Steve Jones, founder and CEO of pocstock

Erik  00:00

Steve, we want to welcome all of our listeners to another episode of MRP, Minority Report podcast with Eric and Kerel. Each episode, we talk with real operators and leaders in media, tech and business, and today, joining us is Steve Jones, who's the founder and CEO of pocstock, let's jump in and get to know Steve. Steve, how you doing? Welcome to the show.

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Steve Jones  00:26

Well, thank you for having me. This is very exciting. I'm looking forward to the conversation today.

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Erik  00:32

We are too. Can't wait to ask you about pocstock. So many great things, questions I think we have, and subject matter a little near and dear to the heart too. We'll get to that in a little bit. But Steve, for those that don't know you and our listeners, can you tell us a little bit about Steve Jones? Where was Steve Jones? Born and raised? Where are you coming from?

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Steve Jones  00:53

So that's a good question, because I was born in Barbados in the Caribbean. I came to the States when I was six years old and I lived in Brooklyn, Bed Stuy, do or die Brooklyn, when it was still a great community, before it went through what it went through to now be go back to becoming a great community. And then, you know, I lived in Crown Heights. I live in various places around Brooklyn. And right before 2000 I moved to New Jersey, met the love of my life and decided to stay and five kids later, 20 years later, you know, Jersey is home, home base for right now.

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Erik  01:29

That's great. You know, coming from Barbados and your family and sort of weaving yourself into the fabric of Brooklyn at that time and culture. What was that like for you and your family?

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Steve Jones  01:45

Yeah, it was a complete culture shock, and anyone from the islands would know this. Sometimes, when you come from the Caribbean or any sort of place like outside of the US or wherever, sometimes your parents will go first, or they'll send someone first says emissary ahead, get everything set up, and then they'll send for the kids. Yeah, and that's what my mother did. So when I tell people this, they don't believe it. But my mother left when I was a baby, like newborn, and I didn't see her again until I was six years old. So the woman who raised me was my older sister, Marcia, and I met my mother in the airport, JFK airport at six years old, because there was a strange woman putting a coat on me, because I've never experienced winter. And I came here in December, you know, right before Christmas. And it was just a culture shock with the weather the people, you know, Barbados is a very pristine place in terms of the Caribbean, it hasn't been fully Americanized at that time. It was really all I knew, right? You know, six years old, that's all I knew. And then coming to Brooklyn, everything was fast moving. You know, it's a lot of people in the islands. You know, we pride ourselves and Barbados having a 98% literacy rate. So everything was about education and progress and things like that. And right when we came is right when Reaganomics was starting, like right before Reaganomics started. So we came at a time where we were getting used to the American culture. You know, we're trying to bring the rest of our siblings over and really trying to really get a lay of the land. And, you know, Bed Stuy was already a fast moving place, so just getting used to the pace of it took some time. But I was a child prodigy. You know, I was in kindergarten. I was on the sixth grade level. Sixth grade, I was on a college level. So I was one of those young kids who fell through the cracks once you know, once Reaganomics hit, and then every thing transformed. It's

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Erik  03:46

been a unique experience. Steve, when you know you're advanced compared to your fellow classmates, what sort of unique things do you think you sort of learned about yourself and then your environments as you were sort of doing that, yeah,

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Steve Jones  04:01

I mean, I learned really quickly that, you know, a lot of the folks that I was around did not respect intelligence. So I eventually stopped raising my hand in class, because, you know, you get called names, you get looked at funny, you get picked on. And eventually, instead of raising my hand for every question, because it was extremely easy to work was easy. I stopped raising my hand, and I kind of shrunk down a little bit. It was clear. I couldn't hide it. Everybody would come to me for answers to things, and it's still that way today. People come to me to help them figure out all sorts of things, but at the end of the day, it was the culture of toughness over intelligence. Was something that you learned really early, that you have to be tough physically. You have to be ready to, you know, throw hands if you need to at any time. And that was what was respected in the island you compete for, you know, to go to different grades and get higher grades. And, you know, bringing a B was a negative. You. Know, getting a beat where I grew up was like, You're a genius, you know, and the work was extremely easy, so it was just wrapping my head around why people couldn't necessarily process things the way I did. It took me a while to realize that I was somewhat unique in some situations, because I thought I don't look at people in that way. If I can do it, anybody can do it, was always my mentality, but I quickly saw I was different, and now in business, do you see some of what you always had in you now almost being a unique gift and in ways that you can impact business and others? Tell us a little bit about how now all of that kind of plays out, yeah, yeah. Once I got into the business world, I really realized that differences are superpowers, like, if you have a room full of everyone who thinks the same, you don't get the best out of people. But when you fill a room with people with different ideas, different backgrounds, different experiences, and they're not afraid to speak up, or they're empowered to speak up as a leader. You want to empower people to express themselves in that way. You know, you get the best out of any situation. You get the best solution. That's why diverse teams outperform any other company or any other team that's non diverse, because you get the best ideas from so many different backgrounds. But it turned into my superpower. You know, when I started my last company, it was a digital agency, and just thinking outside the box, you know, coming up with these out of the box creative solutions for people, it really helped to be able to think differently, you know, and still today, you know, that's what we do today. So that's it really helps,

