December 6, 2021 • 26 mins
Farah Allen has over 17 years of experience in media technology leadership. She is the CEO & founder of "The Labz." The Labz is a music collaboration platform that tracks, stores, and protects all your ownership rights as you unite your creative ideas with other music creators' ideas.
The Labz is backed by blockchain technology and has launched successfully from the creative community. In addition, she's been the President and CEO of the Allen Group IT Management and was the Atlanta Journal Constitution's 2019 Woman of the Year for Technology.
Farah breaks down the value of blockchain technology in protecting your intellectual properties, how blockchain can solve the copyrighting problem, and how she has benefitted from jumping into something new before others do.
Host IG: @itstanyatime
Guest IG: @ceofarah1
Guest Website: https://www.thelabz.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, money movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the Kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. By Hey, everyone, welcome
to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. Let me
(00:22):
tell you, I'm here and I'm ready for abundance. I'm
ready for wealth, success and everything that brings for us,
the kind that only the right business model can bring you.
We've already dove into the enigma that is cryptocurrency and
with the help of our expert and several other guests,
we were really able to get an understanding of what
cryptocurrency and blockchain actually are, which is great, But what's
(00:46):
the point. How do we use this? How does this
apply in our lives? Here's the thing. Even on a
basic day to day level, cryptocurrency can be used. Major
companies such as Microsoft, A, T and T, and even
some Burger Kings are accepting cryptocurrency as payment. It's slowly
creeping into our everyday lives, and we have to wonder
why these companies see something like cryptocurrency and blockchain as
(01:09):
an asset to their day to day practices and their
p and l's. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban stated that
the franchise would be accepting three different types of cryptocurrency
because of its usage benefit to society. But let's be real,
there has got to be some major benefits to the
Mavericks business model as well, and I want to know
(01:31):
what those are to help us gain an understanding of
how we should really be framing our mindsets around the
use of blockchain and cryptocurrency when it comes to entrepreneurship.
She is the CEO and founder of the Labs, an
interactive events platform company that makes it easy for brands
to create online interactive events. She's been the president and
CEO of the Allen Group I T Management, and was
(01:52):
the Atlanta Journal Constitutions two thousand and nineteen Woman of
the Year for Technology Fair. It's a pleasure to have
you back. It's always good to see you. Welcome, Welcome, welcome,
thank you, thank you. It's good to be here. Okay,
So I want to start off today because you know,
I have so many people on the Money Moves audience
that are curious about how to make the leap into entrepreneurship,
(02:13):
and you have done not only that, but you've also
used one of the hottest technologies blockchain and embedded that
into one of your first ventures. Can we talk about
how you took the leap into entrepreneurship and used blockchain
and how it feels to really dive into entrepreneurship. Yeah. So,
(02:34):
how I got in was because of my husband. He
was in the music industry, and um, I was just
surrounded by the problem with the music creators and their
I p and them, you know, really feeling you know,
salty of them the day because of the whole process
and technology not helping them with their professional responsibilities versus
(02:57):
their creative responsibility. It's so funny because I'm gonna off
you there and say this is the classic like Dreamer's dilemma, Like, oh,
this problem drives me crazy. I'm losing sleep over it.
If only this existed, and that is like the essence
of entrepreneurship, Like how do I change something in this world?
To build something from nothing and build something valuable? So
(03:17):
I mean, and it's in an industry as hot as
the music industry. I love it, so please, I can't
wait to hear more. Yeah, so, I felt a passion
for it. I'm a creator myself, you know, when architecture school,
I design. I was musical as well, playing instruments um
growing up and into college. So I understood the dilemma
(03:39):
and I wanted to to assist and bring my technology
skills to the table, and that's what I did. So
that's where it all started. I spent a lot of
time thinking about the problem, researching the problem customer discovery.
I mean, I know everything there was to know about
the industry, the technology and industry competitive of advantage, not
(04:01):
competitive advantage, like certain things that you as an entrepreneur
should know or research before you even start. You want
to make sure it's worth your time. Oh my gosh,
I have to pause you right there, because this is
like key for early stage entrepreneurs. You might have a
great idea. It might be amazing your mom, your girlfriend,
(04:21):
your husband is going to be like, oh, your baby
is so beautiful. This idea is just incredible. But customer discovery,
what you just said, they're actually doing the time to
research or people gonna pay for this? Is this something
that's like just nice to have or is this something
that people will pay you know, thousands of people, hundreds
of thousands of people, millions of people that you can
(04:41):
gain revenues. So I just love that you said that
because that's such a key to winning and creating a
winning business. That is so true. And you know what,
we kind of get salted because you know, growing out,
we're taught if you build it, they should come. Yeah. True,
Like not not for everything. It's not one, but all scenario,
(05:05):
especially if you're a technology company. If you build it
and you don't have a clue if people want to
buy it, you are out of a lot of money. Yes, time.
