Aaron Samuels has revealed his roadmap into the venture capital space.
Samuels, co-founder and former chief operating officer (COO) of Blavity — who now leads a venture capital firm between 2011 and 2016, his LinkedIn mentions.
For the next seven years, Samuels helped co-found Blavity Inc., a platform catering to Black Millennials and Gen Z amplifying areas of entertainment, politics, technology, and culture. It was created alongside Morgan DeBaun (CEO), Jeff Nelson (now COO), and Jonathan Jackson.
Serving as the COO laid the footprint for Samuels’ foray as
While on the “Black Tech Green Money” (BTGM) podcast hosted by AFROTECH™ Brand Manager Will Lucas, Samuels shares that there are generally three paths to joining the venture capital arena. The first path, which created the space, was by being rich with the flexibility to take great risk.
“I recommend one of the former two paths, which is to be an operator or to be an investor, and my way was to be an operator… I had a great career path that led me to this moment,” he told Lucas. “And I clipped from all of my experiences, from being a spoken word artist to being a consultant to being a product manager to being a COO, but I think it’s important to say for all your listeners, because there might be people that walk different paths that want to find a way to get into venture, you don’t have to just do it my way,” he explained.
Samuels also draws parallels that have applied to his time spent with artists and countless founders. hrough
One benchmark that is essential for Samuels is finding imagineers because that is the first step towards creating the next platforms, groundbreaking systems, and industry-shaping technological advancements.
“I think that in many ways there are strong commonalities between my favorite artists and my favorite founders in that both of them are dreaming a better world, identifying a way that the world can be happier, healthier more efficient, but improved in some way, and then building that and speaking it into existence. If you can’t dream it first then you can’t build it, and for me that attribute of passion is something that is probably the No. 1 characteristic that I look for in founders,” Samuels expressed on the BTGM podcast.

To check out the full interview, click here.