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06:39

yeah, Steve, I want to ask you about Hawk stock. For those that aren't familiar, tell us about this great company that you built. We're on our way to being a great company, you know, but for right now, we've

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Steve Jones  06:50

spent a couple of years building the infrastructure, and now we're really looking to make an impact globally. But I will say that my last company was a digital agency, and we spent a lot of time creating marketing and tech and creative assets for brands of all sizes around the world. And one of the things that was glaringly obvious is that at some point marketers and advertisers and brands realize that you need to effectively communicate with people of color in a certain way, right? They're your audiences, they're your employees, they're your consumers, they're your neighbors, they're your family members, right? And for a long time, the stock image industry did not prioritize people of color, you know, in terms of being able to build these massive libraries of images that look like us, and not being able to find those assets. So I ran a creative team, and they would have to find these images for our clients. And it was very difficult. My team would have to take one image from one platform, another image from another platform, cut them together, fix the lighting, to try to make it look like a diverse team. And that's where the idea from. POC stock came from, just out of the frustration that we felt not being able to find images that look like us. And I'll tell you one story, one time I was sitting with a client on my laptop, and you know, we were trying to find an image of a black business person, and this is the moment where POC stock was born. So I'm sitting side by side with a client that I'm trying to impress, showing them imagery, and I type in on one of the most popular stock search platforms that you can imagine, and I type in black businessman. And one of the images in the first set of searches that came up was a black man in a sort of a bar situation, and it was lines of cocaine on the bar table, and I was mortified, because that was a reflection of what people think of us, right? Somebody had to take the image somebody put so there's accountability in different places. But I was embarrassed in that moment, right? Because I thought that was an easy term to find, right? I'm a black businessman. I'm around black business people all the time, so I didn't think it would just be something that would produce such negative results. And that was the moment where I said, I have to do something about this, because when you think about most people's experiences with different cultures or different people from different locations or backgrounds. Most of what we think about people is not what we personally experience. Is what we see and process through media, whether social media, mass media, TVs, movies, music videos, what you think you know about other people has a lot to do with what you've been conditioned to see through these imagery. And I thought, I can have an impact. Oxide can have an impact by having positive images of people of color to provide to marketers, advertisers, and now we do it for AI companies, so that they don't ever have a reason to say, I can't find. The image of a black CEO or a female doctor, right,

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Kerel  10:05

right? Yeah, yeah. And Steve, what's been the reaction from the marketplace since you launched the company? It's

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Steve Jones  10:11

been overwhelmingly positive. People are all behind the mission. We've gotten a lot of great support. It's not without its challenges, because we are disrupting an industry that does not want to be disrupted. A lot of stock platforms who are now looking like they're diverse, they have these massive libraries, and only a slither of their diverse content is there for window dressing, which is an attempt, is fine. It's progress. I'll take it. But you know, for the most part, it's been overwhelmingly positive. Like, you know, we get new customers subscribing, and we're partnering with, you know, like a lot of leading brands and ad agencies as well, so we do a lot of work to make sure that the content is safe, the content doesn't reinforce negative stereotypes. The content is well shot, well LED is legal to use. And we're thinking about people who've never been thought about. We call it creating heroes, right? So we create new heroes, right? So if you think about, if you look at traditional stock images, if there was ever a person who was physically disabled in a wheelchair, they're never in the office space, not often in the office space, not never, but not often. And if they are, they're a spectator. How cool is it if you show them as the leader of the meeting, right? How cool is it to show women leading? How cool is it to show you know, people who who have different looks, just being the star of the show, people who have been traditionally overlooked, that's what we focus on.