So the process of pressman discovery is so critical in
software development, hardware, any of those fields. I'd say, if
you build it, you need to make sure it's a market,
(05:27):
and it's a big market. I agree. I agree. Describe
how you built your company and you had this idea
and you know what was it about blockchain that you
felt could really help fix this problem in the music industry. Yeah.
So at the time I was doing it, one of
the big headlines or multiple headlines, were US folks being
(05:49):
sued because of copyright infringement, someone saying their band member
now wants the world ty checks and there's no proof
that that them or was even on the kend or
wrote anything. And um, that idea was really around, and
I my idea was really around how do we avoid
(06:11):
those scenarios where people don't remember, don't have any proof
of what actually should transpired during the creative process. It
was like, how do we have a trusted system with
doing this? And Shane was an obvious solution and people
just started talking about that in the music space, right.
(06:34):
I think there was like three companies at that time
solutions around it. And it wasn't anything around let's start
it from the beginning of the process. It was really
like this heavy duty, let's bring all the major record
labels together to solve the problem. I'm never working, but
(06:54):
my problem, my solution was really starting from the very
beginning and starting with it ratio process. And so that's
like a bunch of people in the studio working from
that process. So as you're creating, you're making these beats,
you're embedding it in the blockchain. Correct. It's so funny
because your example to me like really hit home. I'm
(07:14):
picturing a bunch of people in the studio. It's three am,
people are drinking, and then five years later someone pops
up and they're like I was there, and they're like
I don't remember, and all the time, and you know what,
majority of the time, it's not even the studio is
one place, right, you might say it a couple of
hours there, but the following days in the six months
(07:37):
that you're taking sometimes it is all on through file exchanges,
through text messaging, through through email. It's all over the place.
It's not just a studio problem. And so when I
really dug down research, it was a file sharing problem.
(07:57):
It was a writing word album there. And we work
our way into the studio and we make sure you
have a sign in of who actually is here, whether
they're contributed or not. H make sure you're you know,
if people are signing off their rights to actually owning
their work for hire, you know, knowing all these things beforehand,
(08:19):
keeping it in a good place and adding it as
a leisure was all that block chain brought to the table,
and that's why we used it. I love that, Okay,
just to go a little bit deeper into that for
those folks that are at home and they're thinking about, hey,
I'd love to build a business on the blockchain, and
there's trying to start a company. You've done it before.
(08:42):
Did you actually do the coding yourself or how did
you go about finding somebody to help you be the
CTO and create the technology to then embed into your business.
So my CTO I found after I came up with
the idea, and it's really not you don't start by
(09:04):
saying I want to use blockchain. You start by saying,
how are we going to solve the problem? Right? So
I got him based on the problem that and someone
reliable who can who can help me manage the technology
project out scale. All those contributes for good CTO and
then um, when we found out that hey, I think
(09:27):
we need to go in the direction of using blockchain,
we picked the technology or we picked um, we picked
the technology that C plus plus engineers that crypto that's
security like language, and they you know, got someone early
(09:48):
on to be a part of our our starting team,
and they learned because it was a part of the
code that they already knew. It was just there, you know,
just and figuring out how to implement it into our system.
So it wasn't us going out to find a block
for say a blockchain engineering at the time, there's like
(10:09):
a hundred of them. Uh, It was really us finding
someone with the skill set to learn and join our
team because we didn't have money to pay them like that,
that's what we did. Yeah, I mean, this is just
such a beneficial story because I think a lot of
people have an idea and they might have, you know,
incredible business acumen, but they get stuck on the fact
(10:32):
that they're like, I'm not technical, I can't code, So
how do I get to the next level? So you
sharing your story saying, look, I had to go out
and find somebody who I could give equity because I
had no money in the company, who believed in the
dream of what we were building, and together we could
then join forces. And that's you know, really the essence
of like early stage entrepreneurship. It's one person in their
(10:53):
idea of meeting another person and building together. So, UM,
thank you so much for sharing that, and I hope
that it motivates more people in our audience, UM to
really dive into entrepreneurship and not be afraid of technology
like the blockchain. So fair, take us back on your
entrepreneurial journey. Now you've built a beta product and you're
launching it. You've already told us and sort of given
(11:15):
us a little bit of the secret, like you've got
some heavy hitter customers like Comcast. But take us back
to those early days when you're an entrepreneur. You've got
this beta product, and then what like, what were the
next steps that you knew that you needed to do
to succeed? So my next steps were trying to get funding,
back to funding, but back to funding because UM, at
(11:39):
some point you're you're proven out the concept, which we did.
UM we went ahead and got some people to commit
to signing up the platform. We had beta users. Well
let me pause you pause you right there, because I
feel like people get stuck on this part too. We're
(11:59):
talking thing about getting users. How did you get users?
