Danielle Newnham Podcast Clarence Wooten on Grit, Entrepreneurship and Empowering Underrepresented Founders
“As a kid, I lived in a place where as a young Black man, you had only two choices: become a predator or become prey.”
This is a quote from today’s guest - Clarence Wooten – serial tech entrepreneur, investor and entrepreneur in residence at X, Google’s Moonshot factory.
Clarence grew up in a tough area in Baltimore which instilled in him a level of grit that ked him on to a hugely successful career in the tech industry.
In this interview, we go back in time to what it was like growing up in that environment as well as how he got into tech and the ups and downs of his entrepreneurial journey.
From starting Envision Designs, whilst studying architecture as an undergraduate followed by that got acquired. Clarence then co-founded and was CEO of ImageCafe.com – regarded as the Internet's first online superstore of customizable websites templates, it was acquired for $23 million by Network Solutions in November 1999, just seven months after it launched.
Clarence was also founder and CEO and Chairman of Progress.ly - an enterprise SaaS platform that made it easier for enterprises to turn business processes into visual, repeatable, workflows in the cloud. Progress.ly was acquired by Box in June 2018 He also founded Groupsite.com in 2006, a self-serve SaaS platform for building private, branded communities of interest.
These are just some of his accomplishments. Clarence is also an investor and does a lot of work to encourage and empower more underrepresented founders in tech.
Clarence is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and has degrees in Business Management and Computer-Aided Design for Architecture and Engineering. He is also the only African-American to have founded and led two startups to successful acquisitions by publicly traded companies with the sale of ImageCafe to Network Solutions and Progress.ly to Box.
This is an incredible episode with an amazing entrepreneur and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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Clarence on Twitter @clarencewooten
Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and Instagram @daniellenewnham
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Mentioned in this episode:
Clarence's EIR at Google X appointment announcement
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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng.