The ProspEQUITY Collective

The ProspEQUITY Collective supercharges impactful business networks & resources for underserved Founders and Funders through a human-centric and technologically automated meritocracy ecosystem. Through the use of our platform, users enter a qualitative incentivization structure that enables them to gain access to opportunities, resources and funding based on meaningful & verified digital and in-person network engagements. 

There are a staggering amount of resources and programming available globally to underserved Founders and Funders, and yet awareness and access aren’t enough to ensure long-term viability and growth. Scalability of quality networks is predicated on social capital requiring a uniquely human-centered design to qualify and strengthen those communities. Our ProspEQUITY solution, integrates real-world technological community incentive structures (Ex.NFC & QR codes for in-person Proof of Attendance rewards) with AI automated results-driven data analytic tracking to facilitate a visible and meaningful real-world network and accountability structure. Our solution bridges the gap between resources and the activated networks required to truly utilize and maximize those resources. 

Founders and Funders enter the ProspEQUITY Collective network via a free platform membership with access to diverse databases of compiled business resources (vendors, funding, founders, career talent) searchable by community identifiers such as: BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Woman & Non-Binary, and/or economically disadvantaged). Real-world community participation qualifies members for higher level opportunities. Our programming tracks consist of (1) Network (2) Advisory (3) Funding, where members identifying from underserved communities can present themselves as Founders, Funders and/or career talent looking for Advisory, funding or employment opportunities with meritocracy verification related to network engagements.

In a landscape of well-intentioned, but often competing non-profit resources which tend to specialize in solutions to fractionalized pieces of a problem, our ProspEQUITY solution seeks to maximize the efficacy of these individual resources into something collectively powerful beyond measure. Instead of competing, our platform AI technology analyzes, organizes and qualifies available resources for underserved business owners (Founders), Career Talent and Funders, creating a free master blockchain index and scalable networking track-based incentivization system to complement the utilization of these resources. We believe that a well-chosen blockchain-based solution will aid in the democratization of access to these resources while also providing a public verification system that ensures a higher level of trustworthiness and accountability metric on behalf of those resources. 

While resource gathering and qualification systems lay a basic framework for the opportunities we plan to make available, the real leveraging of new technology exists within our incentive structure. The ProspEQUITY membership system is aimed at encouraging the development and engagement of quality individuals, businesses and funders who not only thrive in their own right, but additionally continue to contribute back to the development of a successful, impactful and scalable network. 

The ProspEQUITY Collective platform membership ecosystem consists of a series of automated rewards and incentives (publicly displayed and endorsed), starting with the initial Network Layer. Founders, Funders and Career Talent have the ability to earn meritocracy scores based on their involvement in virtual and real-world networking events, workshops, panels and advisory events. NFC tags, QR codes and generative NFT membership badges are awarded for real-world engagements and present data for automated digital participation scores that are visible across the ProspEQUITY Network platform. Consistently verified participants unlock higher level opportunities. Access to the Advisory and Funding tracks are predicated on meaningful participation on the Network track level. 

Once qualified for the Advisory track level, underserved Small Businesses and potential Advisors (Career Talent and Funders) gain access to pitching and advisory opportunities, where our ProspEQUITY Collective platform analyzes user data to present scores for potential collaborations. Through a series of virtual and in-person “speed dating” pitch events, our platform solution presents relational matches along with milestone guidelines. Successfully completed milestones reported by matched parties results in the execution of official Advisory positions and/or employment. 

While all members have access to the ProspEQUITY Collective Database, the Funding track allows for qualified Network members to contact one another for Funding objectives. In order to maintain an active score at the Funding track level, Founders and Funders are tasked with abiding by the following metric: Founders at a Series A or above level must have a min of 50% of their cap table represented by underserved community investors; Funders must have 50% of their investment portfolios representative of underserved community founders. A 3-5 year plan to move from 0-50% as a provisional member is allowable, with platform grant rewards available to members consistently north of this 50% metric.

