Gaining wealth is part of the struggle

Eric Collins from TV show The Money Maker on why capital is key to uplifting the community

Entrepreneur Eric Collins is determined to invest more in black communities (Pic: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

THE GLOBAL protests that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020 triggered heated discussions about the links between economic and racial inequality. 

Equality campaigners have long pointed out that the seemingly ever-widening differences in income and wealth between black people and other communities invariably translate into similar disparities in political power and influence.

Building generational wealth through assets such as property, business ownership and investments is no easy task. And it’s an especially difficult battle for black Britons when you take into account the fact that on average, they have less family wealth.

According to a December 2020 report by think tank Resolution Foundation, people of African and Caribbean heritage typically hold the lowest wealth with a median figure of £24,000 in family wealth per adult. This is less than one eighth of the figure for a person of white British ethnicity, which stands at £197,000 in family wealth per adult.

Now one entrepreneur, prompted by statistics like these, is seeking to inspire black communities to take their economic destiny into their own hands and use it as a tool to challenge inequality.

Eric Collins is well known as the driving force behind Impact X Capital, a venture capital fund aimed at investing in under-represented entrepreneurs from the African Caribbean community and women in this country and across Europe.

Collins’ passion for the way in which entrepreneurship can have a transformative effect on society is evident in one of his latest roles as a newly appointed ambassador for the Prince’s Trust. 

“My focus with the Prince’s Trust is on the enterprise group”  he reveals. “These are young people who have a business or could be working in someone else’s business. My role is to spend time supporting them and help them  gain access to the right sort of networks in order to be able to progress their visions and become the drivers of change that we know underrepresented people can become.

“The Prince’s Trust works with some fantastic people around the country who, when supported in the right fashion, can create a certain type of magic. It’s not just that they’ll be able to change their own circumstances and those of their families. They will be able to help communities, the country and ultimately the world. That jives very well with what we do at Impact X.”

The vision that Collins and his founding team had when Impact X Capital was launched has now been boldly articulated in his new book. In We Don’t Need Permission: How Black Businesses Can Change Our World Collins argues that supporting under-represented entrepreneurs not only creates wealth, it drives the kind of social change and racial equality that thousands of protestors called for during the protests at Floyd’s tragic death.

“We as black people have been organising, marching and protesting against racial and social injustice forever” Collins tells The Voice. “And these are very useful tools to get us to a certain point. But in the ongoing struggle for racial and social justice there are other things we might need to actually do. Too often we as black people have to go to other people or institutions to ask for money, for capital or permission to do what’s needed. 

“For example, if we decide that George Floyd’s death is the most important issue of the century, and we want to support a constant campaign of information and action against police brutality or the strip searching of our young people then we need money to not only get above the noise, but to keep that campaign going for decades. And we just don’t have the economic capital to do that.”

He continues: “One of the reasons we don’t have the capital isn’t because we don’t have good jobs. It’s because we don’t have the kind of capital in our communities on the scale of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. They have this kind of capital because they built big businesses, companies that  allow them to dominate headlines in media around the world. These companies impact markets, governments, they impact our lives.”

For black communities to have this kind of impact Collins says new thinking is required about how to create Black-founded global Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies that are generation-changing, which he defines as having huge positive social impact. 

In We Don’t Need Permission he outlines ten principles of entrepreneurship aimed at addressing systemic barriers to economic empowerment that black people have traditionally faced.

These principles are drawn from the successes and failures of entrepreneurs, major corporations and executive teams as well as his own business career and experience as the host of the acclaimed Channel 4 TV series The Money Maker.

“We don’t yet have a group of people who can bend the attention of society towards issues they believe in for a sustained period of time by using their business resources and capital” he says. “Yes, we definitely need small businesses because all countries run on small businesses. But we need a handful of large black companies which can be drivers of real sustained change.”

Collins’ career embodies the ethos that economic empowerment is the key to solving the multiple problems that result from systemic racial and gender inequality. 

As well as being a serial entrepreneur and technology executive who has helped transform the value of companies such as AOL, MobilePosse and Micro SwiftKey Collins’ business acumen led to former US President Barack Obama inviting him to join his Small Business Administration Council in the White House. 