I know you were connected in the in the music industry,
but you know, like walk us through because people don't
realize the lifting that you have to do as an
entrepreneur um yourself. There's nobody else to do it. So
how did you go about getting your first set of
users to actually use the product? Partnered with UM the
(12:20):
music program at Georgia State Smart interns there, and the
interns got me in and they were plugging this the
technology and their studio, plugging it to their their teacher
and their professor. I became a regular at the school,
and um, folks that came on early onto my team
became regulars there and um that's how we we got
(12:42):
our first set of users. What a grind. Yeah, one school,
went to Morehouse, went to Spellman, went to Outside. You know,
the the younger crowd really brought it to the older
folks and made it something to it to do. I
love this because it speaks to the real truth of entrepreneurship.
(13:04):
Everyone thinks they're going to be an entrepreneur so that
they can like vacation on the beach, but really you
are like a door to door salesman, like every day
selling knives, like hey, knocking on the doors, you know,
and it's it's not cool like you were like I
was at the schools. You weren't chilling with Diddy at
bad Boy, like hey, you want to try my app?
You know, you get there, but it's it's a grind.
(13:24):
Tell us about a moment that you remember where you
were like Okay, I've done something really cool here, you
know that you can look back on and you were like,
huh wow. There's so many interesting little um experiences. Um.
You know, one of the things that really made me
say wow is I got to invite from NASA to
(13:49):
come to speak to them and consult with them on
music technology, as in NASA take me to outer space,
NASA face, NASA have flew me, flew me out? Will
you girl out to or UM Florida to discuss with
them how they can repurpose UM surveillance technology audio surveilance
(14:12):
technology to help musicians UM with their I P you know,
finding their music across the world. Okay, now that is surreal,
literally surreal. I'd be like, oh my gosh, I am
going to NASA some of the most highest technology, not
even on this Earth, because it's we're now talking about
like the universe. And they were like, we want to
(14:34):
know what you've built. Come on, black girl magic. That's incredible.
What you guys to invest in my company? You know,
like I hear front raising. Yeah did they invest? No, Well,
they wanted me to work on their project and um
uh oh. And the technology it was hard enough to
(14:58):
sell blockchain right for me to sell NASA technology surveillance
to studios and musicians. So I didn't think they were
they were a little bit before their time, you know,
maybe ten more years from now. Wow. And so I
mean even just you saying like before their time. You know,
there's so much time for people to get involved in blockchain.
(15:19):
I think it is going to be like our new
Internet revolution. You know. We talked about our age a
little bit back there, remembering when a t M started
popping up, you know, and there's kids today that can't
even remember what the Dewey decimal system was or you know,
life before the Internet. And I think this is going
to be the future for you know, blockchain. I remember
when I was at tech Square Labs. I had an
(15:40):
intern from Georgia Tech and you know, she was working
beside me, and I remember asking her to if she
could help me write a check. So I gave her
my paper check books for we were doing, you know,
um billing for tech Square Labs, and like five minutes
later she came back. She was like, I don't know
how to do this, And I think this is the
epitome of what you know, digital pay ments are going
(16:00):
to like one day no one's gonna remember you know,
cash money. And it seems like far in advance right now,
but we're getting there. We are here, and you know,
my my mom is texting me, hey, let let me
tell you about this crypto currency deal thing that I'm
I'm in. I'm like, wow, what are you talking about?
(16:21):
How did you get into this? So it's going beyond
the ages two and that's really good to see something progress.
Oh my gosh. I love that when you know it's something.
When are the older generation our parents are calling us
being like, oh, let me tell you about my crypto stocks.
It's real, guys, get on board. UM, I want to
(16:41):
take us back to NASA because I'm just fascinated with
that and I think that is just such an incredible story. Um,
you know, you built this company, You had this idea,
and all of a sudden you had a superstar like
NASA calling you to talk about what you, um, we're building.
When you walked in there, what did you show them?
Was it a demo? Was it dec Can you tell
us a little bit more about that? Um? The person
(17:04):
leading the project stow me pitch. They weren't in Atlanta
and they saw me pitch and they did the research
and I got emails, so I didn't really have to
They already knew about me before I got there. And
so what what they did? You're pitching to me? So
I was in the boardroom at the head of the
(17:25):
table as they gave me their power point pitch as
to batter and batter they were trying to sell you.
Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's a great story. I really
love that. If that is not motivation on this Money
Moves podcast, I don't know what is. I love it.
And you know what, you know as an entrepreneur, and
and you do grow um tremendously as a leader. But
(17:50):
as you're growing, it's the hardest stage. It's like trying
to be like a baby trying to walk. So when
this happened to me, guess what, I didn't even appreciate it.
I was worried about something else that it didn't register
me to to me that I was I've just been
flown out by Massa and I'm sitting here. I was,
you know almost. I mean now I can think back
(18:12):
and like, oh my god, I was not in the moment.
