For the month of February we announced that for Black History Month we would highlight four black tech entrepreneurs.

Our second entrepreneur is Charles Hudson, Venture Partner at SoftTech VC

Bio
Charles is a Venture Partner at SoftTech VC and the CEO and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games, a mobile games company based in San Francisco, CA.

Until February 2010, he was the VP of Business Development for Serious Business, a leading producer of social games for the social web. Zynga acquired Serious Business in February of 2010.

In addition to working at Serious Business, he also produce technology conferences focused on the intersection of gaming and social media. The two flagship conferences they produce are the Virtual Goods Summit and the Social Gaming Summit.

He also works with Justin Smith from Inside Social Games / Inside Facebook on a series of research reports on the virtual goods market. You can check out their research at Inside Virtual Goods.

Prior to joining Serious Business, he was the Sr. Director for Business Development at Gaia Online, a leading online hangout for teens and young adults.

Prior to Gaia, he worked in New Business Development at Google and focused on new partnership opportunities for early-stage products in the advertising, mobile, and e-commerce markets. Prior to joining Google, he was a Product Manager for IronPort Systems, a leading provider of anti-spam hardware appliances that was acquired by Cisco Systems for $830 million in 2007.

He spent several years working at In-Q-Tel, the strategic venture capital group for the Central Intelligence Agency. While at In-Q-Tel, he focused on identifying investment opportunities that could deliver significant value to the CIA and the commercial market in both the short and long term. He holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Economics and Spanish from Stanford University. He is also on the Advisory Board for BizWorld, a nonprofit that educates students about business, and the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, a nonprofit connecting entrepreneurs, ideas, and capital.

Last week we announced that for Black History Month we would highlight four black tech entrepreneurs during the month of February.

Our first entrepreneur is Shellye Archambeau, CEO of MetricStream Inc

Bio
As the CEO of MetricStream, Shellye Archambeau is responsible for running all facets of the business. Ms. Archambeau has a proven executive management track record and over 20 years of experience driving sales growth in the technology industry. Prior to joining MetricStream, Ms. Archambeau was Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Sales for Loudcloud, Inc, responsible for all global sales and marketing activities. At Loudcloud she led the transformation into an enterprise-focused company while growing sales 50% year over year. Previously, she served as Chief Marketing Officer of NorthPoint Communications, where she led the design and implementation of all sales and marketing strategies. Ms. Archambeau also served as president of Blockbuster, Inc.’s e-commerce division and was recognized by Internet World as one of the Top 25 ‘Click and Mortar’ executives in the country in June of 2000. Ms. Archambeau spent the prior 15 years at IBM, holding several domestic and international executive positions. Ms. Archambeau serves on the board of directors of Arbitron, Inc. and the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives. She earned a B.S. degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business.

Stay tuned as next Monday we’ll highlight a new entrepreneur.

As recent reports indicate, African-Americans are more interested in hard news with substance than celebrity and gossip news nowadays. Well, that is what minority founder Adylia-Rhenee Gutierrez’s had in mind when creating online community platform, YhorLife.com - creating value driven content without the drama filled celebrity happenings.

YhorLife.com is an online community that celebrates hard work, shared values,  and offers advice on a number of topics and issues from dating to parenting. The content based site includes articles and interviews that open discussions about real life problems and issues today.

A team of experts, men, and women from different backgrounds and ages come together to build healthy relationships and dialogue on the web as an alternative to the sometimes negative messages and images witnessed on other Web sites.

“I listened to what my friends and family wanted which was content that wasn’t the usual celebrity trash,” said Gutierrez. They wanted content with substance and so did I so I said why not be the answer to the problem.”

Although there are many sites that offer quality news and information, YhorLife.com ‘s goal is to assist its members in living the best life possible through encouragement and helpful everyday information. The site is geared towards community and communication in a way that relates to many different demographics.

YhorLife.com launched in October 2011, and according to Gurtierrez, has been well received. Being a subscription based site Gutierrez is able to pay her staff in addition to giving 10 percent of earnings to the children and people of Grenada, Nicaragua.

Being a young entrepreneur, Gurtierrez believes that today’s economy has forced many to be innovators and create things they think are lacking.

“Recessions in a way are helpful,” says Gurtierrez. It makes us create our own paths, build and create what we want, and live the real American dream in being our own boss.”

When the CEO of Megen Construction Co. was asked last Tuesday if his firm had an employee-retirement plan, Evans N. Nwankwo (pdf) immediately replied, “Of course.” He then summarized why black entrepreneurs should, if possible, follow his lead.

