Sunday, March 1, 2015

Rapper Chamillionaire Joins Venture Capital Firm as Entrepreneur in Residence

Chamillionaire
 
Grammy-winning rapper Chamillionaire has been appointed entrepreneur-in-residence at Los Angeles-based investment firm Upfront Ventures. The announcement was made a few days ago by the company’s partner, Mark Suster.
 
While the Houston-based rapper is best known for his smash “Ridin’,” Chamillionaire aka Hakeem Seriki has been deeply involved in entrepreneurship for over a decade.
 
According to Business Insider, Chamillionaire has invested in a car dealership, launched a modeling firm, led a Global Innovation Tournament at Stanford, owns a tour bus company, and of course, owns a record label (Chamillitary Entertainment).
 
Here’s what Suster said in his announcement:
 

“After seeing Chamillionaire interact with several entrepreneurs both at events and as an investor I started introducing him to startups in an advisory capacity. It always started the same way – a founder would ask for an intro because they figured he could help with promotion. And after one meeting they started asking for his advice about marketing, customer engagement, product design, monetization – whatever.
 
Chamillionaire has a way more refined sense of what customer behavior is like than most ivy league graduates with nice Powerpoint slides that I meet. If you want to get schooled by a guy who’s done it all I suggest watching this video interview I did with him that has already been watched 55,000 times or if you prefer a summary version in writing it’s here.
 
A while back Chamillionaire started telling me he wanted to immerse himself even more in the tech world – learning to build products, studying different business models and committing himself to being a true tech entrepreneur. He attends many of the high-profile tech conferences and has been hanging out with a few partners at Y Combinator and such.”

 
Related: Kanye West Discusses Relationship Between Culture & Tech

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