I know, and now I'm in the moment because I'm like,
I have grown from that that place. But entrepreneurs, please,
you know, this journey is a special. It's awesome and
you need to appreciate every moment. That's my lesson. But
I did not get to appreciate NASA the way I
(18:32):
should have in the moment, I could see that. And
there's a phrase that always comes to mind with me
when you ask an entrepreneur like, Hey, how's your day going,
and there's either one of two answers, like either entrepreneurship
is killing me or I'm killing it, and there's no
in between. There's days when everything is going great, and
then there's days when you're like everything is going horrible
because it's that high stress. And then there's those days
(18:54):
in the middle that you look back and you're like, wow,
I just went to NASA. That was pretty incredible. Um So,
Pharas we talk about your journey, and entrepreneurship is truly
a journey, can you tell us a little bit more
about what you're working on that? Yeah, so um It
told you about my fundraising efforts in my early stage. Unfortunately,
we didn't get to raise um enough for us to
(19:17):
continue going and getting those those folks onto the platform
using it. So we can, you know, slowly get into
what all says M collaboration products have to do. They
have to sustain long enough for it to be valuable.
We couldn't do that, so um as soon as we
had launched, we fortunately got with Abigail Disney and she
(19:41):
approached us to bring in film and television and theater,
those those type of UM creators into the platform because
they too have I P issues. But more so what
we've built with something beautiful and something that creatives wanted
to be inside of, and UM that was unique. So
(20:03):
the thing that we were like trying to trick the
musician studios ended up being the thing that other people resonated,
resonated with other people. So after we built, we did
the pilot with her. It was twenty early last year
where COVID hit and now our community that she brought
into to us, UM, which is level forward, is the
(20:26):
company they now needed to present their content. It wasn't
so much collaboration. Yeah, we need to survive and we
need to sell this movie, we need to sell this
play or present a script reading. And so the opportunity
for us to take this very creative environment and make
it a very creative, interactive event environment specifically for these
(20:47):
people who were very creative UM came about and so
we finished the the second we finished this kind of
pivot though it was the addition to UM take you know, collaborate,
and then when you're collaborating after you can create very
beautiful interactive experiences around your content. That finished UM in
(21:10):
September of last year. Between September and December, we had
over a hundred and fifty events. Wow, a hundred and
fifty events. It's a lot. That's a lot. And we
and in COVID we had political figures and in COVID
we sold films in there. Um we've you know, just
(21:30):
had some phenomenal events that were really cool and um
even this year we've worked with Amazon Studios that coming
to America too. We're working with Comcast Sports like I
mentioned before, and um doing Destroy Up Africa. And there's
just so many, so much opportunities. Now we've found another
(21:52):
great segue from an industry that's just now starting to
bo This segue is, hey, media entertainment customers absorb content different.
They don't like cop it, they don't like you know
very you know, I call it the your dad's management tool,
a right. They want something very that their customers are
(22:15):
used to sing, which is what they are used to
sing in in that launch party at the club or
you know us. So that that's what we've built and UM,
it's it's really it's really amazing to kind of see
the transition from from what I was doing before, which
was very it's very fulfilling, um to what we're doing now,
(22:39):
which you know we're estimating double digit multimillion dollar numbers
within the next year or two. Wow. Okay, that's incredible.
That's incredible, And I mean, I can't wait to have
you back again to talk more about this, because I
think you are the true epitome of an entrepreneur. You
started with an idea, you built a product, um, and
(23:00):
you've had to pivot and reiterate, but you're continually upon
continually applying this product into new markets and just growing
beyond and beyond. And I think you said what type
of revenue numbers, because that's pretty impressive. It's up there,
it's up there. It's it's really cool to to kind
of see success with looks your hard work kind of
(23:23):
kind of coming through, and um, you know, there's always
something to kind of watch out for, which is, hey,
this is new and you're still having to um get
into places that you're not going to see yourself in,
so still barriers to to break. That's why we're working
with the Caribbean. We're working with Jamaica, with Africa, and
(23:47):
we're you know, despite what, despite anything, work with who
wants to work with. You find coptunities. There's you know,
money all over the world. There's money the world. There's
any all over the world, and as an entrepreneurs your
job to find where it is and find solutions that
And I often say that you know, the biggest and
(24:10):
best companies like you have to dream really big because
the big you dream big, you solve problems that are
really big, and you solve problems that are applicable all
over the world. So, Fara, thank you so much, congratulations
and we will be following your journey. Fara, thank you
so much for joining us today and sharing your story.
It is also incredibly inspiring for our Money Moves audience
(24:31):
to get to hear stories of other black entrepreneurs who
are building incredible things in the technology world. So more
power to you, sister, and keep making those money moves.
Make sure you keep it locked in. We'll be solving
another one of your money related problems on Money Versus Moves.
Be sure to tune into the Money Moves podcast powered
by Greenwood. Here's a sneak peek of what's coming up next.
