TULSA, Okla. — Tyrance Billingsley II founded Black Tech Street to build upon the tenacity of the entrepreneurs of Black Wall Street with the support and connections he brings to Black entrepreneurs they didn’t have 100 years ago.
Billingsley founded Black Tech Street about 18 months ago with one question.
“What could Black Wall Street have been had it been supported and not destroyed?” Billingsley said. “And when I looked at the level of tenacity that it took for these entrepreneurs to build these incredible businesses during Jim Crow, the smashing through walls and the out-of-the-box thinking reminded me a lot of the tech industry.”
Black Tech Street introduces fledgling tech entrepreneurs to resources and connects them with the right people to set them up for success.
Shaun Simon is one such tech entrepreneur. He recently returned to his hometown with his new financial technology company, STACE, and he connected with Billingsley.
“We want to be able to facilitate digital payments specifically and make that process easier, not just [for] the consumer and how they’re doing with contacts, payments, etc. but for the business owner,” Simon said.
It’s the business owner who has to pay fees for digital payment services and often passes that cost onto the customer. STACE is a no-fee digital payment platform.
But Simon is not only building his business. He wants to be part of a system that helps to employ others, and a model for Black entrepreneurs.
“There are people looking for high-paying jobs and medium-paying jobs and changing their economic standpoint,” said Simon.
Billingsley said knowing the right people and having an audience with them is the most important part of being a successful entrepreneur.
For those who are capable of getting funding but not in getting enough exposure, that’s where Black Tech Street can help.
“I not only saw an incredible wealth-building opportunity for Black people, but I also saw the Black Wall Street vision pushed to a new horizon,” said Billingsley. “So, I said, ‘Had Black Wall Street been supported and not destroyed, it would be nothing other than the nation’s premiere Black tech ecosystem.’”
It is that ecosystem that Billingsley and Simon are working to create.
Simon said he is a natural entrepreneur. He began making money by creating a small lawn-mowing business at the age of 10 years old, hiring his friends to multiply his service and his profits. But he also was surrounded by entrepreneurs in his family.
Simon’s aunt owns a restaurant in north Tulsa, where he saw her struggling with digital payment platforms and online ordering.
“Being a tech guy and a software guy, you know I always knew what these companies were but actually trying to get them going, setting them up, you know it was extremely difficult, even for me,” he said. “Then we started getting into the merchant side, how much [we] are spending out in terms of transactions and that’s where the real problems came about.”
The concept of STACE came to Simon as he was negotiating these processes while sitting at a table in his aunt’s restaurant just one year ago. He then created a platform to streamline and optimize all of those payments that burden small businesses like his aunt’s restaurant.
Simon did a soft launch of his company last summer and already has more than a dozen customers around the world.
Billingsley’s Black Tech Street is connecting him with customers in Tulsa.
Like Simon, Billingsley found that he, too, had a family connection that went before him in investing in his vision of rebuilding what was lost in the Tulsa Race Massacre more than 100 years ago.
After he started creating a network of support for Black entrepreneurs, Billingsley got a call from the previous pastor of the Vernon A.M.E. Church in Greenwood.
“I came down here and I was told that after clearing out the basement of some old books of Vernon A.M.E., they found a ledger that actually had the names of cousins of my ancestors who donated to rebuilding A.M.E after … it was originally destroyed in the massacre,” said Billingsley.
He said that financial seed planted by his ancestors to rebuild the church was validation, and a spiritual connection to the foundations for commerce he had already begun creating for Blacks, just a few blocks from the church. Both Billingsley and Simon are taking their ideas—inspired by their family ties—and forging a new Black Wall Street to help Black entrepreneurs create wealth for generations to come.
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