You might think juggling a side hustle along with a 9-5 is hard, but to serial Entrepreneur Esosa Ighodaro-Johnson that’s simply light work. Johnson is the definition of pure ambition and hard work. With over 10 years of experience in tech entrepreneurship, she has discovered how to create the roadmap to billions and is now sharing it with her community.
In 2017, Johnson along with Regina Gwynn co-founded Black Women Talk Tech, a network and community for black woman tech founders. BWTT was established to create a supportive space for black women tech entrepreneurs, providing a platform for sharing ideas and accessing resources essential for building the next billion-dollar tech or scalable company.
Johnson had the privilege of creating this community thanks to the knowledge and experience gained from her own endeavors. After a decision to leave the finance industry and pivot to the world of technology, nothing was the same.
The Great Transition
In 2013, Johnson was making strides in her banking career at the young age of 23 as a Management Associate for CitiBank, but there was one problem. “I was bored to tears,” she says humorously. “I wanted to figure out something else, so I started to explore.”
“I just didn’t feel like my impact was doing much and we really only talked about ‘this PowerPoint looks great’ type of things. So I wanted to do more. Some more challenging and impactful work,” Johnson explained further. And she did just that. Johnson began to hear a lot of buzz about tech startups, particularly in gaming. She became more curious after a friend who was previously employed by Microsoft, ventured out to create an app.
“He left his job to create a tech app on Apple’s App Store. And I was like, you’re leaving your six-figure job to do this? Is this real? Like you can survive off this?” So with that, she had to learn more about this industry. “I begged him to create a course on how to reskin technology apps and that was the start of my technology journey,” Johnson recalled.
Building a Tech Company from Scratch
After Johnson became more invested and knowledgeable about the tech industry from attending conferences and doing her own research, she began to build and envision her first business very intentionally. “I never saw myself working in tech as an employee. I saw myself building tech,” Johnson explained. “So whenever I would think about technology, I would think of it through the lens of a tech business.”
She began to ask fundamental questions to build that business. Questions like ‘Who would she need to meet?’ or ‘What resources would she need? ‘. Johnson was determined to figure out the answers as quickly as possible. She came up with the idea of her first tech company CoSign; an image recognition company that specializes in social commerce, allowing users to tag products within the images they upload to social media.
One thing she knew for certain was to get a company off the ground she needed money. She began building the company while she worked for CitiBank full-time. “I was putting money away. I started putting the designs together. I put workflows together, I started building my team. There’s a lot you can do while you’re still working full-time before you make the jump,” Johnson stated.
Nonetheless, she underestimated just how much it would cost to launch and scale her business. Thankfully her background in financial services prepared her to fundraise successfully. “One of the biggest things I leverage from a financial services background is learning what the banks ask for, versus what an angel [investor] asks for and what different types of financing are out there to launch and scale your business.”
Using her previous knowledge, she raised $1.4 million over 3 years. “It was a good run in terms of learning how to navigate the fundraising process and learning about different fundraising attributes,” Johnson recalled. As her first tech company, getting it off the ground was far from easy but her experience in those first few years paved the way for many exciting ventures to come.
“From year 0 to 2 is just a wild experience. You’re just trying to survive like you’re trying to figure it out and put all the all the other pieces together,” she expressed. “It’s always an exciting venture but once you find your critical skill set, you have to go find other people who have different skill sets that work in complement to build in the same vision.”
Since building and selling her first tech company, she has progressed to become involved in several other companies within the tech and financial industries. She also founded the largest accelerator event in America, AcceleratorCon.
Creating a Space for Us
In the process of building her first tech company, Johnson faced several challenges with funding, hiring, and overall support.
“I wanted to find a community of women who were having the same challenges as me,” said Johnson. “So I met this young woman at an event and she was like, ‘Hey, sis’, and I said, ‘Hey’, and we got together and found out that we were having a lot of the same challenges as black women.” This sparked a connection that would lead to the creation of one of the biggest tech conferences in America for aspiring black women tech entrepreneurs, Black Women Talk Tech.
Johnson and co-founder Regina Gwynn began their relationship as supportive peers, discussing the resources and needs for their endeavors. In 2015, they extended this dialogue to other women in their field by hosting a retreat in Connecticut with 10 women to discuss navigating their careers. Two years later, the duo vowed to make this meetup more official birthing the first Roadmap to Billions conference for Black Women Talk Tech at Google’s campus.
“We decided to create an agenda where you can build a community around building an entrepreneurial business because it is really lonely,” Johnson expressed. “Sometimes you need a soundboard if you don’t know if you’re considering things the right way. This community really serves as that.”
The duo began to plan for the first conference expecting around 30 women but were astonished when hundreds of women expressed interest. The first event squeezed in about 70 guests in a room. Johnson and Gwynn prepared for 300 people in the second conference and were stunned when over 500 people showed up. Year after year the numbers have grown and the conference now brings at least 1500 people to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
At each Black Women Talk Tech meetup, attendees not only create connections but also gain valuable insights on topics relevant to aspiring tech entrepreneurs including product development, fundraising, legal matters, scaling, and more. “It’s a lot of these early-stage conversations on where most of us were and trying to navigate that with a team of people versus by yourself,” Johnson explained.
What The Future Holds
Black Women Talk Tech has grown to a lively community of over 50,000 members with 10 local chapters in different cities in the country and across the globe. Each member gets access to events, virtual coworking, courses, and other helpful resources. Johnson has big plans for the future of Black Women Talk Tech. The organization recently expanded to London and has plans to expand to Toronto this year.
“We’re really excited about supporting global entrepreneurs and startup founders that have incredible solutions that we can help support.” As far as the tech industry, she sees much potential in current trends such as the rise of AI as well as vertical SaaS, and Fintech. Johnson sees an abundance of opportunities for black women to find success and build wealth through entrepreneurship and technology. “I just think starting a business in general, is so important. Don’t deprive yourself of not having different ways to earn income, especially because as innovation increases and AI becomes more common life for us. It will replace a lot of things,” she says in closing remarks.
She invites all black women entrepreneurs invested in the tech industry to come to the Roadmap to Billions 2024 conference hosted by Black Women Talk Tech from May 16-18 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“We’ll be having so many great ways for you to connect with founders and get recruited for different companies where they have roles and positions…just come and join us at Roadmap to Billions in New York City.”
To get more information on Black Women Talk Tech and the Roadmap to Billions conference visit blackwomentalktech.com.
