way of the Central Carolinas, CSL piloted REEP in 2018 to understand whether entrepreneurship can be a viable alternative to standard employment for FIP, an antidote to possible recidivism and a tool for restorative justice. Justice-involved persons are disproportionately African Americans and during the REEP pilot, 98% of our participants were Black.
Throughout 2020, CSL has received positive community receptivity for the implementation of REEP in Charlotte along with the Mecklenburg County’s Office of Criminal Justice Services, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, Digital Charlotte, the Charlotte Area Fun, the City of Charlotte, the Mecklenburg County District Attorney and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Office of Research and Economic Development.