What does entrepreneurship mean to you?
I believe the Afro-futurism is a mission worth pursuing. I want to preserve and sustaining black futures, which in turn I believe will elevate all futures for all people. I’ve been blessed to see education and work opportunity change my trajectory. We build ethically viable tech, lead equity labs that engineer and align teams to a better future. Cypher is the next phase of my purpose.
Entrepreneurship means the opportunity to build the future. To determine exactly what the beginning of your life will be, and to be open to new ways of saying yes. I feel like I’m following in the footsteps of my biggest hero, my dad who was the first person I ever saw leave a life of comfort and walk away from success to make his own way. Like the men before him he was a military man, and at one point he wanted that for me. He wanted me to know discipline see the world and have opportunity, he wanted me to forge my own way like he did. He was the first man I saw bet on himself and almost rig it to win through sheer will and commitment and discipline. I need to future building and since the moment I saw my dad build his own future I’ve always believed in myself. I knew I need an idea that was bigger than me and I’ve always believed to service you discover exactly who you are and what you’re going to do. Entrepreneurship for me is the next chapter as my own man, and as a man of service.
As a black man, raised by black folk in America, I know that black futures aren’t promised. I want to pay forward and scale empathy. I want to cultivate change spaces, empower youth, and align with those like me, who know that societal equity has an exponential ROI.
Who is your customer? Who do you serve? Can you describe them?
Customers will obtain access to data analytics at a fraction of hiring a data Scientist, an analyst, and engineer. Each investment unlocks opportunities for schools and youth.
Our customers are business leaders who invest in social communal missions. Cypher works with both for-profit and nonprofit, who invest in transforming their organizational culture as a way to promote psychological safety among staff, cultivate collective leadership practices, and roadmap new normals for success in an evolving digital first environment.
Our products and services support:
- product managers and visionary leaders needing analytical support
- lean organizations with inaccessible data
- agile teams who want to maximize ROI by building iterative and with equity at the core of team development and Dynamics.
Our customers are are looking for products and services that connect the dots between collective prioritization, data informs storytelling, and strategic action.
Our most successful clients team up with Cypher in order to overcome their current challenges as a relates to customer engagement and operational efficiency.
Our users and who we serve, a dually motivated. We’re deployed to develop
Collaborators – clients and users are intra-organizational collaborators, supporting future-ready youth learning campaigns through engagement with Cypher products or through direct donation; similar to a donor choose model.
- role relevant tactical analytics skills, and tool expertise
- bespoke tools that complement current function with human and conversational AI coaching.
- supporting the promotional career journey by offering personalized PD journeys and
Can you describe your competition? Who do you believe you compete with?
We bet on our emphasize on transformation as a human-centered process, not a technology driven force. Where competing with “out of the box” analytics and brand trust.
Our competition are organizations that promise analytics and apps that alleviate similar short-term issues as Cypher but require less “investment” by individuals. Tableau, Dataiku, Lovelytics and are other hybrid “data as a service/product” organizations.
I believe that our potential with brand position, operational model advantage, and ethically viable production model gives us a unique window in this time to reset the stage of analytical skill development, workforce development as a whole, and the relationship between enterprise transformation and organizational culturally ecology.
What is your business model? Can you describe it?
Cypher’s business model is a future-ready framework that means to take the corporate social responsibility model of Tom’s and scale the African American culturally philosophy of “each one, teach one” and give it a technological super charge. We’re aligning our products and services with social impact.
We’re betting on best in-class analytics products and services, combined with a mission where clients can make value-based logically impact as investors in our offerings, indirect collaborators in education equity, and stewards of the future. Our model acts to promote social and environmental change by offering our clients ethically viable product offerings that directly convert to Cypher led sustainable K-12 STEAM education interventions and 21st century learning opportunities for learning from disparate backgrounds.
TODAY: Too often transformation, reform, and “deep work” is brought on by FORCE, or a reaction to internal fallout.
Transformation is a human process, it demands patience and grace.
We can embody those qualities when we build through a process rooted in attacking our deficits thinking.
Our operation model is built off of three critical pieces powering collective leadership through market communalism, human-centered UX and data accessibility as a control. While we believe that mining our engagement and client data may lead to novel solutions to client pain points, were of the belief that, much like a “Bumble to the Dating App Tinder,” Cyphers ethically production position can allow us to modify as our competitors and the market shifts.
Culturally Responsive Analysis Framework
Proactively outlining our vision and scaffolding the journey, embedding success points.
Creating Optionality & a Culture of reversible outcomes
Learning Analytics Engine Powering Our Tools
Making our data/ and other institutional assess more interoperable (like legos) for “plug and play use”.
Scaffolded experiences + cohort based development evoke a sense of communal engagement and lead to more authentic and reliable data results based on human engagement.
Privacy by Design R&D Projects based in Block-Chain
Our marketing attribution and ML tools mine engagement to build out suggestions for inter-org career advancement through bespoke development cycles that tie development to promotion.
Gamified Promotions, link user to call to actions for youth equity campaigns that relate to professional development and motivate them to continue.
Impact
Culturally Responsive Analysis Framework
Provide a space for staff psychological safety agency development, and diverse talent density generation through ERGS, Equity Labs, and on-boarding tools.
Collaborate with us to design informed solutions that streamline the use of your data assets and roadmap best practices.
Learning Analytics Engine Powering Our Tools
Redeploy existing offerings to personalize customer experience and maximize ROI on the engagement journey.
Build a digital learning community and self-service ecosystem for integrated learning experience.
Privacy by Design R&D Projects based in Block-Chain
Digital ID currently used by millions of people, which would give users a way to control and manage their professional ID.
Users’ platform activity channels support to school DataUnions and STEAM program. Platform/ID data lives with Users.
Merging gaming mechanic, machine learning, to motivate user behavior to meet business goals, promotional goals, and develop self-reliance.
