The First Startup

While interning at a middle-market private equity firm, I discovered something unexpected. As I sourced companies and worked on LBO transactions, I found myself more fascinated by the founders' stories than the deals themselves. I loved hearing how different entrepreneurs built their companies from nothing, and I realized I wanted to be there at the beginning of these journeys, not just at the exit. The partners at the firm gave me straightforward advice: if I wanted to be an investor, I could choose the traditional path of consulting or banking—or I could become an operator first. Even though I got an offer from the PE firm, I knew the operator was what I wanted I believed that building something from scratch would teach me invaluable lessons about the founder's journey and make me a more effective investor down the line. My entrepreneurial journey began with a mission to tackle the growing problem of loneliness in our world. While I did thorough customer research and truly understood the problem, I stumbled into one of my first major mistakes: outsourcing the UI design for our mobile app to a design firm.

This expensive lesson quickly taught me that I needed a technical co-founder. After exhausting LinkedIn, YC co-founder match, and countless other platforms, the breakthrough came through my friend and would be co-founder, Taylor. Taylor introduced me to Meier, a talented developer from the University of Denver who was already working at a startup. Meier saw the vision and joined what would become NewAve (though we went through some questionable names first—Blooom anyone). In the beginning, I made the classic mistake of trying to build a business before we had a great product. I believed in the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) mantra, but consumer tech taught me a harsh lesson: users expect a Minimum Expected Product. They don't care if you have raised $20k or if you are a public company. This reality hit hard when we launched at the University of Alabama. We had partnerships with bars and ambassadors and we gained 1,500 users overnight in Tuscaloosa, but our product wasn't ready for that scale.

The gap between user expectations and our product reality became glaringly obvious. Despite raising an angel round and nearing a VC check, I faced a humbling realization. As a Black founder from Alabama, not from a target school where startup knowledge flows freely, I had a steep learning curve ahead. We had great pieces—an ambassador program, a free High Noon partnership—but without a great product, none of it mattered. Then came a pivotal meeting with Derek Brown. His opening line, "We are going to be competitors," turned into a conversation that would change everything. After two coffee meetings, he offered to acqui-hire NewAve and bring me onto his team at Bunches. Making the decision to sell was like giving up a child. I had investors to consider, including Mac Dunbar, who had believed in me enough to invest after just a week of knowing me at his $20B investment firm. Through prayer and countless conversations with co-founders and investors, we decided to move forward with the acqui-hire. Looking back, joining Bunches was the right call. Learning from a tech veteran who had "seen it all" accelerated my growth in ways that struggling alone never could. While I sometimes wonder what NewAve could have become, I know I'm a better leader, product builder, and growth engineer because of this decision.

My startup journey taught me that sometimes the best way forward is to let go. It's not about giving up—it's about recognizing when a different path might lead to better growth. Today, I carry these lessons with me, grateful for both the struggles and the wisdom they brought.