Innovation and Inequality

I'm from Atlanta. I live in Atlanta proper. Today we are number one in income inequality in the world, and this didn't just happen this year. We've been trending with this unfortunate statistic for several years now. When we peel back the data, what we saw changing in our macro metropolitan area was that there was an influx of high-growth technology companies moving into Atlanta, particularly with the slowing down of our real estate industry because of the last economic downturn. We, we saw a lot of resources being shifted into our innovation economy. Atlanta being home to 26 Fortune 100 companies also ramped up their investments in corporate innovation, in venture et cetera. So it's like, oh my God, all of these— now all of these buildings are going up, all of these innovation labs, you know, research institutions are expanding, nice shiny, you know, new buildings, bikes, scooters, the like, everywhere, right? Everything is awesome, right? But actually, for a lot of Atlantans, native Atlantans who happen to be Black, things weren't evolving and changing. And so that income equality gap was growing because the density of innovation was displacing the native citizens out of the inner city. So now when you hear inner city in a major city, it's not urban or Black anymore. It's inner city specifically because of geography. And that's because Black people have been regentrified out of most inner cities and major cities around America. So I'm taking the time to actually clearly define part of the problem. Northwestern University released a study maybe 3 years ago now, CityLab— it's on CityLab's website— where there's a direct correlation between innovation density and income segregation. Now, innovation density was defined by the number of patents filed in said metro and the commercialization and the venture capital invested in said metro. Now, you being in San Francisco, proximate to Silicon Valley, are thinking like, wait a minute, this story sounds familiar, right? You know, tech companies popping up everywhere, density of Silicon— density of venture capital in the city. Yet there's so much poverty. There's so much drugs. Etc. And so to bring it home, I saw myself as this out— the successful outlier, innovator, entrepreneur, investor, you know, thought I was doing good by becoming successful all by myself, which is okay to do, but realize that I had become a part of the problem. And so to respond to the problem that I was creating as an investor as a member of the startup ecosystem, it was important for me to do something about it. So O-Hub is the solution to myself, but myself is just an archetype of the density of innovation, edge technology, and venture capital that's fueling 60% of net new jobs in this country.