(24:54):
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to the Greenwood dot com and check out
the Money Moves podcast blogs. Stay tuned tomorrow and every
day this week. From very special Money Versus Moves. Our
letter that came in today is really about how do
you get someone from an entirely different generation to see
(25:15):
things your way? I already love it more from our
experts not only musicians, with artists, graphic artists. Anything to
be monetized on the blockchain, your artist currency. That's incredible
and you won't want to miss the one the only
angel rich party stack. You're essentially the reverse engineer the
(25:37):
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you get your podcasts from
Hey, money movers, Welcome back to Money Moves, the daily
podcast determined to give you the keys to the Kingdom
of financial stability, wealth and abundance. By Hey, everyone, welcome
to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenwood. Let me
(00:22):
tell you, I'm here and I'm ready for abundance. I'm
ready for wealth, success and everything that brings for us,
the kind that only the right business model can bring you.
We've already dove into the enigma that is cryptocurrency and
with the help of our expert and several other guests,
we were really able to get an understanding of what
cryptocurrency and blockchain actually are, which is great, But what's
(00:46):
the point. How do we use this? How does this
apply in our lives? Here's the thing. Even on a
basic day to day level, cryptocurrency can be used. Major
companies such as Microsoft, A, T and T, and even
some Burger Kings are accepting cryptocurrency as payment. It's slowly
creeping into our everyday lives, and we have to wonder
why these companies see something like cryptocurrency and blockchain as
(01:09):
an asset to their day to day practices and their
p and l's. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban stated that
the franchise would be accepting three different types of cryptocurrency
because of its usage benefit to society. But let's be real,
there has got to be some major benefits to the
Mavericks business model as well, and I want to know
(01:31):
what those are to help us gain an understanding of
how we should really be framing our mindsets around the
use of blockchain and cryptocurrency when it comes to entrepreneurship.
She is the CEO and founder of the Labs, an
interactive events platform company that makes it easy for brands
to create online interactive events. She's been the president and
CEO of the Allen Group I T Management, and was
(01:52):
the Atlanta Journal Constitutions two thousand and nineteen Woman of
the Year for Technology Fair. It's a pleasure to have
you back. It's always good to see you. Welcome, Welcome, welcome,
thank you, thank you. It's good to be here. Okay,
So I want to start off today because you know,
I have so many people on the Money Moves audience
that are curious about how to make the leap into entrepreneurship,
(02:13):
and you have done not only that, but you've also
used one of the hottest technologies blockchain and embedded that
into one of your first ventures. Can we talk about
how you took the leap into entrepreneurship and used blockchain
and how it feels to really dive into entrepreneurship. Yeah. So,
(02:34):
how I got in was because of my husband. He
was in the music industry, and um, I was just
surrounded by the problem with the music creators and their
I p and them, you know, really feeling you know,
salty of them the day because of the whole process
and technology not helping them with their professional responsibilities versus
(02:57):
their creative responsibility. It's so funny because I'm gonna off
you there and say this is the classic like Dreamer's dilemma, Like, oh,
this problem drives me crazy. I'm losing sleep over it.
If only this existed, and that is like the essence
of entrepreneurship, Like how do I change something in this world?
To build something from nothing and build something valuable? So
(03:17):
I mean, and it's in an industry as hot as
the music industry. I love it, so please, I can't
wait to hear more. Yeah, so, I felt a passion
for it. I'm a creator myself, you know, when architecture school,
I design. I was musical as well, playing instruments um
growing up and into college. So I understood the dilemma
(03:39):
and I wanted to to assist and bring my technology
skills to the table, and that's what I did. So
that's where it all started. I spent a lot of
time thinking about the problem, researching the problem customer discovery.
I mean, I know everything there was to know about
the industry, the technology and industry competitive of advantage, not
(04:01):
competitive advantage, like certain things that you as an entrepreneur
should know or research before you even start. You want
to make sure it's worth your time. Oh my gosh,
I have to pause you right there, because this is
like key for early stage entrepreneurs. You might have a
great idea. It might be amazing your mom, your girlfriend,
(04:21):
your husband is going to be like, oh, your baby
is so beautiful. This idea is just incredible. But customer discovery,
what you just said, they're actually doing the time to
research or people gonna pay for this? Is this something
that's like just nice to have or is this something
that people will pay you know, thousands of people, hundreds
of thousands of people, millions of people that you can
(04:41):
gain revenues. So I just love that you said that
because that's such a key to winning and creating a
winning business. That is so true. And you know what,
we kind of get salted because you know, growing out,
we're taught if you build it, they should come. Yeah. True,
Like not not for everything. It's not one, but all scenario,
(05:05):
especially if you're a technology company. If you build it
and you don't have a clue if people want to
buy it, you are out of a lot of money. Yes, time.
So the process of pressman discovery is so critical in
software development, hardware, any of those fields. I'd say, if
you build it, you need to make sure it's a market,
(05:27):
and it's a big market. I agree. I agree. Describe
how you built your company and you had this idea
and you know what was it about blockchain that you
felt could really help fix this problem in the music industry. Yeah.