Our target population is people who have historically been denied access to financial, educational and network resources necessary to grow their own businesses. This includes but is not limited to women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and economically disadvantaged populations who are entrepreneurs, founders, funders and/or career talent. 

With The ProspEQUITY Collective solution, we aim to create meaningful networks within and across underserved population identities to strengthen the ability for these communities to collectively elevate one another into a prosperous and more equitable space. Outside of our Network, Advisory and Funding tracks, we plan on encouraging & incentivizing the building of local community and demographic ProspEQUITY chapters to account for any gaps in education or access to resources that our main platform tracks might have.

Through both our work with Motion Creative and our co-founder’s networks, we have access to communities & programming heavily entrenched in the BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Women & Non-Binary and Economically Disadvantaged Youths demographics both in the U.S. and globally. We plan on rolling out programming and resources within our existing networks initially.  

There is a massive gap between start-up resources for small businesses and growth resources, if underserved populations are even aware that these resources exist at all. In order to leverage available resources for underserved businesses to thrive and grow, they need not only access to those resources, but have the ability to participate in a network that continues to support their growth through various stages. Our ProspEQUITY Collective tech solution not only accounts for stage growth at the initial Network, Advisory and Funding stages — but supports the building of an impactful community within that pipeline that enables small businesses, founders, career talent, and funders to share back into that growth ecosystem.

Our solution is in alignment with a few of the Challenge Dimensions, including (1) Business Development & Procurement - for which our Network & Advisory track qualification systems and engagement incentive structures provides for a uniquely high value referral resource and accessibility both within underserved population networks and cross network (2) Support Scaling - our Network, Advisory and Funding track levels are all aimed at providing long-term resources that support business growth across various stages of growth (3) Data and Impact - Our ability to gather and analyze data and metrics across each of our tracks in addition to our AI resource foundational resource qualification process allows for us to constantly be able to improving our incentivization structures to enhance members growth and collaboration opportunities across all growth stages.

Psychology Today cites a 2018 study that delineates a powerful indicator of community resilience as community cohesion. If, according to Forbes, 99.9% of all businesses in the U.S. are small businesses, but they only account for 44% of all economic activity with 65% of small businesses failing within ten years, then we are failing to provide the meaningful resources for these small businesses to thrive. We aren’t facilitating a cohesive network structure for success. 

When we analyze business from a demographics perspective, in 2022 women represented less than 2% of VC funded companies, even though women represented just over 50% of the population, with an additional study finding that over 88% of C-Suite executives of Fortune 500 companies were caucasian males that same year. 

The ProspEQUITY Collective’s theory of change is that underserved populations which represent the backbone of small businesses are only underserved by defacto societal design. Our solution aims to tackle this problem through creating a solid ecosystem for community cohesion to thrive. Our approach is community-centric & humanistic in its design by rewarding real-world community building, utilizing technology and data combined with a solid sociological-behavioral incentivization strategy.

In the shorter term, we serve our target community by building trustworthy networks and a scalable ecosystem that provides resources for consistent and sustainable growth. The ripple effect and longer outcome is breaking the Fortune 500 ceiling and having our economy at scale represent the U.S. population more meaningfully based on a true meritocracy. 

Currently: 100+ partial solution. Our “humanistic” programming side likely serves businesses in the hundreds via our educational programming, panels, workshops and scholarships from our Motion Creative current initiatives which include: (1) Amplify & Level Up national workshops, panels and writer camps tarteging BIPOC, Women & Non-Binary and LGBTQ+ (2) Web3 Initiatives from Blu3 DAO Ethglobal scholarships advisory for women & non-binary to Web3 Music Rights group AMAs & Think Tank events aimed a arming small businesses in the creator economy with knowledge and network around negotiating their rights within emerging tech and finally our “Beyond Extraordinary” tech conference stage take-overs where we feature women & non-binary tech entrepreneurs & hold office pitch hours with VCs. 

As for the tech/platform component of our solution, we are in prototype phase, with our current investor DB (focused on sub 50 million investment brackets) at 32K being qualified to identify underserved investors. Through our programming, we have realized that Telegram, Social Media, DAO Tooling and newsletter services aren’t enough to really create the meaningful impact we would like to have in supercharging our present and prospective community targets.

