SOURCE: USA Today, Jessica Guynn and Nicquel Terry Ellis
Over an iPad and a cup of tea, Marcus Blackwell Jr. is talking up his mobile app that uses music to help kids learn math. Sitting across from him at a sleek wood table is Jewel Burks Solomon who, after selling her startup to Amazon, invests time and money in helping other entrepreneurs make their mark in the tech industry.
As Blackwell shows off how algebra formulas in Make Music Count play melodies and chords from popular hip-hop and pop songs, Solomon counsels him on everything from how to get exposure to how to land funding for his app.
This kind of informal coaching session happens hourly in cafes all over San Francisco and Palo Alto, California. The difference here: Nearly everyone in this room is black.
Welcome to the city that’s emerging as the nation’s black tech capital. For a growing number of African-Americans in the tech world, Atlanta is beckoning. Weary of coastal hubs that don’t reflect America’s growing diversity, they are packing up their lives and careers for a city with a rich history of entrepreneurship, a booming black middle class, affordable quality of life and a small but growing tech scene.
Nowhere is Atlanta’s cresting wave of black innovation more evident than here at The Gathering Spot, a members-only, co-working and business networking hub on the site of a turn-of-the-century railway yard west of downtown Atlanta. You never know who you might run into: Voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the 2018 race for governor of Georgia, rappers T.I. and Killer Mike, the cast of “Greenleaf” from the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a who’s who of the local digerati, like Solomon.
“I don’t think there is a better place in the country if you’re a black entrepreneur to be,” Ryan Wilson, co-founder of The Gathering Spot, says of Atlanta. “I definitely stand as an example of what’s possible in this city if you really stay rooted here.”
Even as tech companies pour money into increasing the diversity of their work forces, African- Americans remain sharply underrepresented in tech jobs nationwide. But not in the city that’s been dubbed Silicon Valley of A Solution!