Using entrepreneurship to protest

Jon Laster, Blapp

For years, I thought protesting was a waste of time. To me, the only thing that works is to actually come up with something better. So I’m really excited that today’s guest John Laster, somebody who had been out there protesting and finally said, “You know what? Why are we protesting? Why aren’t we doing something about it?”

And he decided he was going to do something about it. John Laster created an app called Blapp, which is a marketplace of black owned local businesses. I invited him here to find out how he did it.

Jon Laster

Blapp

Jon Laster is the founder of Blapp, which helps users discover black-owned businesses.

Andrew: Hey, they’re freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy, where I interview entrepreneurs who built a successful companies for an audience of entrepreneurs who are building successful companies. And I’m one of the early entrepreneurs that I interviewed on here, was the founder of 99 designs.

And I kind of knew Matt offline too. And I said, Matt, do you know that after I interviewed you, I got a ton of hate. He goes, yeah. I said, doesn’t it bother you? He said, look, there are a lot of people who don’t like this idea that we’re opening up designed to the crowd that any, that if a, an entrepreneur like you, Andrew wants to get a design set up.

You can list yourself on 99 designs and hundreds of designers will submit work. And you only pay for the one that you like. There are people who are upset that the. Designers, aren’t getting paid. I said, I get it. But aren’t you upset that...

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