Darrel FraterFounder & Managing Partner, TGN Ventures · Founder & Managing Partner at TGN Ventures

Darrel Frater, Primetime VC

24 Aug 2023 · 2 min

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2:08

In this first-person narrative, Darrel Frater recounts his upbringing as the son of a Jamaican immigrant entrepreneur, describing hands‑on experience building houses and working alongside his father. He explains how, after graduating college in 2015, a 2017 reading of Reginald Lewis’s biography Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? sparked his interest in venture capital and private equity. Over the next four years he deliberately built networks, gained experience, and pursued an MBA, culminating in his entry into venture capital in 2021, immediately after graduation. Frater frames his career as a mission to address the stark racial wealth gap in the United States, viewing entrepreneurship and venture capital as levers to redistribute wealth. He declares that he is in the fourth year of a planned twenty‑year journey to launch his own fund, with the ultimate goal of closing the wealth gap through supporting entrepreneurs. The narrative is driven by personal conviction, strategic career planning, and a long‑term impact‑focused vision.

Chapters

Growing up, I didn't know anything about venture capital. My father was an entrepreneur from Jamaica, came to this country with nothing and built his businesses. And growing up, I helped him build his— I built houses and it was just working hard with him day in, day out in his businesses. So entrepreneurship was all I knew. Graduated from undergrad in 2015, and 2 years later, 2017, is when I learned about venture capital. And I learned from reading a book called Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun by Reginald Lewis. It's the story of the first Black billionaire, or the first Black person to own a billion-dollar company, and he did so by successful leveraged buyouts, or what we call now as PE, private equity. That's— after reading that book, that's when I learned about venture capital and this whole industry of high-growth tech. So since 2017, I did everything in my power to make myself as well-rounded as possible to get the networks I needed, to get the experience I needed to be able to eventually break into VC. So it took me 4 years from the day that I read that book to break into VC in 2021, a week after graduating from my MBA. And it really takes you to have a vision of the future and for you to execute on that vision and really understanding what is the higher thing, what is the thing that you're doing this for and creating alignment with your life. For me, that alignment is my passion for closing the wealth gap. There's huge disparities on the people that have money and the people that do not have money in this country. I think that entrepreneurship is a unique opportunity to change that paradigm of who has wealth, and through venture capital, the people that are enabling entrepreneurs, I think it'll be possible to have a major impact in closing the wealth gap. So for me, I say that I'm in year 4 of a 20-year journey to launch my own fund and to be able to close the wealth gap through entrepreneurship. And that's why every single day I do what I have to do to drive that impact.