So at the time I was doing it, one of
the big headlines or multiple headlines, were US folks being
(05:49):
sued because of copyright infringement, someone saying their band member
now wants the world ty checks and there's no proof
that that them or was even on the kend or
wrote anything. And um, that idea was really around, and
I my idea was really around how do we avoid
(06:11):
those scenarios where people don't remember, don't have any proof
of what actually should transpired during the creative process. It
was like, how do we have a trusted system with
doing this? And Shane was an obvious solution and people
just started talking about that in the music space, right.
(06:34):
I think there was like three companies at that time
solutions around it. And it wasn't anything around let's start
it from the beginning of the process. It was really
like this heavy duty, let's bring all the major record
labels together to solve the problem. I'm never working, but
(06:54):
my problem, my solution was really starting from the very
beginning and starting with it ratio process. And so that's
like a bunch of people in the studio working from
that process. So as you're creating, you're making these beats,
you're embedding it in the blockchain. Correct. It's so funny
because your example to me like really hit home. I'm
(07:14):
picturing a bunch of people in the studio. It's three am,
people are drinking, and then five years later someone pops
up and they're like I was there, and they're like
I don't remember, and all the time, and you know what,
majority of the time, it's not even the studio is
one place, right, you might say it a couple of
hours there, but the following days in the six months
(07:37):
that you're taking sometimes it is all on through file exchanges,
through text messaging, through through email. It's all over the place.
It's not just a studio problem. And so when I
really dug down research, it was a file sharing problem.
(07:57):
It was a writing word album there. And we work
our way into the studio and we make sure you
have a sign in of who actually is here, whether
they're contributed or not. H make sure you're you know,
if people are signing off their rights to actually owning
their work for hire, you know, knowing all these things beforehand,
(08:19):
keeping it in a good place and adding it as
a leisure was all that block chain brought to the table,
and that's why we used it. I love that, Okay,
just to go a little bit deeper into that for
those folks that are at home and they're thinking about, hey,
I'd love to build a business on the blockchain, and
there's trying to start a company. You've done it before.
(08:42):
Did you actually do the coding yourself or how did
you go about finding somebody to help you be the
CTO and create the technology to then embed into your business.
So my CTO I found after I came up with
the idea, and it's really not you don't start by
(09:04):
saying I want to use blockchain. You start by saying,
how are we going to solve the problem? Right? So
I got him based on the problem that and someone
reliable who can who can help me manage the technology
project out scale. All those contributes for good CTO and
then um, when we found out that hey, I think
(09:27):
we need to go in the direction of using blockchain,
we picked the technology or we picked um, we picked
the technology that C plus plus engineers that crypto that's
security like language, and they you know, got someone early
(09:48):
on to be a part of our our starting team,
and they learned because it was a part of the
code that they already knew. It was just there, you know,
just and figuring out how to implement it into our system.
So it wasn't us going out to find a block
for say a blockchain engineering at the time, there's like
(10:09):
a hundred of them. Uh, It was really us finding
someone with the skill set to learn and join our
team because we didn't have money to pay them like that,
that's what we did. Yeah, I mean, this is just
such a beneficial story because I think a lot of
people have an idea and they might have, you know,
incredible business acumen, but they get stuck on the fact
(10:32):
that they're like, I'm not technical, I can't code, So
how do I get to the next level? So you
sharing your story saying, look, I had to go out
and find somebody who I could give equity because I
had no money in the company, who believed in the
dream of what we were building, and together we could
then join forces. And that's you know, really the essence
of like early stage entrepreneurship. It's one person in their
(10:53):
idea of meeting another person and building together. So, UM,
thank you so much for sharing that, and I hope
that it motivates more people in our audience, UM to
really dive into entrepreneurship and not be afraid of technology
like the blockchain. So fair, take us back on your
entrepreneurial journey. Now you've built a beta product and you're
launching it. You've already told us and sort of given
(11:15):
us a little bit of the secret, like you've got
some heavy hitter customers like Comcast. But take us back
to those early days when you're an entrepreneur. You've got
this beta product, and then what like, what were the
next steps that you knew that you needed to do
to succeed? So my next steps were trying to get funding,
back to funding, but back to funding because UM, at
(11:39):
some point you're you're proven out the concept, which we did.
UM we went ahead and got some people to commit
to signing up the platform. We had beta users. Well
let me pause you pause you right there, because I
feel like people get stuck on this part too. We're
(11:59):
talking thing about getting users. How did you get users?
I know you were connected in the in the music industry,
but you know, like walk us through because people don't
realize the lifting that you have to do as an
entrepreneur um yourself. There's nobody else to do it. So
how did you go about getting your first set of
users to actually use the product? Partnered with UM the
(12:20):
music program at Georgia State Smart interns there, and the
interns got me in and they were plugging this the
technology and their studio, plugging it to their their teacher
and their professor. I became a regular at the school,
and um, folks that came on early onto my team
became regulars there and um that's how we we got
(12:42):
our first set of users. What a grind. Yeah, one school,
went to Morehouse, went to Spellman, went to Outside. You know,
the the younger crowd really brought it to the older
folks and made it something to it to do. I
love this because it speaks to the real truth of entrepreneurship.
