Two years ago, De’Lon Dixon was ready to pack his bags and leave Detroit.
The entrepreneur was set on taking advantage of Miami’s warmer weather and its growing tech scene. But one weekend, Dixon dropped in on a then-new monthly gathering in Corktown for Black entrepreneurs and creatives. A conversation with Johnnie Turnage, co-founder of the initiative, coined Black Tech Saturdays, motivated him to stay.
“He (Turnage) was interested in what I could do and he gave me a stage to showcase my skill sets,” Dixon told BridgeDetroit.
As Black Tech Saturdays celebrates its second anniversary, the once-small gatherings in a Newlab conference room at Michigan Central have blossomed. The must-see events are drawing hundreds of people, creating community, mentorship and opportunity for Black entrepreneurs in a field that lacks diversity. The movement is gaining state and national attention, landing Turnage and his wife and co-founder Alexa Turnage visits from actor and former U.S. Senate hopeful Hill Harper and Olympic swimmer Cullen Jones, a shoutout from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer during the 2024 Mackinac Policy Conference, and an Afrotech speaking engagement.
The events are also attracting financing. The Gilbert Family Foundation has invested $1.2 million in the organization, while Rocket Community Fund has invested $350,000.
“From April of 2023 to the end of September of 2023, we went from a five-person gathering to about 500 people and we were less than six months old,” Johnnie Turnage said. “That’s what really let us know that Black Tech Saturdays had to evolve a little bit and keep up.”
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It’s not just tech founders coming out to events. The meetings are often frequented by artists, athletes, lawyers and politicians and membership in the organization is free.
“Just like Black Tech Saturdays have evolved, me and Johnnie for the past two years have been on a true, personal growth journey where we’ve been forced to evolve into the leaders that we are now,” Alexa Turnage added.
From a meeting to a movement
The Turnages said the idea for Black Tech Saturdays came after hosting a networking event in February 2023 centered on Black entrepreneurs like themselves. The couple co-founded the donation app EvenScore.
After the event, people were reaching out on LinkedIn to find out when the next gathering was, Johnnie Turnage said. A couple of months later, the first Black Tech Saturdays meeting was held to help people brainstorm products and work on grant applications. Every week, the crowd expanded until it reached several dozen, Alexa Turnage said.
“I really thought this was just gonna be a few of us and the fact that we had 30 people come to just learn and check out what we were doing was really special,” she said. “It became even more evident after that meeting when the attendance doubled. We were like, ‘Oh, this won’t just be a small working group of nerds trading notes and trading information.’”
Black Tech Saturdays offers a range of services such as workshops, training, networking, mentorship and community outreach. During a recent meeting, attendees participated in a mass marketing workshop with Jonathan Mildenhall, chief marketing officer with Rocket Companies, Alexa Turnage said. Another format they have is the “founder takeover” where a tech founder teaches on a subject they’re an expert on.
“Also, we do different webinars,” Johnnie Turnage said. “We know there are a lot of people who can’t make it in person. Last summer we did virtual sessions with the National Science Foundation.”
The Turnages said one of their favorite things about the growth of the organization is the impact it has on emerging entrepreneurs. Darren Riley, the founder of environmental tech company JustAir, landed a $2.7 million contract with Wayne County in 2023 to install 100 air-quality monitors.
“An entrepreneur called me up and said, ‘I didn’t know that Black people were getting million-dollar contracts. I’m in negotiations with a big potential customer, I didn’t know I could ask for that much,’” Johnnie Turnage said. “It changed how she approached negotiations.”
Creating an equitable tech landscape
Detroit’s tech ecosystem is the second-fastest growing in the world after Dubai and the Turnages want to make sure entrepreneurs of color continue to have a seat at the table.
However, Black and brown people still face significant hurdles when starting their businesses, including limited access to entrepreneurship training programs and access to capital. Black founders in the U.S. raised 0.48% of all venture dollars allocated in 2023, equating to around $661 million out of $136 billion, reported Tech Crunch.
“A Black unicorn in Detroit could create millionaires in equity with the jobs,” Johnnie Turnage said. “A tech role is taking people from making $16 an hour to $85,000 (annually) (annually) and that kind of income change doesn’t just impact the family, it starts to impact neighborhoods because you get five people in a neighborhood who are making $85,000 overnight, the community has different anchors and that’s the way we have to think about it.”
Even with the dozens of startups that launch in the city each year, the Turnages said more work needs to be done to cement Detroit’s place in the tech world. One part of that means getting rid of the preconceived notion that Detroit and Michigan’s economy is centered around the auto industry, Alexa Turnage said. Meanwhile, Johnnie Turnage wants to see more capital.
“If you have an idea and you’re in Silicon Valley, it is so much easier to figure out how to get $50,000 to $100,000 just to try the idea,” he said. “When you’re in Detroit, most people don’t have the flexibility to try their entrepreneur endeavor in jeopardy of their job or whatever else is going on. Think about how many people who have amazing ideas that can’t technically afford to take the risk.”
Next, the Turnages will focus on a BTS’ Women’s History Month celebration March 22 and a Black Tech Saturdays digital empowerment summit in September.
“Black Tech Saturdays is our first little baby here,” Johnnie Turnage said. “We want to set our kid up for success, because one day we’re not going to be here to do everything for our kid. So we gotta give it these things and give it a couple other people and make sure it’s got some aunties and uncles to look out for it.”
New generation of tech startups
Dixon launched his Detroit AI company, Think Technologies, in 2022.
Under the direction of Black Tech Saturdays, he’s been able to grow the company into a five-person team.
The company is now in the process of developing an AI-powered e-learning platform called UThink. The app will allow users to take micro-courses on tools such as ChatGPT, Google Analytics and Canva, Dixon said. The goal is to get older people who aren’t as tech savvy to learn how to use those programs.
Dixon also developed an AI chatbot for Black Tech Saturdays’ website and was a partner and panelist for the group’s Black History Month Innovation Summit. He said he’s planning to build a curriculum around the summit’s sessions.
“We’re going to have experts make short videos to show people how to do different things with those tools and ultimately, this will be uploaded into a curriculum to where people can sign up and watch a quick course on how to make an Instagram post on Canva or something of that nature, just to get more guidance and really help people leverage technology in a quick and efficient way. Our main goal is to bridge the digital divide.”
Detroiters Brittanie Dabney and Kameron Dye have been attending Black Tech Saturdays since 2023, establishing their company Ecosphere Organics last year.
The tech startup takes food waste from local restaurants and suppliers and converts it into reusable material. Dabney is the founder and CEO while Dye is the chief business officer.
The idea for Ecosphere came out of Dabney’s desire to scale the use of food waste in raw materials and eco-friendly products.
“I have the desire to re-imagine how we use waste streams, how we rethink waste streams, and then how we can scale it to reduce the amount of harmful plastics in our chemicals,” Dabney said. “And that really comes from my background being in environmental science.”
Last fall, Ecosphere received a $20,000 grant from Black Tech Saturdays and Rocket Community Fund to help bridge the digital divide by providing access, devices and training programs in the city. Dabney and Dye plan to use the award to develop a summer program to get youth interested in environmental science and justice as well as engineering.
“The community that Johnnie and Alexa are building, being very intentional about the startups that are heavily involved and those that can be mentors to people that want to get into tech, has made this a really good community to keep being involved in,” Dabney said.
Join Black Tech Saturdays
Meets twice a month inside Newlab at Michigan Central, 2050 15th Street in Detroit
Sign up to become a member at blacktechsaturdays.com.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misstated the official name of the Rocket Community Fund.