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Kerel  11:44

Love it. Love it. And you've mentioned agencies and brands. But just to be clear, like anyone that's looking for diverse images, right, they can go to the site and either sign up and download and utilize the images

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Steve Jones  12:01

absolutely any business of any size can utilize pork stock today, we try to remove as many barriers as possible for people to get access to these images. Our pricing is more competitive than some other platforms. We make sure to have as many options. We're flexible. If you're a nonprofit or other organization, and even the pricing we have publicly doesn't work. Hit us up. We may be able to negotiate pricing that's more favorable for your organization. We don't want any reason why people cannot find good quality positive images of us. There should be no reason in 2024 not especially now that we exist. So that's really what we're looking to do. Gotcha,

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Kerel  12:46

gotcha, love it. And I know Eric probably wants to ask you a couple of CO, Founder, CEO type questions, but I'm gonna get that. I'm gonna get that started first with, you know, obviously, you know, Founder, CEO, you're growing the business, right? What does it take, or what are some of the keys to leadership when you know you have a company that you're building from the ground up, and you have other people that are coming along with you on the journey, I feel like being a CEO of a company at that stage is different than being the CEO of a, you know, 50 year old company that's been around for, you know, ever so on and so forth. So what do you think about day to day from a leadership perspective? That

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Steve Jones  13:32

is a great question. And believe it or not, I am a space enthusiast, so I look at almost everything in the context of going now to space, right? So I always look at it from when you launch a business, it's like launching a rocket into space. The team of engineers that preps for space journey are never really the people who go into space. There's the early stage of folks who really set the groundwork for the mission to come. And sometimes in the early stages of a startup, you're going to start off with some folks who are going to add value in the beginning, and then as the company grows and matures, you know, so do the people that come aboard. But everybody contributes. And some of the things I think about are people. You know, having the right people at the right time is everything. Sometimes you get opportunities, but you don't necessarily have the right people, or the people that are most capable of getting the company from one stage to the next. They may be passionate, they may be dedicated, they may be loyal, but they may not have the right skill set. You know, as a startup founder, sometimes you have to early stage. You have to find the people you can afford to pay right and then later on, when you could be more competitive with salaries and look in different spaces for talent, then you upgrade and bring on more people. Also those early stage people are generally more overworked than later when you can find specialists, because early stages, you're wearing multiple hats. Products, right? So a lot of what I think about is the future. We've raised so far about 1.6 million in seed investment. And I think about our investors and our shareholders. We have over 1000 photographers, videographers across 60 countries who rely on POC stock for royalties. I think about those folks on a daily basis, making sure that when we put together a production team for a brand or project, that we're making sure that people of color are included in every aspect of the production, from the creative direction to the producing to the directing, not just in front of the camera, like a lot of productions are. So I think about the growth of the company. I think about getting out front and moving roadblocks out of the way so my team can do what they do best, which I think is ultimately my job, to be out front, moving things out of the way for everyone so they can operate to the best of their abilities. We have a great team. Our Chief Operating Officer, Derek Lorraine, is phenomenal. My co founder, Deshawn Brown is phenomenal. POC stock would not be where it is today if we didn't have people who came from a certain level of experience and brought that experience from big corporations and big agencies to bear. It makes us unique, but it also it makes us a lot more buttoned up than the average business at our stage. Who, when you get in front of a big like, we just did a global partnership with Canva, and one of the reasons that's so successful is because we were ready for it, right? We were in an early stage startup who did not know how to do an enterprise deal like, you know, we work with a lot of brands like the Googles, the Amazons of the world. And, you know, we were prepared to do that from even before the company started, because of our past experience. So having the right people makes all the difference in the world, having the right systems in place. I'm a strong believer that your business is not a real business. If you can't take a day off, if you can't take a vacation, if you can't step away, if you can't be sick, then you haven't built your vision into an actual business. Because for me, businesses are series of processes and people,

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Erik  17:14

right? So all said, Steve, thank you. Lots of great insights in there, lots of good real life experience in there. Yeah, and congratulations on the seed and growing more more capital there. I'm curious. You're first and foremost a founder and a CEO, but you're also a black founder. What are some unique experiences you've had going through that process of raising seed and raising money. Tell us a little bit about