(13:04):
Everyone thinks they're going to be an entrepreneur so that
they can like vacation on the beach, but really you
are like a door to door salesman, like every day
selling knives, like hey, knocking on the doors, you know,
and it's it's not cool like you were like I
was at the schools. You weren't chilling with Diddy at
bad Boy, like hey, you want to try my app?
You know, you get there, but it's it's a grind.
(13:24):
Tell us about a moment that you remember where you
were like Okay, I've done something really cool here, you
know that you can look back on and you were like,
huh wow. There's so many interesting little um experiences. Um.
You know, one of the things that really made me
say wow is I got to invite from NASA to
(13:49):
come to speak to them and consult with them on
music technology, as in NASA take me to outer space,
NASA face, NASA have flew me, flew me out? Will
you girl out to or UM Florida to discuss with
them how they can repurpose UM surveillance technology audio surveilance
(14:12):
technology to help musicians UM with their I P you know,
finding their music across the world. Okay, now that is surreal,
literally surreal. I'd be like, oh my gosh, I am
going to NASA some of the most highest technology, not
even on this Earth, because it's we're now talking about
like the universe. And they were like, we want to
(14:34):
know what you've built. Come on, black girl magic. That's incredible.
What you guys to invest in my company? You know,
like I hear front raising. Yeah did they invest? No, Well,
they wanted me to work on their project and um
uh oh. And the technology it was hard enough to
(14:58):
sell blockchain right for me to sell NASA technology surveillance
to studios and musicians. So I didn't think they were
they were a little bit before their time, you know,
maybe ten more years from now. Wow. And so I
mean even just you saying like before their time. You know,
there's so much time for people to get involved in blockchain.
(15:19):
I think it is going to be like our new
Internet revolution. You know. We talked about our age a
little bit back there, remembering when a t M started
popping up, you know, and there's kids today that can't
even remember what the Dewey decimal system was or you know,
life before the Internet. And I think this is going
to be the future for you know, blockchain. I remember
when I was at tech Square Labs. I had an
(15:40):
intern from Georgia Tech and you know, she was working
beside me, and I remember asking her to if she
could help me write a check. So I gave her
my paper check books for we were doing, you know,
um billing for tech Square Labs, and like five minutes
later she came back. She was like, I don't know
how to do this, And I think this is the
epitome of what you know, digital pay ments are going
(16:00):
to like one day no one's gonna remember you know,
cash money. And it seems like far in advance right now,
but we're getting there. We are here, and you know,
my my mom is texting me, hey, let let me
tell you about this crypto currency deal thing that I'm
I'm in. I'm like, wow, what are you talking about?
(16:21):
How did you get into this? So it's going beyond
the ages two and that's really good to see something progress.
Oh my gosh. I love that when you know it's something.
When are the older generation our parents are calling us
being like, oh, let me tell you about my crypto stocks.
It's real, guys, get on board. UM, I want to
(16:41):
take us back to NASA because I'm just fascinated with
that and I think that is just such an incredible story. Um,
you know, you built this company, You had this idea,
and all of a sudden you had a superstar like
NASA calling you to talk about what you, um, we're building.
When you walked in there, what did you show them?
Was it a demo? Was it dec Can you tell
us a little bit more about that? Um? The person
(17:04):
leading the project stow me pitch. They weren't in Atlanta
and they saw me pitch and they did the research
and I got emails, so I didn't really have to
They already knew about me before I got there. And
so what what they did? You're pitching to me? So
I was in the boardroom at the head of the
(17:25):
table as they gave me their power point pitch as
to batter and batter they were trying to sell you.
Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's a great story. I really
love that. If that is not motivation on this Money
Moves podcast, I don't know what is. I love it.
And you know what, you know as an entrepreneur, and
and you do grow um tremendously as a leader. But
(17:50):
as you're growing, it's the hardest stage. It's like trying
to be like a baby trying to walk. So when
this happened to me, guess what, I didn't even appreciate it.
I was worried about something else that it didn't register
me to to me that I was I've just been
flown out by Massa and I'm sitting here. I was,
you know almost. I mean now I can think back
(18:12):
and like, oh my god, I was not in the moment.
I know, and now I'm in the moment because I'm like,
I have grown from that that place. But entrepreneurs, please,
you know, this journey is a special. It's awesome and
you need to appreciate every moment. That's my lesson. But
I did not get to appreciate NASA the way I
(18:32):
should have in the moment, I could see that. And
there's a phrase that always comes to mind with me
when you ask an entrepreneur like, Hey, how's your day going,
and there's either one of two answers, like either entrepreneurship
is killing me or I'm killing it, and there's no
in between. There's days when everything is going great, and
then there's days when you're like everything is going horrible
because it's that high stress. And then there's those days
(18:54):
in the middle that you look back and you're like, wow,
I just went to NASA. That was pretty incredible. Um So,
Pharas we talk about your journey, and entrepreneurship is truly
a journey, can you tell us a little bit more
about what you're working on that? Yeah, so um It
told you about my fundraising efforts in my early stage. Unfortunately,
we didn't get to raise um enough for us to
(19:17):
continue going and getting those those folks onto the platform
using it. So we can, you know, slowly get into
what all says M collaboration products have to do. They
have to sustain long enough for it to be valuable.
