How did all of the big companies miss this untapped market, well they simply weren’t looking. Until Walker started his Black Men Line…
How did he become a Silicon Valley icon for Black America?
Part of it is who supports his beauty startup, Walker & Company Brands. He has celebrity endorsements from Nas and financial support from Google Ventures. Part of it is his record of employment. He has worked at Twitter, Foursquare, and Andreessen Horowitz. But, most of his success is based on his drive to succeed and help other Black men and women to do the same.
Three years later, Bevel is going strong. It is sold at Target, but it is primarily a subscription service. From day one, he likened the need for his system to Proactiv and followed their model. It’s even the example he gives when pitching his product to investors.
When asked how he gets tech firms to fund him when he is not a tech firm, Walker responded that he actually runs a tech company. “[Look at] our ability to communicate with our customers, our ability to educate those customers in real time, our ability to up-sell to other products for those customers, our ability to adapt our merchandising experience to fit that customer’s needs.”
Walker has not kept his success to himself.
He is co-founder and chairman of Code 2040, which is described by Time as “a nonprofit that helps Black and Latino students land jobs at tech giants like Facebook and Apple.” Code 2040, now in its fifth year, has already “graduated” nearly 90 participants. Their full-time placement rate of Black and Latinos is 90-plus-percent. Intel just offered them another $1.3 million. This didn’t surprise Walker. “All of our partner companies are incredibly excited and that’s why they give us the money that they do and the support that they do.”
When asked why he does it, Walker explains, “I didn’t know about Silicon Valley until I was 24. That’s crazy. I’ll be damned if I let other people make that same mistake.”