Garry Johnson III: Leveraging the HBCU Network and Sharing Knowledge
The founder of Bison Venture Partners, The Ghetto VC, and First Founders is just getting started.
By nature, entrepreneurs can rarely focus on just one business. They often have multiple income streams, or at least have their mind on multiple ways to earn money.
What I personally find attractive about entrepreneurs and emerging fund managers is their vision to leverage their capital and their knowledge in a way that empowers those who need it.
That’s how I feel about Garry Johnson III. We originally met during Arlan Hamilton’s Investing as a Catalyst, where he was always asking questions and participating in the conversation. It was easy to get a sense of his drive, his ambition, and his hunger to become an investor.
Since we last spoke, he and his team closed their WeFunder crowdfunding campaign for Bison Venture Partners and launched a community platform for entrepreneurs and angel investors. He’s also launched a guide to thinking like a venture capitalist, a show about investing, and a coffee brand.
Meeting the Needs of Delaware Founders
While at the University of Delaware, he launched an annual pitch competition for entrepreneurs in his community. He spoke with numerous founders throughout the years about their experiences with both local and national accelerator programs. Many were told they were “too early” for accelerators, but they didn’t have the resources to bring their businesses to…whatever stage isn’t “too early.”
He recognized the need for an accelerator program that catered to the needs of underrepresented (and underfunded) Delaware-based founders, so Garry started First Founders Inc in 2019. Whether they aim to raise VC funding, bootstrap their companies, or a combination of both, First Founders Today, they’ve supported over 300 founders, launched a community, and collected a number of resources to help any founder take their next steps seriously.
However, because First Founders is a non-profit, they can only offer limited support to entrepreneurs. First Founders doesn’t take equity in the companies they work with, and while they can issue grants and competition rewards, First Founders can’t really invest large sums into the companies.
They rely on donations to keep operating. And as we all know, underestimated founders are building businesses. They’re not charity cases.
So in pursuit of his passion to support early stage entrepreneurs, Garry enrolled at Howard for his MBA so that he could elevate his knowledge, expand his network, and become more useful to the founders he wanted to help. In addition to the top notch education, he aims to leverage that network to be the best value-add possible to founders.
How Garry Started Bison Venture Partners
After starting the MBA program, he quickly realized that most everyone else in the program had similar goals. And rather than wait until their program had finished, he and his classmates started figuring out what they can do now.
So they started Bison Venture Partners as a type of venture-aligned studio to help founders within the HBCU networks. Over the next decade, they aim to:
Source $100 million to Black-owned businesses
Enable 10,000 angel investments (including any made via crowdfunding)
Support 1,000 women-owned businesses
Create 1,000 new jobs
As MBA candidates, they can’t currently manage a fund full-time. However, they can plant the seeds for their ventures, such as purchasing and setting up a PopCom machine as a marketplace for products made by HBCU students and alumni.
Lately, they’ve been focusing their efforts on BVP Coffee. It’s been a vehicle for establishing larger partnerships, such as with CIC Philadelphia and Urban Outfitters corporate cafe.
They also recently launched their community platform The Herd for venture partners, entrepreneurs, and angel investors to meet and share knowledge.
And in their free time between course work, managing their community, running their coffee business, and doing weekly livestreams on their app, they are still making investments and forming partnerships with a number of notable companies:
KingsCrowd, and angel investor education and portfolio management platform
Kribi Coffee, a Black-owned coffee roaster focused on sustainable farming (in terms of both living wages and the environment)
Black And Mobile, a food delivery platform supporting Black-owned restaurants
HX Innovations, an injury-prevention sportstech health company founded by a Black woman
In fact, HX Innovations founder Nicole Homer recalls a coversation she had with Garry about whether crowdfunding would be a negative signal for her fundraise (it wasn’t).
So while Garry and the Bison Venture Partners team may still be in university, their work and dedication to vision is pushing full-speed ahead.
Why I’m Bullish on Garry and Bison VP
It’s clear that Garry has a passion for helping entrepreneurs, and over the years, he’s refined his thesis and work. His most recent endeavor to spread the wealth: sharing investment insights through his Substack The Ghetto VC. Not only is he establishing himself as an upcoming leader in VC, but through his alma mater, he will also have access to that entire network—one that is often overlooked in VC circles.
Sometimes you just meet someone and they immediately give off rockstar vibes. You’re not quite sure where they’re going or how they’ll get there, but you want to take the journey with them because you know they’re doing something amazing.
I can’t wait to see where Garry goes.