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Steve Jones  17:45

that. Yeah, it's not for the faint of heart. I tell you that right now, it's not easy. And you know, we black founders, get less than 1% of all VC money. Black female founders, point three, five or somewhere around there, I think we doubled to 2% after George Floyd, and it reverted back to the status quo. So there are those challenges in finding access to that 99% of funding that's just available to other cultures without even having the type of team and ideas and traction that we have. So one of the things that I think about a lot when I think about funding, there is no shortage of money in the world, none the shortages in access and proximity to the money. And I was able to, or we were able to, and fortunate enough to meet a brother and sister who had proximity to wealth, and they believed in pock stock from the start, and they were able to connect us to their network. And I'll tell you, we raised 750,000 in less than 90 days through their network, amazing. And yeah, and it was a $10,000 minimum. And you know, my partner and I were doing pitch meetings, 1520, minute pitch meetings. They were very informal, just like this conversation. There were no slides and graphs and charts, and people were cutting 50, $60,000 checks like that. And after 15 minute call fast forward, we realized that we inadvertently excluded a lot of people of color from that round because they could not afford to $10,000 minimum. And then just, you know, traditionally, we don't have access to just say, Okay, I'll invest 10,000 just like that. And we want to be inclusive, so we did a crowdfunding round, and the minimum was $100 to get into that round. So we got 179 investors in that crowdfunding round, and that took about eight months to raise 150,000 Wow, versus. Is 90 days to raise 750,000 and when I say six months, I meant of working, of marketing, of creating videos, of creating collateral, and calling and Hey, call me back on when I get paid, and I'll do $100 when I get paid. Like it was a lot to make sure that we included people, but we put in the work because we don't just want people of color in front of the images. We want them on the cap table. We want them in our vendor list. We're heavily into paying suppliers of color, so we did the work to make sure that we were inclusive. But it was so much easier if you were access to the right network to raise money than if you do the harder route, which is what we took to be inclusive. So I wouldn't change it, but I'm just letting anyone who's trying to raise money, it's proximity to those networks. You have to network, and you have to meet people, connect with someone who's outside of your network, who's raised money before, and fortunately, our Investor Relations leader Chad, he came from those networks. He spent 30 years as a hedge fund manager. He left that job to come work at POC stock. He left working in hedge funds. He believed in the brand so much, to come aboard, right? So that's the sort of support that we've been getting. And that's not you know, comment, but I'm just saying that that's how we were able to do it. That's

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Erik  21:24

great, more great advice. And thank you, Steve for sharing a little bit about that really unique experience, and then how hard it is, and then also how it really goes. Right earlier,

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Steve Jones  21:35

you said we there are a lot of great solo founders, and then there's a lot of great co founder and founder and co founder and building and creating a company with a partner and creating other folks. That seems to be your experience. I want to ask you about, you know what it's like, and the advantages of having a co founder or folks founding with you. It is hugely advantageous, especially if you could find the right chemistry. I will say this, I started POC stock, and then I sought out founders afterwards, right? And I sought out three founders in areas of the business that I either had very little experience in or did not want to work in. So I found a founder who I'm creating a photography company. So I sought out a photographer, very popular photographer in our area. I sought out a CTO, and I sought out someone who can deal with the clients. And then two of those founders are no longer part of the company, and it's just now me and one of the founder of Deshaun, to lead all of our major client relationships and partnerships. But it is usually advantageous, because of the brain trust in my past company. If it was all about me and I was the only founder, I have to make all of the decisions, there's no one else with skin in the game as the company scales, it's like that turbulence of getting out of the atmosphere you don't have any support in shouldering all of those things that come at you, and then you start to make bad decisions, or not your best decisions, because you're spread very thin, and you're handling a lot of different disciplines. I'm a tech founder, so I usually lead with tech, and I lead to Tech in my company. So I built the platform, or I led the team that built the platform. I should say I haven't rode the line of code in 20 years, but, you know, I still like to play tech and develop on TV.

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Kerel  23:29

That's that's the growth as a CEO, right? Yeah, it's supposed to be writing code, no more,

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Steve Jones  23:34

exactly, exactly. But I love to be in and around the tech aspects of the business, around the branding aspects of the business, around the marketing of the business, like those are the areas that really light me up. And then we put people in place who are more skilled and talented and passionate about the other aspects of the business. And I think being a founder, any founder, no matter color or experience level, you have to know what your limitations are. You have to know what you're good at, and you have to find people who can do for the company what you can't do yourself, right? You can't have the ego to say, if I can't do it, it can't be done. You have to find the people who could fill in those gaps of what the company needs. And at some point, as a you know, the company matures, you do less and less of that type of work, and do more and more of just setting the tone, setting the vision, setting the direction, and putting people in place to get everything done that the company needs, and moving roadblocks out of their way.

