Credit Suisse Seeks To Accelerate Wealth Creation Among African American Entrepreneurs

The landscape has changed for artist management since Carter cut his teeth interning for industry moguls Will Smith and Sean “Diddy” Combs. “We are at a stage where distribution is lot different with the barriers of entry having been broken. Things are moving a lot quicker just in terms of building global artists. As a manager, we had to readjust our style and strategy just to be able to keep up with the pace of technology in terms of this accelerated artist development process. So, before you had a year or two years to get artists ready for a global stage now we have about three to six months to do it.”

Since founding Atom Factory in 2010, Troy has created several other entities. In 2011, he co-founded The Backplane, a Silicon Valley-based startup that allows celebrities and brands to connect with fans, foster community, and cultivate brand loyalty. In 2012, he created A IDEA, a product development and branding agency, and he launched POPWater, a low-calorie soft drink brand that he is scaling nationally. He also launched AF Square, an angle fund and technology consultancy with investment in over 40 startups including Spotify, Dropbox, Fab, Songza, and Uber.

“Where I am now is sitting at a cross section between content, technology and lifestyle culture.  We want to put ourselves in the center of the conversation. We have a technology fund where we invest in young entrepreneurs and we have a management company that invests in young artists.  That puts us in an interesting place,” adds Carter.

As an angel investor, Carter says that he like entrepreneurs who have failed before or who have lost money before–people who are entering the space with something to prove and have some experience under their belt. “That is a plus,” he explains. “When you look at Travis Kalanick CEO of Uber, that was his third company. We like working with entrepreneur who have been knocked on their backs a couple of times and have been able to get up.”

Carter says that it wasn’t until he got into investing that started to notice the lack of minorities into the space. Studies show that ethnic minorities account for less than 5% of the active angel population (nearly 300,000 wealthy individuals). Being an angel investor requires a thorough due diligence and vetting process of identifying fundable, scalable startups and early stage companies, Carter says. “You have to make sure that the entrepreneur understands what market they are in, the product that they are building and that they have the mental wherewithal to make through the tough process of the entrepreneur’s journey.”

The other ten circle members are Phil Bronner, CEO and Co-Founder of the college honors program Quad Learning; Jonathan Cropper, global branding/media strategist and founder of Futurlogic; Sheldon Gilbert, CEO of Proclivity Media, a high-performance cloud-computing technology platform specializing in predictive analytics; William Heard, CEO and CIO of the investment management firm Heard Capital; Heather Hiles, founder and CEO of the edtech company Pathbrite, developer of an eportfolio learning platform; John Legend, singer, songwriter,  and philanthropist;  Karl Simmons and E. David Ellington, respectively, CEO and president of GridSpeak Corporation, whose Web-based platform provides quantitative analytics for North American energy markets; Collin Wallace, founder of FanGo Software Systems, a mobile food-ordering platform; and, Hussein Warmack, president of Hantz Group Accounting, whose flagship software LEGACYSOFT is a financial tool for  high net-worth individuals.

According to Credit Suisse there is no formal graduation date from the program. However, the first group of entrepreneurs is expected to stay within the program for two years before being considered alumni and serving as mentors to the next generation of circle members.