130: Top 20 Countdown

Top 20 Countdown: Week 10

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s episode is the tenth of several highlight shows where we are taking a look back at our top 20 favorite interviews and conversations of all time. Today’s featured guest is Felecia Hatcher, Author & Co-Founder of Code Fever. Felecia is on a mission to rid communities across the globe of innovation deserts by working with community leaders and government officials to create inclusive and diverse tech/startup ecosystems. She is also a White House Award winning entrepreneur, bestselling author, and globally sought-after speaker.

Some key points from Felecia from Code Fever:

• Author of five books (so far)
  • The “C” Students Guide to Scholarships
  • Start Your Business on a Ramen Noodle Budget
  • FOCUSED Strategic Action Planner
  • How to Become an Epic Expert
  • PopPreneurs
• Her upcoming book titled FAILURE your greatest Success Story
• The myth of needing to be a A+ student to be successful
• Being a great student outside the classroom
• Teaching herself how to code when she was in high school
• Learning to market herself for what she’s good at not for what her GPA was
• Winning $130,000 in scholarships as a C student
• Starting her first business freshman year of college in her dorm room (educational consulting)
• Running a gourmet popsicle manufacturing company for 8 years
• Getting creative when you have limited resources
  • Never let money be a barrier for you
• Starting Code Fever
  • Since the start, the organization has worked with over 4,000 students and introduced them to computer programming and digital literacy
  • Cultural understanding and setbacks to the program’s success and impact on the students
• The myth that people who live in Miami don’t work or have serious businesses
• Starting Black Tech Week 6 years ago
  • Bringing thought leaders, investors, accelerators, etc from all over the world to the event
  • Holding the conference in less known neighborhoods that need business and money
• Miami being diverse by default and not intention
• Miami’s diversity and inclusion issues cannot be solved by one solution because the issues are made up of several little things
• Listen or watch Felecia’s full episode here