Chris Lyons: Diversity On The Cap Table

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This week we’re having tea with Chris Lyons, who leads the Cultural Leadership Fund at Andreessen Horowitz. The goal of the CLF is to connect great cultural leaders to the best new technology companies and enable more African Americans to get into tech.

Chris previously served as Chief of Staff at Andreessen Horowitz and worked with Jermaine Dupri as a music producer and engineer.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Immad Akhund: Give us a quick snapshot of how you got into investing.

Chris Lyons: I flew out to Silicon Valley because I founded a company in the restaurant technology space. I was only supposed to go for three months, but I got connected with Ben Horowitz who told me about a Chief of Staff position. I was 25 at the time and that changed the future of my career. I took my background in the music industry, startup world, and now venture capital to launch the Cultural Leadership Fund in 2018.

CLF is not only thinking about how we can connect the dots between the world’s greatest cultural leaders and the best new technology companies, but more so how we can be a voice within the startup ecosystem. We want to figure out how we can enable more African Americans to get not one foot in the door, but two feet in, and really be a part of the growing change that I was fortunate enough to get into.

There’s a systemic problem with African Americans not being involved enough in tech. Why did you decide to come at it from the cap table perspective?

If you think that the future of wealth is going to happen within the technology industry, then African Americans and people of color need to also have a seat at that table. It’s being very intentional about making sure that we can increase the level of inclusion that’s going into helping fund the next generation of businesses.

The second piece is when you think about African American culture, our culture has really helped redefine so many different industries. From rock and roll, to jazz, to hip hop, to what’s now happening in fashion with someone like Virgil, or what Serena did in tennis, and Tiger Woods in golf.

Technology is the next frontier and we need to make sure that we’re also preparing our leaders across all different sectors and industries to have access, advisory opportunities, and partnership opportunities to integrate with some of the work that they’re doing. Find a unique path to change the future of technology, but do it in a way that is authentic to our culture and allows us to have a front row seat as we’re trying to help make a difference here.

Not just African American celebrities, but all celebrities are getting more involved in startup investing. Do you think it’s almost like a branding change?

Before, endorsements were huge. The ability to get paid to promote a product was something that everybody knew and understood. It was a huge business. But we’ve seen a dramatic shift where people understand their worth and they also know that they can do it themselves.

You went from getting paid a hundred thousand dollars to then doing what Dr. Dre did with Beats — creating an entire entity and having equity into the company. And LeBron, rather than getting a deal to be a promotional partner, he said, “Well, I’d rather have equity into the business.” Once it gets acquired by Apple, that’s a completely different multiple from an opportunity perspective.

Ownership is really where the game is at, which goes to why equity is so important. It’s such a great opportunity within our culture and it’s not even just within technology; people are starting their own businesses and running their own production companies. It’s something that I see as a progressive movement that’s not going to go away. More and more entrepreneurs are going to be built because of this mind shift of going into an equity-first business proposal as opposed to, I want to get paid and then be happy.

But with that, there’s a lot of education that needs to be contributed in order to understand the world of venture capital and the world of startup investing. Especially within the Cultural Leadership Fund, we want to make sure we provide access to information. We help those interested in getting into venture capital and provide them with meaningful information and resources so that they can ultimately go out and do it themselves.

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