We couldn't do that, so um as soon as we
had launched, we fortunately got with Abigail Disney and she
(19:41):
approached us to bring in film and television and theater,
those those type of UM creators into the platform because
they too have I P issues. But more so what
we've built with something beautiful and something that creatives wanted
to be inside of, and UM that was unique. So
(20:03):
the thing that we were like trying to trick the
musician studios ended up being the thing that other people resonated,
resonated with other people. So after we built, we did
the pilot with her. It was twenty early last year
where COVID hit and now our community that she brought
into to us, UM, which is level forward, is the
(20:26):
company they now needed to present their content. It wasn't
so much collaboration. Yeah, we need to survive and we
need to sell this movie, we need to sell this
play or present a script reading. And so the opportunity
for us to take this very creative environment and make
it a very creative, interactive event environment specifically for these
(20:47):
people who were very creative UM came about and so
we finished the the second we finished this kind of
pivot though it was the addition to UM take you know, collaborate,
and then when you're collaborating after you can create very
beautiful interactive experiences around your content. That finished UM in
(21:10):
September of last year. Between September and December, we had
over a hundred and fifty events. Wow, a hundred and
fifty events. It's a lot. That's a lot. And we
and in COVID we had political figures and in COVID
we sold films in there. Um we've you know, just
(21:30):
had some phenomenal events that were really cool and um
even this year we've worked with Amazon Studios that coming
to America too. We're working with Comcast Sports like I
mentioned before, and um doing Destroy Up Africa. And there's
just so many, so much opportunities. Now we've found another
(21:52):
great segue from an industry that's just now starting to
bo This segue is, hey, media entertainment customers absorb content different.
They don't like cop it, they don't like you know
very you know, I call it the your dad's management tool,
a right. They want something very that their customers are
(22:15):
used to sing, which is what they are used to
sing in in that launch party at the club or
you know us. So that that's what we've built and UM,
it's it's really it's really amazing to kind of see
the transition from from what I was doing before, which
was very it's very fulfilling, um to what we're doing now,
(22:39):
which you know we're estimating double digit multimillion dollar numbers
within the next year or two. Wow. Okay, that's incredible.
That's incredible, And I mean, I can't wait to have
you back again to talk more about this, because I
think you are the true epitome of an entrepreneur. You
started with an idea, you built a product, um, and
(23:00):
you've had to pivot and reiterate, but you're continually upon
continually applying this product into new markets and just growing
beyond and beyond. And I think you said what type
of revenue numbers, because that's pretty impressive. It's up there,
it's up there. It's it's really cool to to kind
of see success with looks your hard work kind of
(23:23):
kind of coming through, and um, you know, there's always
something to kind of watch out for, which is, hey,
this is new and you're still having to um get
into places that you're not going to see yourself in,
so still barriers to to break. That's why we're working
with the Caribbean. We're working with Jamaica, with Africa, and
(23:47):
we're you know, despite what, despite anything, work with who
wants to work with. You find coptunities. There's you know,
money all over the world. There's money the world. There's
any all over the world, and as an entrepreneurs your
job to find where it is and find solutions that
And I often say that you know, the biggest and
(24:10):
best companies like you have to dream really big because
the big you dream big, you solve problems that are
really big, and you solve problems that are applicable all
over the world. So, Fara, thank you so much, congratulations
and we will be following your journey. Fara, thank you
so much for joining us today and sharing your story.
It is also incredibly inspiring for our Money Moves audience
(24:31):
to get to hear stories of other black entrepreneurs who
are building incredible things in the technology world. So more
power to you, sister, and keep making those money moves.
Make sure you keep it locked in. We'll be solving
another one of your money related problems on Money Versus Moves.
Be sure to tune into the Money Moves podcast powered
by Greenwood. Here's a sneak peek of what's coming up next.
(24:54):
Thank you so much for tuning in Money Moves audience.
If you want more or a recap of this episode,
please go to the Greenwood dot com and check out
the Money Moves podcast blogs. Stay tuned tomorrow and every
day this week. From very special Money Versus Moves. Our
letter that came in today is really about how do
you get someone from an entirely different generation to see
(25:15):
things your way? I already love it more from our
experts not only musicians, with artists, graphic artists. Anything to
be monetized on the blockchain, your artist currency. That's incredible
and you won't want to miss the one the only
angel rich party stack. You're essentially the reverse engineer the
(25:37):
fair as a credit recording system and a plot game
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swapping a round. Candy wapping round credit site. Money Moves
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