As hundreds of athletes from around the world gathered in Paris last month, a smaller gathering of entrepreneurs was happening, spearheaded by Pharrell Williams.
Two Atlanta-based founders were part of the group, dining with Williams and other executives of the luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, connecting with former Olympians, billionaire investors and French entrepreneurs.
The trip to Paris was paid for and organized by Black Ambition, a nonprofit initiative founded by Williams in 2020 based on the premise that ambition is limitless, but access is not. It invests in Black, Hispanic and HBCU founders, provides mental health support for entrepreneurs and connects them to potential corporate sponsors and future investors.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
In February 2023, Williams, a Grammy award-winning musician, designer and entrepreneur, was named Louis Vuitton men’s creative director and now lives full-time in Paris. He had been wanting to figure out a way to extend the work of Black Ambition to his new home, Felecia Hatcher, CEO of Black Ambition, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
So, in the opening days of the Olympics, from July 31 to Aug. 3, 50 French and seven U.S. entrepreneurs connected in both luxury and startup spaces, all culminating in a Black Ambition-run pitch competition for the French entrepreneurs.
There was a reception at the LVMH hub for the luxury group’s brands, a dinner at the family home of Louis Vuitton and meetings at Station F, an entrepreneurial space that bills itself as the “world’s largest startup campus.”
The Olympics served as both backdrop and metaphor for the events.
“[Athletes are] carrying their cultures on their back in the road to the Olympics, and they are building and working on things much bigger than themselves,” Hatcher said. “That also represents entrepreneurs … what they’re doing, what they’re building, oftentimes with nothing and having to turn it into something.”
Fostering connections
For Brianna Arps, the Atlanta-based founder of fine fragrance brand Moodeaux, the trip was a “full-circle moment.”
Arps officially launched her company in October 2021, initially funding it by liquidating her 401(k), using her savings and the income from consulting gigs to get her fragrance brand off the ground. But last November, she won $100,000 from Black Ambition. Months later, she was traveling to the birthplace of the fragrance industry.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
“For them to say, ‘We want to take you to that place so that you can see what you can truly become,’ you know, and it wasn’t just let’s take you to Paris, let’s take you with Louis Vuitton, and let’s take you with LVMH, the people who own brands like Sephora,” felt full circle, Arps said.
Maïré Bavarday-Rosa, co-founder and CEO of ECOMSPACES, was also on the trip. She was the second-place winner last November, getting $250,000 from Black Ambition.
In Paris, she spoke on a panel with Marie-José Pérec, a French Olympic champion who hails from Guadeloupe like Bavarday-Rosa, dined with billionaire investors, made connections with soon-to-be clients and met potential future corporate sponsors.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
“I talked, indeed, to a couple of investors who are highly interested in ECOMSPACES,” Bavarday-Rosa said.
“I felt like they were after us. It wasn’t like, oh, we’re looking for investors. It was the other way around and that felt really good, because now I’m in a position where I can take my time and get to know these investors and not rush to get money from them.”
Investment is incredibly important for founders, particularly Black and brown entrepreneurs, as the accelerant that fuels entrepreneurship. But robust connections are necessary to build a sustainable company, too.
Hatcher said it is important founders have “people that can literally put you on or one phone call away from the exact thing that you need.”
“If you’re knocking on Walmart’s door for two years, as opposed to someone can pick up a phone call and in five minutes get you in front of the person that you need or help you close that deal, it changes everything, because time is a commodity that none of us get back,” she said.
In Paris, the entrepreneurs got to meet with prospective investors, like the founders of restaurant chain Panda Express, and potential corporate sponsors like Comcast, Hatcher said.
But both Bavarday-Rosa and Arps said the best part of the trip was the connections with other entrepreneurs.
The two had met before going on this trip together, but it wasn’t until being in Paris that they decided to formally go into business together. ECOMSPACES will soon ship and fulfill orders for Moodeaux, Bavarday-Rosa said.
Facing pushback
Black Ambition was founded specifically to help Black and brown founders. It has invested in 101 U.S.-based entrepreneurs and recently began expanding its programming to other parts of the world – Colombia, Ghana, Brazil and now France.
Though the programming is glamorous, behind the scenes, operating has been harder “with the constant distractions of what is happening,” Hatcher said.
Lawsuits and threats against DEI programs and shareholders attempting to force changes to diversity initiatives have contributed to a chilling environment for corporate diversity initiatives, which were intended to help address the vast disparities in funding that exist for entrepreneurs of color.
Opponents to DEI initiatives see them as a form of discrimination based on race, sex or orientation, that may exclude men, white people or straight employees.
“You end up diverting resources and also mental capacity towards something that we should not be fighting in 2024,” Hatcher said. “We get 1% of capital, and they want that too … It’s very disheartening, very troubling and very, very scary times ahead.”
And in France, entrepreneurs of color face challenges, too. The French government does not collect statistics on race or religion, ostensibly because of the country’s policy of secularism and the idea that people are French no matter other identities, but some critics say the lack of official data prevents a robust examination of discrimination.
Arps said the French entrepreneurs she met told her that being proudly Black and ambitious would be a “faux pas.”
“There is a glass ceiling in Paris, and they don’t want you to talk about racial issues,” Arps said.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Even bringing the Black Ambition pitch competition to Paris was met with pushback, Hatcher explained.
“There were so many people that told us not to come to Paris, that it would be impossible to do what we were trying to do,” she said.
But she felt the event successfully supported diverse entrepreneurs, a sentiment Bavarday-Rosa echoed.
“The event had so much traction … so many people came from far away. They came from the overseas territories, they spent money to come because they wanted to be part of this,” she said.
“People had hope that, OK, we’ve got people backing us up, we’re not invisible anymore.”
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