In 2018 he led a group of prominent black European and U.S. entrepreneurs,  investment bankers, corporate leaders, and entertainers that would eventually launch Impact X Capital.  And as CEO of the venture capital firm he has invested in and helped transform black-led companies which have gone on to have major social impact. 

Last year, after backing from Impact X Capital, digital insurance company Marshmallow, founded by twin brothers  Oliver and Alexander Kent-Braham and David Goate, became the first Black British led company to achieve unicorn status, which means a business is valued at more than $1 billion. 

“When we invested in the company,  20% of the leadership and employees were black and more than 50% were women”, Collins says. “The type of impact we have created is not just that there are some newly minted wealthy black people. We have created great resumes for a whole bunch of other black people and women who work for Marshmallow because of the skills they’ve developed in using the artificial intelligence which the company uses.  

“That makes them very much in demand. Those resumes also give those people an opportunity to start their own companies, because investors will recognise their skills in helping build a successful organisation. The money they earn can also be used to pay off student debt, buy a house or to be used for philanthropic reasons. 

He continues: “We know that people of colour and women are more likely to hire and support other people of colour and women and this creates economic opportunities at an amplified rate. As this continues  there is a flywheel effect. From day one of our investment strategy we’ve been able to identify these sorts of opportunities and be part of this kind of fantastic ecosystem.”

We Don’t Need Permission: How Black Businesses Can Change Our World is out now 

Comments Form

3 Comments

  1. | Chaka Artwell

    “We as (African-heritage) people have been organising, marching and protesting against racial and social injustice forever,” Mr Eric Collins confidently tells The Voice.

    However, my dear Voice readers, there is little practical truth in this well exercised and familiar statement from Mr Collins.

    Only during national crisis do England’s African-heritage Subjects collectively gather in solidarity for example, the successful three months Bristol Bus Boycott during the winter of 1963; the New Cross Fire that claimed the lives of 13 Caribbean-heritage partygoers under suspicious circumstances in 1981, and the current protest for the unarmed Mr Chris Kaba, killed by armed Police Constables.

    His Majesty’s African and African Caribbean heritage Subjects have spectacularly failed to unite either to honour the memory of African people who brutally and savagely perished under English slavery in the Caribbean, or the African Nations and people of continental Africa.
    Continental Africans were savagely debased and forced into colonial servitude by the English; French, Belgians, Portuguese, Germans, Italians and Spanish; and exploitative E.U. Terms of Trade with Africa are practiced today: and remain unchallenged by African-heritage people in Caucasian Europe.

    Mysteriously, ancient Ethiopia was the only African nation to escaped full European colonialism.

    This complete failure of His Majesty’s African-heritage collective to unite in a pedestrian way to honour our historical fallen; or to unite to cross the many rivers and obstacles that arise because of the colour of our African-skin,
    or to demand Trade Justice for the people and nations of the African Continent is puzzling; shocking and the chief cause of African-heritage people’s failure to prosper and mature as a historical; political, FINANCIAL and cultural collective in England and Europe.

    Reply

  2. | Alpha Delta

    This sounds like a great initiative.

    However, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk (who you name in the article) didn’t make it as billionaires because they were white, or even because they were lucky. They are both top engineering graduates.

    The sorts of businesses which are going to grow to be global giants all depend on advanced technology, and being the global leader in developing that technology. That requires strong graduates in engineering, science and maths. “Creative” industries tend to have large numbers of smaller firms, none of which have any real competitive advantages allowing them to take over a market.

    The best thing which we can do to enable young people to make it financially in the 21st century is to encourage them to keep studying maths and science subjects for as long as possible. They will be in secure well-paid employment, which will allow them to build up the skills and savings to start world leading businesses in the future.

    Reply

  3. | Chaka Artwell

    The Semitic Hebrew Messiah said “man does not live by bread alone.”
    Most African-heritage people have a place to rest; food, warmth, education, medical assistance and shelter.

    Nevertheless, English society still carries the slave-era belief in the natural inferiority of African men and women.

    The English Slave-era belief in the Inferiority of African people still influences how African-heritage Subjects are threated today; and how we view ourselves in English Society.

    Until His Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects are rehabilitated from the 500 year European belief in the inferiority of African-heritage men and women, our financial and business success will remain weak; irregular and patchy.

    Reply

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