NOIR Labs’s mission is to inspire and operationalize Black liberation worldwide.  They dream of a world in which Blackness is centered and celebrated always; a world in which every Black person has equal access to opportunity, freedom, self-actualization, love, joy, abundance, and good health. We all need positive images to aspire to, and we all need for non-Blacks to be exposed to such images so that we can enjoy true equality, having our intrinsic value recognized through positive association with aspirational stories. If the world is being conditioned to see Black skin as containing only lives of no value, stereotypes, worthy of having vaccines tested on them, then the world can be reconditioned to see us as the glorious originators of humanity and civilization that we are.NOIR Labs uses technology, art, and experiences to inspire their community to connect, build, and thrive. Their two main products are NOIR Fest and noirpress.

To fulfill this mission, I conducted five in-depth market studies and built corresponding market reports in PowerPoint for each of the company’s five main target markets – podcasting and media platforms for noirpress, community platforms for NOIR Labs, and US streaming market and international market for NOIR Fest. These studies were used to inform development of the platforms, develop market entry strategies, and forecast growth. I also developed a fundraising strategy and submitted three grant appliations, which are critical for the business to operate in order to fulfill its mission. Finally, I built 13 market models for all of the different expected revenue streams (outlined by the CEO), which will explain how NOIR will generate revenue while achieving its mission to donors.

I applied lessons I learned from a variety of disciplines at Columbia Business School, from media courses to strategy, marketing, and finance courses. For instance, in media, we learned through the entire Media and Technology Program curriculum that content is king, so I emphasized at every team meeting the need to acquire a critical mass of quality films before NOIR could have its first festival and launch its streaming service. I also applied broader lessons from my coursework, namely the dynamics of consumer demand and willingness to pay. I was involved in discussions with the co-founders through the summer in discussions about how to best monetize the business. In these meetings, I repeatedly emphasized that consumers would pay a premium for content so the launch of the streaming service should be prioritized and that advertisers are the primary way to generate revenue through podcasting. Once the CEO made it clear she did not want any advertising on her platform, I built a fully dynamic model to reflect how NOIR – and its partner brands – could generate revenue through affiliate marketing. The model included two components – new companies that NOIR would help launch and established partners – generating a total of four revenue forecasts (one each for NOIR and the partner).

The primary challenges that I faced were the financial limitations and the opaque scope of the company’s priorities and limited traction with our core customer group. Up through my tenth week of the project, we were still having meetings about how exactly to phrase our mission on the company website – the ultimate result was beautiful and impressive, but not substantially different in any way from the mission when I started on June 1. It was also challenging to build forecasts when the discussions about the scope of the business grew more and more opaque and less about how to incrementally grow and launch our near-term revenue generators, namely the streaming service. We did not place a significant emphasis on generating film submissions after June, and rather continued to shift focus to a variety of different priorities (ultimately discussing things like becoming Amazon in Year 6 and Apple in Year 10). The lack of any real traction is largely due to the brand’s limited following. To no fault of the team, the company only had a marginal number of loyal, engaged followers. While the company had 11,000+ Facebook fans, there were only something like 10-20 tuned into each Saturday’s podcast.

Despite the challenges, I believe in the company’s mission more today than I did on day one (I was already fully on-board). NOIR’s mission to normalize black joy and connect the global African diaspora is incredibly powerful, meaningful, and timely. One of my key takeaways was that every second is precious when working with limited resources to launch a business with a relatively wide scope. There were only a few weeks over the summer where all of the stars aligned and eight people comprised our team – making every second and every hour and every week count vital. I realized that launching a social venture and trying to do so without VC funding or any advertising on your platforms is unfathomably challenging. My ultimate goals are to work in corporate strategy for a larger entertainment company and, if and when I successfully do so, I plan on contributing my effort and money to help founders launch socially impactful media startups like NOIR labs.