Written by Matthew Addai – Cashblack
3 brothers’ journey to support the Black community in their support of Black-owned businesses – Born out of a moment to grow into a movement.
When people ask me, “What made you leave finance?” and I respond by saying, “My redundancy,” it’s either an awkward, apologetic laugh where they try to decipher whether or not I’m joking, or genuine pity at my situation for not having agency over my decision to stop getting paid to bet on sports at a boutique hedge fund and, instead, cosplay as a social entrepreneur. I prefer the former because, as much as I didn’t completely choose the cards with which I’ve been dealt these past few years, I’ve been through more than enough to know how to play them.
The Year 2020
That year of the pandemic, the recession and that summer when the rest of the world agreed with the fact that racism is real and racism is bad. With my 2019 redundancy now a sabbatical, I’d already decided to dedicate my time to autodidacticism to better teach myself “how bad” racism – and everything else wrong with the world – really was. With the goal of leaving my self-imposed journey of self-discovery to find out exactly “how the world works,”. Halfway through that year none of us will ever forget, I feel like we all learned our own personal lessons. Mine, though, was with the intention of gaining something entrepreneurial to pursue. A real purpose. From selling sweets in school to being a nightclub promoter at university, I was always going to end up being a “business guy” in some capacity. A spring spent educating myself on how rigged the game followed by a summer of watching CNN and listening to Kendrick Lamar meant that, by autumn, I’d found my calling. More specifically, I found a correlation between the lack of support for Black-owned businesses and the issues faced by Black people – globally. And I felt that the best way to try and fix these issues was to find a way to incentivise patronage in Black-owned businesses by having the Black-owned businesses reinvest back into the patrons. With time to kill that summer during lockdown, my two younger brothers and I thought to ourselves, “How about a cashback website?” “A cashback website for Black-owned businesses.” “Why don’t we call it ‘Cashblack’?”
“Light work”, I thought to myself. I’d already amassed countless business ideas that year – as I’m sure so many others had during lockdown – but I thought that out of all the get-rich-quick schemes that filled my Notes app, this one has the most material benefit for the most people. More importantly, I could bang this out by Black History Month in October 2020. This really was going to be “light work.” Business registered with Companies House. Trademark registration application submitted with the Intellectual Property Office. Now we just needed to build it.
As the oldest of the three of us, I instructed my COO middle brother, Jonathan, to source the companies we were to onboard while the youngest, Nicholas, as our de facto CTO, was tasked with building the platform from scratch. We put up a whiteboard akin to a Pinterest Vision Board of plans, ideas, and, in essence, dreams of what the project could become – something, to which, we still refer to this day. As good as our first iteration was, it became hilariously apparent that this wasn’t going to be “light work” at all.
Realising we needed outside help for iteration number 2 of Cashblack, we found a white-label solution provider for development team number 2 who would, basically, give us a cashback platform with a handful of add-ons to make it our own. However, we desired way more. We requested more to be done but we were met with either pushback or costly upselling from the developers to the point where we were at an impasse knowing we’d gone as far as we could with them with what we were prepared to pay. So we decided to seek a new route to our vision. A custom solution. One we could totally control. In our search for this, a close friend of mine recommended a family friend who could help. We met, we spoke, he resonated with the project and I resonated with the idea of having the project completed by Black History Month 2021 so I felt that it was a perfect fit. Especially given the fact that the project shouldn’t be “that” hard and, worst case, it’s a family friend of a close friend – practically “my own family” as I used transient property mathematics as justification to give half of my life savings to someone to build our project as per our whiteboard’s specification. Unfortunately, as confident as I was that I wasn’t going to get swindled out of a footballer’s ransom, a month into the project, the series of red flags I’d ignored had turned my purview into Trinidad Carnival. Not only was I not going to get what I paid for, I was also not going to get my money back. Apparently, an occupational hazard for non-technical tech founders. All the mediation in the world between myself, my friend, and his family friend couldn’t resurrect the carcass of our project so I took the L – as painful as it was – knowing that nobody was coming to save us so we had to persevere to find a new development team to finish, or even start, what we needed to finish.