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Kerel  24:36

Gotcha. Gotcha. And Steve earlier, you mentioned also married with five kids, if I heard that correctly, right? Yes. How are you doing it all? Tell us. Give us. Give us. Give us something. Both Eric and I are married as well with kids. We don't have five, but we both have kids. You got to tell us how you. Make it work.

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Steve Jones  25:02

Well, I wish I could say, I do it all by myself. But

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Kerel  25:06

no, no, no, no, no, none of us do No, no, no. Shout out. Shout out to the wives.

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Steve Jones  25:12

Shout out to the wives. I would say this, I come from a big family. So my family, I had four brothers and four sisters. I lost two brothers and one sister, I would say that, depending on the stage of the business you're in, would dictate the amount of time and energy you need to put into it, and all of that time and energy you put into it is away from your family. And there was a time in my past where I was so locked in to my business that I didn't spend as much time as I could at home, and my wife held it all down. And when my business wasn't doing well, I had to lock in even more. And there was times where I would just come home from work like I'd get up for, you know, back then I would get up as late as 4am 5am and then I would be working until 9:10pm, and I would just come home and pass out and wake up and do it again. And somehow bill still got paid. Schedules still were made, you know, things still were done because my wife held it down. And there were times where my flexibility as a business owner allowed her to travel for work, and, you know, we're in Jersey, she would work in the city, so that means I was doing all the school pickups and drop offs and school trips. And it's a balance, right? So, isn't it? I don't believe any relationship is 5050, I think it's like a jar, and you deposit, right? You make deposits into that jar, whether it's friendship or a romantic relationship or marriage. You just deposit into that as long as both people are contributing, then there's something to take out when you need it. And there was times where I was the one who was 80% out in the world doing my thing, and she was holding it down. And there was times where it was the opposite. And, you know, that's just the reality of it. And you know, we have five beautiful kids. My youngest is 14, just turned 14, and my oldest is 30. It's a blended family, so it's a lot of dynamics, lot of moving parts, but we're pretty solid in our relationship. We've been together 26 years. Nice, married 21 so yeah, it's lot of good years, also a lot of challenging years as well. I hear you.

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Kerel  27:37

I hear you on that. All right, I got a fun question for you, what's in your music rotation right now?

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Steve Jones  27:44

Oh, man, I wish you didn't ask me that question.

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Erik  27:51

What do we got in there?

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Steve Jones  27:54

My music collection has not gone past 2003 very rarely listen to anything that was recorded past 2003 2004

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Kerel  28:04

Hey, I'm not mad at you. There's not much classic music that's made past that time. So yeah,

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Steve Jones  28:10

but if you look at that collection, you're going to see a lot of, you know, East Coast, West Coast hip hop. You're going to see some reggae, you're going to see some 1950s R and B and soul, and you may see a little bit of sprinkle of country in there. You know, I grew up on country music, and country music is very popular in Barbados.

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Erik  28:29

Interesting. Do

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Kerel  28:31

you get back to Barbados at all?

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Steve Jones  28:33

I haven't been since COVID yet, but I may go in December, but I haven't been in a couple of years. Gotcha. But my family goes down every year, and then up until my sister passed away, we had a family home down there.

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Erik  28:46

Well, Steve, thanks for hanging out with us. You know, a lot of our listeners like to sort of find a way to follow you or stay in touch. What are some ways that they can follow you? In the company,

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Steve Jones  28:57

you can follow POC stock on any social platform. We're considering getting on Tiktok, but all of the others, we're heavily on Instagram and LinkedIn. I am heavily on LinkedIn, so ox stock, pocstock, and I am Steve, the idea guy on any platform that I'm on. So that would be mostly LinkedIn, but I'm also on Instagram as well. Nothing interesting on Instagram about me, other than pictures of my kids and

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Erik  29:26

Well, Steve Jones, thanks for hanging out with us, and thanks for telling us about you and pocstock, everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode. You can find all kinds of episodes wherever you find all of your audio and video. Just search for MRP, Minority Report, podcast, look for the logo. Thanks all. Thanks Steve,

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Steve Jones  29:44

thank you appreciate it. Thanks for having me.