“We may be a minority company, but we compete with majority firms all the time and must make sure that our own staff has the education, capabilities and experience to excel. Providing a retirement package, and a salary that is attractive, is crucial,” Nwankwo said.

As has been noted in this column previously, blacks are creating businesses at triple the rate of other groups, and one poll suggests that more black children contemplate starting companies than do white children.

Selling good products or services is not enough, however. A company’s success also depends on consistently attracting, hiring and retaining good employees. So it was important when a Nationwide Financial small-business survey revealed that 78 percent of black business owners said that they were concerned enough about their employees’ financial retirement situation to call the situation a crisis.

Read the rest of this article at The Root

(Photo: The Root)

Typically when people think of entrepreneurs, they don’t automatically think of college students, but they should. College is the best time to think big and execute ideas, especially when hustle and grind is naturally part of the curriculum.

There are three core reasons why college is the best place to build a startup:

The resources are available and ready to use. In college, students are not only paying for an education, but also to utilize every last resource the school offers. What type of resources available will differ depending on the institution, but taking advantage of everything they have from creative software to tech labs can be a great help to starting a business when these tools could be hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Networking comes with admission. College is the ultimate networking experience. This is the perfect place to meet co-founders for your company. College is filled with different, unique, and talented people. This is the chance to link up with students with different majors to collaborate on projects and business plans.  For example, if you are a history major but have a tech company in mind and you don’t know how to code; there is probably an engineering student across campus that does.

College students are young! Traditional college students are usually in their twenties and upon first entering still teenagers. Being young is an advantage. If you look at the tech world today most founders are barely even thirty.  When you are young the opportunities are endless.

Students are not the only ones who can benefit from starting a business in college, professors too. Academic professors are amongst young and vibrant students trying to come up with the next big thing; so it makes perfect sense for them to try to launch something they’ve maybe been longing to do for years or an idea they just came up with today. So whether you’re a student or an educator take advantage of being in a college setting because not everyone has the starting ground for a business at their fingertips.

The lack of minority entrepreneurs, more specifically, tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have been talked about. But where are they if not there?

According to Forbes.com, they are in Atlanta where half the residents are African- American. A large number of minorities including Hispanic and Asian have started their own businesses in the metropolitan city over the past 10 years.

As of last year Atlanta had the second-highest percentage of self-employed minorities among the top 52 metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million.

Different cities offer different things, so researching areas is important to see what will best fit the needs of your specific company.

Forbes.com put together a list to start from. Check out the top 52 cities for minority entrepreneurs:

1. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
2. Baltimore-Towson, MD
3. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN
4. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
5. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
6. Oklahoma City, OK
7. Riverside-Sand Bernardino-Ontario, CA
8. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
9. Orlando-Kissimmee, FL
10. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ
11. Memphis, TN-MS-AR
12. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
13. San Antonio, TX
14. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
15. Austin-Round Rock, TX
16. Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC
17. Indianapolis-Carmel, IN
18. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
19. Richmond, VA
20. New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA

For the rest of the cities go to Forbes.com , maybe in a few years Silicon Valley will be on this list too.

In a recent interview with Katie Morell, on American Express Open Forum BeCouply founders share their entrepreneurship story and the idea behind BeCouply. Here’s an excerpt.

Q: Could you tell me a little about your backgrounds?

Uzamere: I grew up in New Castle, Pa., and went to MIT for computer science. I was very involved and was the student body president while there. After graduation, I moved down to Washington, D.C., and worked for a federal consulting firm. After two years, I left to start my own consulting business.

Cruze: I’m originally from the Phoenix, Ariz., area. I went to George Washington University for political communication and graduated in three years. After college, I ended up working as a paralegal in a small law firm. I met Pius while we were both working in D.C.

Q: What advice can you give budding entrepreneurs?

Uzamere: I recommend moving to the Valley [Silicon Valley] if you are in the consumer Internet space. I also recommend being all-in—it is something people pick up on. It would have been easy for us to do other things and limp along part-time, but if we’d done that we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Cruze: If you are trying to raise capital, you are asking an investor to take a risk on you. If you haven’t demonstrated that you can take a risk on yourself by going all-in, as Pius said, it is hard to convince the investor.

Uzamere: Find a community, even if it is online. If you are a programmer or tech startup founder, I recommend Hacker News. By just reading that, you can learn a lot about the industry. I also recommend getting involved with Angel List; it’s a great resource.