Year One: Target is to provide meaningful, measurable growth for 200-300+ small businesses within our ProspEQUITY platform

Five Years: 500-1K small businesses who will have experienced meaningful, measurable growth with regards to everything ranging from finding career talent, advisors and funding to scale and grow their businesses and the ProspEQUITY network of Founders & Funders. 

The community we serve is Founders, Funders & Career Talent from under-represented communities who have historically and statistically experienced difficulty getting the opportunity to thrive from start-up through to Fortune 500s level. 

An initial community with our in-person programming was focused around women in tech globally with on-site education for Web3 hackathons. We took 250 women & non-binary on scholarship to global hackathons with a win rate of 97%. Our all-women hack teams were some of the first all-women teams to win. We initially developed our solution to help them navigate the VC/Accelerator attention and lack of network resources to help them go from prototype to start-up & to provide educational opportunities. We also developed our solutions after a year’s worth of feedback from under-represented communities of funders who were experience a challenge in deal flow from the same groups that were experiencing the same problem with in-kind funders.   

We build trust with our community by continuing to be visible and provide meaningful resources in addition to continuing to amplify our impact through our organizational partnership strategy. Nearly all of the events, workshops and scholarship trips that we have thrown across the U.S. and globally over the past few years, we have partnered with organizations that are mission aligned. This collaborative approach has amplified our outreach across all of our programming categories. The pillars of Motion Creative programming include: Education, Networking & Advocacy for underserved populations. All of our programming has been free for participants. 

Our main desire in launching The ProspEQUITY Collective platform, is to increase our impact by utilizing technology to supercharge many of the collective community resources & networks that our organization and solution co-founders have access to and continue to build. 

For the next year, we want to see our in-person programming & regional chapters increase tenfold, both across the U.S. and globally, with increased metrics for career talent getting hired and added to founders teams, in addition to an increase in underserved small businesses receiving the support and funding they need to experience meaningful growth at a larger scale. Within 5 years, we’d like to see 50% of cap tables for these companies as they approach series A represented by underserved investors and we’d like to see 50% of funders’ portfolios in our network including underrepresented businesses. 

We plan to achieve these goals with the launch of our ProspEQUITY Collective platform and organizing our existing and prospective partner community programming into meaningful small business growth tracks (Network, Advisory and Funding).

We are applying to the Truist Foundation Inspire Awards in the hopes of getting some amazing minds on our ProspEQUITY Collective solution. Funds are always useful, but the collaboration with Truist Foundation and  MIT Solve and the ability to get access to some of the best minds in the world regarding how to leverage technology and human behavioral sciences towards incentivizing a truly meaningful growth ecosystem for underserved Founders and Funders - is an incredible opportunity. 

A stamp of approval from this awards program would also help us with regards to our barriers where larger non-profits might be hesitant to trust our solution without it. This endorsement, if we were to win, even at the runner up levels, would also aid in our ability to leverage the confidence in our project to solve for some of the technological barriers as it would be easier to find partner organizations providing tech to underserved populations willing to work with us with this award attached.

We will always be interested in Human Capital assistance, as that is the basis for the meaningful community/network resource that we are seeking to create. As for Legal and Regulatory, small businesses are always in need of this, and as we expand our programming nationally and globally, we will need an expanded understanding of different restrictions in different territories for these resources to be deployed and these opportunities to grow. 

With regards to Monitoring and Evaluation – our tech solution and platform will garner us a plethora of data that is only as useful as the brilliant minds we are able to put towards analyzing it. And we will need accurate interpretations of this data to continue to enhance the efficacy and quality of the membership Network and its assumptive meritocracy incentives within the ProspEQUITY Collective’s ecosystem goals.

Lasly, with regards to Product and Service Distribution, we want our solution to reach as many underserved populations in need as possible. Our core model is predicated upon partnering with existing organizational resources, so we will need to be able to stay upon trusted resources that are both existing and emerging to maintain a meaningful relevance to the population we are serving.