King or Rich - The Afrostream Story
The Relentless Podcast will have a plethora of personal stories about my life journey, I’m sure it’ll surprise many. The hope is to empower others to go from their own “green machine” beginnings to beyond. #Relentless will also have painful and truthful business stories I’ve never spoken about publicly. I wasn’t ready, until now. “King or Rich - The story about the streaming service Afrostream and its founder was such a painful period in my due to the deceit and lies that it helped shape me forever. It took me three months to even “get off the mat” after this situation. I lost some of my closest friends who could not recuperate from the heartbreak that came from a malicious businessman. Almost five years later I’m ready. I’m sensitive about this story being seen as vengeful, it is not. It’s part of my healing process which took much longer than expected.
The Afrostream Story:
As an entrepreneur you must decide if your goal in life is to be rich or a king. The reality is that the majority of us won’t start tech unicorns like Uber or create companies like Apple so we must get comfortable with more realistic business goals. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that being rich or a king are the only reasons to be an entrepreneur, what I am saying is lookout for whoever wants both.
The summer of 2017 I met a smart French Cameroonian entrepreneur, founder of one of the first streaming services focused on the African diaspora, its name was “Afrostream”. Afrostream was early enough on the streaming services race to be a global household brand by now, positively impacting the industry and creatives of color world-wide; instead it was taken into involuntary bankruptcy by the French government in 2017 due to the founder wanting to be both rich and king.
I started VumaTV in 2016 to show more authentic diverse studio quality content. Two years into my VumaTV journey, hungry to do smart business and starving to make an impact in the streaming space I was connected by one of the many a Venture Capital firms I’d been in front of (also an Afrostream investor) to acquire the failing streaming service for two main reasons:
The founder was mismanaging it and The French government had given Afrostream four months to either find a buyer or have the company taken into involuntary bankruptcy by the French government. The French government does this when they are owed money and don’t see a path forward with the leaders of the company. VumaTV and I were that buyer. This was not my first M&A transaction, it was my first where all of my business intuitions were shattered, at the hands of the poster child for ‘unethical businessmen”.
Strategically, it made perfect sense for VumaTV to acquire Afrostream, our mission and business goals were aligned and selfishly I knew I could fix Afrostream’s issues. By doing that, I would not only save the investors who invested in Afrostream globally from Warner Media, Macro Ventures, Orange Telecom but also jump into the global streaming race with my people front and center. After millions of dollars spent on the acquisition and two days before the deadline from the French authorities, I receive this message from the founder:
It was Friday afternoon after a long and exhausting week I was sitting down and breathing, reflecting on the week. I received this message perfectly times at 6:30 EST. It led to trying to save the deal from someone who wanted to be both, Rich and King. Forty-eight hours before the company was dissolved and we were on the clock (no pressure). You’ll never guess the reasons why but this catastrophic email led to one of the biggest lesson on my life. Tune into the #relentless podcast this month cuz it’s about to get real.
VumaTV and Afrostream launch party at ABFF Miami, Florida 2017.
(never released pictures of one of our events)