Be sure the read the entire article A New Startup Gives Couples Something To Do for more on how BeCouply raised capital and their launch plans.

Disclaimer: BeCouply , was one of the startups that participated in the NewME Accelerator. BlackWeb 2.0 and NewME Accelerator are owned and operated by Black Web Media.

When Ida Byrd-Hill began thinking out an idea for an educational board game involving inventions, it wasn’t out of necessity.

The 45-year-old divorced Detroit mother of two wanted to make a point — that black, inner-city youth do have the capacity to develop products and market their inventions if given the tools and training.

“I did a lot of patent searches for the biotech, chemical and computer industries,” Byrd-Hill said. “One of the things I noticed is that few people outside those fields ever talk about that area, but it is the core of most companies. If you can get the patent, you can sell the product at a profit for a certain number of years without anybody challenging you.”

She believes “Fluke” will introduce the landscape of inventions, patents and corporate success to young people faced with an uncertain economy and limited job opportunities.

Read the rest of this article at MLive.com

This summer I had the opportunity to meet Curtiss Pope, CEO, and co-founder of AisleFinder while in the NewME Accelerator. AisleFinder is considered to be the “Google Maps for Supermarkets” and solves the one problem everyone has -not being able to find the items on their shopping list when grocery shopping. AisleFinder solves the problem by providing online and mobile solutions that gives customers the aisle numbers of where to find those items. Curtiss is a software developer, over all nice and smart guy.

During the summer and in conversations it was great to hear Curtiss’s thought process behind shopping, making it easy for users to make list, and solving other shopping problem by shortening the over all customers shopping time. Since then Curtiss has launched AisleFinder iPhone [iTunes Link]. The app works great as advertised and features 2500+ Stores, 150000 products. Stores include: Wal-Mart,CostCo,Safeway,Kroger, and Wegmans. Here are a few screenshots.

Curtiss is thinking big with AisleFinder and not just grocery shopping, so he created the Supermarket API. Supermarket API is the first robust open source API for the grocery industry and provides the following feature:

• Aisle information in over 2,400 supermarkets and shopping Centers including Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Safeway and Wal-Mart across the USA (Canada & Europe Soon)
• Product pictures, details and Information on over 150,000 grocery products
• Free API Access.

AisleFinder’s Supermarket API has already been put to use recently by developers at Startupweekend Ontario (Canada) who created StokFridge.com.

So what’s next for AisleFinder and Curtiss Pope? Curtiss tells me they’re working on adding Canada,UK stores to AisleFinder/SupermarketAPI along with Wal-Mart, Target, Costco data sets will be available through SuperMarket API.com soon. Also be on the look out for HardwareAPI.com set to lunch in the late Winter/Spring.

For more about AisleFinder visit the following profiles:
@AisleFinder
@supermarketapi
AisleFinder on AngelList
AisleFinder on Facebook

Read more AisleFinder Black Web 2.0 coverage:
AisleFinder is Google Maps for Your Supermarket
AisleFinder Takes Unique Route in Raising Angel Round
AisleFinder Launches Supermarket API

Disclaimer: Curtiss Pope, Curtiss Pope, was one of the startups that participated in the NewME Accelerator. BlackWeb 2.0 and NewME Accelerator are owned and operated by Black Web Media.

Have you used AisleFinder iPhone app yet? If so let us know about your experience in the comments below.

Radio personality Michael Baisden announced the details of his “Million Dollar Business Pitch” campaign.  Baisden initially announced his plans to provide a half-million dollars to small businesses and non-profits through the campaign.

Michael Baisden Show listeners  were instructed to tune into the radio show, Twitter, or Facebook  for submission details.

That details were revealed in a three-step process for entrepreneurs to submit their businesses for a chance at a portion of a $500,000 small business investment, contributed solely by Baisden. Beginning January 2012, Baisden promises to begin cutting checks for businesses that can pitch their profit and non-profit companies the best.

Entrepreneurs who are prepared for the challenge must go through three steps to get to the final round.

Step One - Fill out the application online at www.BaisdenLive.com and  include a brief description of your business and submit a one to three minute video pitch of your business.

Step Two - If you make it to “Step 2″ you will be contacted to submit a complete a comprehensive questionnaire, submit your business plan, and business financials/tax returns.

Step Three - If selected for “Step 3″ Michael Baisden will fly you to a city of his choice to pitch your business live in front of him, a live audience and other potential investors.

The winners will receive an investment of $10,000 to $100,000.

For more information go to www.Baisdenlive.com.