We went back to our first outside contact conceding that the upselling had worked and we’d be safe in the knowledge that with proven professionals in development team number 4, not only would we have a website – but also, a mobile app and a browser extension that would become the Cashblack A.F.R.O.B.O.T – an acronym for our Algorithm For Redirection Of Black-Owned Traffic. Essentially, a browser extension that would use artificial intelligence to learn how our members shop to suggest Black-owned alternatives to their usual online retail destinations. We’d toyed with the idea of a browser plug-in mascot for a while. The Cashblack B.A.T (Black Alternative Tracker) was too reminiscent of COVID. The Cashblack B.O.A.T (Black-Owned Alternative Tracker) was too reminiscent of slavery. And the Cashblack Black Alternative Solution Tracker And Redirection Device wouldn’t have been accepted into the Chrome Webstore for obvious reasons so the A.F.R.O.B.O.T was going to be our mascot, hero product and absolute game changer. I mean, if PayPal bought the Honey browser extension for $4 billion in 2020 then we would’ve been content with like 1% of that.
Development team 4 got to work and everything was going as well as expected. Even better than expected. We could see everything from our whiteboard coming to life before our eyes. It was going so well that when the developers asked us to pay the remainder of the amount we owed before the actual completion of the project to help with the financial appearance of their company, I was more than happy to oblige. After all, the progress alone was worth every penny of the second half of my life savings. It doesn’t take a quant with a master’s in Finance and a background in predictive analytics to work out what happened after this. Because if it did, then we probably would’ve launched that year rather than been on the business end of a deafening radio silence that lasted from April 2022 until Black History Month 2022. When the lead developer eventually resurfaced, we were told they had “run out of resources” and our project was to be finished by a team in Pakistan with whom they had worked before. They would do 10 hours of work for free and then whatever transpired after this would be handled between us and this new team. “Fair enough,” I thought. “Who needs money anyway? It’s not like it can be exchanged for goods or services or whatever.” “Take the L.” “Charge it to the game.” “It is what it is” and everything else I said to gaslight myself into seeing this through another missed Black History Month launch. So with no money, not even “vibes” at this point, we had to work with what would be development team number 5 to finish and launch the project which was now scheduled for Christmas 2022.
I wasn’t deluded enough to believe this launch date would come to pass so I was content to work on everything else within our control during this new period of whatever pejorative I decided to call it at the time. However, we did make the most of this period. We joined accelerator programmes which wholly improved us as a business. We won a few grant awards that helped plug the hole in my bank account where money used to live. We forged relationships with Black-owned retailers around the country for whom the idea really hit home and so, were happy to be involved. We onboarded multiple Black-focused charities to whom our future members could donate their cashback rewards that we would then match with our share of affiliate commissions. Most significantly, we were able to land major organisations as partners. Etsy, Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats – all happy to be involved so that our future members would be able to order from Black-owned vendors from those marketplaces through our website or app. “Future Members” being the operative term here because we were still far away from a finished product but as much as faking it until you make it is a way of life for startup founders, I wasn’t going to be making any excuses for missing another Black History Month launch date. Three years going around the country to Black business events telling people about this mythical project where we pay people to support Black people – we absolutely had to come up with something. We reached September 2023, battling through varying degrees of technical incompetence from our developers, financial uncertainty as one would as a pre-revenue founder working full time for 3 years and personal trauma which makes the development hell we went through seem like the “light work” I told myself the project would be 3 years prior.
However, 1st October 2023, my brothers and I were able to finally launch Cashblack – our platform that rewards members with cashback when they shop online with Black-owned businesses. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t emotional given everything we’d been through.
Tens of thousands of pounds over budget
5 different lead developers
2 court proceedings against lead developers 3 and 4
7 different personal traumatic events that make me question whether or not this has all been worth it – at least in the short run
I’m a firm believer that every man thinks that his burden is the heaviest, so I’ll never seek sympathy for this because, ultimately, I’m blessed to be able to take four years out of gainful employment on what some have called a “noble pursuit”. The choices made over the past 4 years through this burden have been mine to make and, as such, I have to stand on every single one of them. This includes friends with whom I’m no longer friends and numbers in my phone I’ll never ring again. As the oldest brother, as a founder, as a Black founder, that’s on me. Even if that means that the energy with which my brothers and I stand won’t necessarily be matched. 2020 was a long time ago. Several world-changing events, organisational statements and DEI budget cycles ago. However, we’ve never left that summer. Be it sunk cost fallacy or genuine belief in what we’re aiming to achieve for our people, as ambitious, arrogant, or even deluded as we might sound, everything we’ve gone through for this project will be for something. As with all the other Black-owned businesses that were formed that summer with a view to operate to the benefit of all of us, my brothers and I will continue with that same energy. With that same purpose. With that same ambition. And with our same whiteboard.
Matthew Addai
Co-founder and CEO of Cashblack.
Matthew Addai Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mattyaddai
Cashblack Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CashblackHQ
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Cashblack LinkedIn: http://www.Linkedin.com/company/Cashblack