Q & A

We recently sat down with Thom Webster to find out more about his passions, his calling and generally dive in deeper to get to know him.

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What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your work over the last few years?

We launched Black Squirrel during the pandemic. We wanted to take our collective experience and look at how we leverage it to create wealth opportunities in Black and Brown communities. We launched Philly Rise, which is a real estate accelerator program for small development companies with a focus on scaling them to be competitive in Philly’s regional development ecosystem. It operates on four pillars: Education and training; professional mentoring and coaching;  procuring public property; and access to capital.

We have partnered with the Urban Land Institute- Philadelphia, with support from its national headquarters in Washington DC. It’s the  largest association in the world for real estate developers. In collaboration with ULI and several other stakeholders, we launched Philly Rise, which prepares Black and Brown developers to develop 50 vacant sites building 50 new, single family homes annually for the next five years. Twenty-five of those homes will be affordable, the other 25 will be market rate.The goal is to create more opportunities for unders-estimated developers so they can build new affordable and market-rate housing, thus increasing community wealth and diversifying their business capacity and capability.

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Developing alternative business models to the startup status quo has become a central moral challenge of our time. These alternatives want to balance profit and purpose and put a premium on sharing power and resources.

Why is getting investments in this alternative model crucial for those who seek it?

My early involvement and business interest in a very successful logistics and delivery company, which is one of the first companies I was able to exit, at a point for expansion, we had over 200 customers and had achieved over $10 million in revenue. To expand we needed capital to lease new trucks. But we couldn't get a bank loan or a line of credit. We were still viewed as “risky” because we had no debt and had self-financed our growth.

I thought, well, if large fleet companies won’t do business with us, let’s look at a small leasing company. We found one, and they asked us about our credit, which was solid, then asked to see  three months’ worth of bank statements. We provided them and they responded, “Holy crap, I have nobody in my customer base making this kind of money.” They leased us our first new trucks, and from there we scaled.

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How do we shift the narrative about the role of capital in BIPOC communities and reframe the perceptions of the risk involved?

Part of it has to be people willing to accept the fact that the investment made is about driving wealth generation for Black and Brown people. I believe that's the disconnect. I think a lot of folks say, “Why should I support their success?” I'm not saying everybody's like that, but I've run across that opinion more than once. When I was on the other side of the table, in government overseeing funding programs, my office used to get calls. People didn't realize the person running these major funding  programs was Black. We would get calls like, “Why are these businesses or this Black business getting all this money or contracts? It’s not fair.” That’s what I used to hear. We need allies and advocates to  buy into the idea that investing in Black and Brown-owned businesses is more than fair – it’s past due and it can be profitable, too.

With our real estate initiative, Philly RiSE, we've been very clear: It’s about elevating Black and Brown developers to be sustainable and scalable for building legacy wealth. This is not about creating more affordable housing. This is not about putting together another home buying program. We have great organizations out there who do that, and we're going to partner with them. We're scaling these young Black and Brown developers, and one day, one of them might be the next Brandywine REIT. This results in the creation of viable, livable, and thriving Black and Brown communities. That's the discussion we have with any funder who wants to engage with Black Squirrel. If that's not their commitment, interest or vision, then we're not the group for them to support.

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What are the top three pieces of  advice you would give to BIPOC entrepreneurs, who are dedicated to both purpose and profit, as they are starting or scaling their business?

I look at this through the lens of capital, and not just financial capital but relationship capital. If you work on addressing both of those effectively, you're going to maximize your ROI.

Philaldephia’s University City Science Center,  is one of the oldest scientific incubators in the country. It’s been around since 1960 It’s a multi-billion dollar economic development institution. I do all my programming there and I host all my events there with their support. People always ask how I got connected there, because it was a beacon on the hill for a lot of folks. And it comes back to relationships. When I was working in government, part of our budget went to supporting them. I came out of government 35 years ago, but I kept that relationship. I didn't know if I would need it one day, but relationships have value.

Now I'm part of their investment network and their Capital Readiness  Group, and I'm able to create opportunities for more Black and Brown people to have access to their resources and to launch partnerships with them. This year, we worked with the United Negro College Fund, which is the biggest pipeline of Black and Brown scientific talent in this country, to not only create fellowship opportunities for that talent to explore their research, but also to invest in their intellectual property.

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What is the call to action for investors who seek to promote social justice through investment solutions?

The call to action is to focus on the elimination of barriers to accessing capital. I'm not talking about leveling a playing field: I'm talking about eliminating the barriers, correcting wrongs by accelerating the opportunities for BIPOC.

The biggest problem with crime in urban centers is that it causes people to lose hope. Young people don't see opportunities or themselves being reflected of what we call success. What I’ve learned is that if a young person sees a different path for himself, if he can say, “Wow, look at what that person did from my community or my block, look how they got out of the neighborhood, I can do that, too,” then we chip away at that barrier. But the opportunities have to exist first. That's why we use black run CDFIs for our Philly Rise Accelerator. VestedIn, our lead CDFI partner, has been running a 15-year youth program every summer where we teach young people how to become real estate financiers and developers. They are exposed to people of color in the industry, exposed to major developers building billion projects, and given  money  to compete in a business plan competition in which the winners are awarded scholarship money. Supporting more initiatives like this is one way to create opportunities that drive more actionable and investable solutions.