Word: dashes
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Meanwhile, he managed to capitalize on some good publicity his project was generating, as well as some big-name corporate connections. For Dash personally, it led to a White House invitation, while DME was named the minority technology firm of the year for 1999 by the U.S. Department of Commerce. When he took DME public last June, Dash's net worth reportedly shot up to $30 million--on paper. Then last spring, when Wall Street soured on dotcoms, DME fell on hard times, and investors scurried away. Dash weathered the storm, but DME was forced to lay off more than...
...What Dash has discovered is that this bumpy path to dotcom success is littered with many of the same obstacles faced by African Americans in the traditional corporate world. Only in this case, he faced a new-boy network, made up mostly of white, middle-class male computer engineers mixing comfortably with M.B.A.s--guys who often knew one another as undergraduates. "Back in 1997, it wasn't cool to be a black dotcom," says Patrick McElroy, president of Atlanta-based EverythingBlack.com a virtual meeting ground for more than 600 African American-owned websites. Dwayne Walker, 39, a veteran of Microsoft...
...When Dash was growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s, there weren't many black role models in corporate America. Today, while some 200 black men and women have reached the upper echelons of FORTUNE 500 companies--up from a handful a decade ago--only two African Americans have ever been named CEO of any of these firms: Kenneth Chenault of American Express and Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae. Prominent blacks like Maytag's Lloyd Ward have resigned or been relieved of their corporate commands. In the Internet world, the minuscule number of black chief execs was prominently diminished...
...Dash wanted to bolster this tiny club--by adding at least one, himself, to their number. While a freshman at the University of Southern California, he launched a successful hip-hop record label. When the Internet began to take off, he used the profits to start DME. He self-financed the company for the first 4 1/2 years, raising a couple of hundred thousand dollars from family and friends...
...most black dotcoms. In the general spring housecleaning, they were likely to be the first to get knocked off. "A lot have already gone out of business," says Lary Tuckett, director of ethnic marketing for Luminant Worldwide, a Dallas-based Internet-services provider. "Or they're floundering." One reason Dash has survived is that his goals offer a certain amount of intangible social equity to the corporate and community-organization partners he has attracted. The National Urban League is promoting Placesofcolor.com at its technology centers, where people get computer training. AOL bought 3% of DME's shares with an option...