Forbes - USA (2019-12-31)

DECEMBER 30, 20 19 FORBES.COM

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mixing this ink by hand in my 500-square-foot

apartment,” Handley recalls. He imported crates of

the fruit from Panama to test and improve the ink. “I

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... this actually works!’ Why has no one done this

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Unfortunately, they were the only ones. Rounds of

fundraising were painful. After a major backer pulled

out at the last moment, “We were around two weeks

away from being completely bankrupt.”

THE MOMENT OF CHALLENGE

THE MOMENT OF SUCCESS

The brothers had a feeling the idea would land better

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online sale within minutes of launching in 2015 and

ran a Kickstarter campaign that raised $80,000 in one

day, proving to new investors the real desire for this

product. The company now has over 120 employees,

in Toronto and Japan.

A

fter landing a job in investment banking post-

college, it didn’t take long for Brandon Bryant,

the 29-year-old cofounder of Harlem Capital

Partners, to observe that he and his colleagues had

little in common. “As a person of color, you sit next

to the kid who played lacrosse, whose father and

mother is somebody, and you get to understand how

they move in the world,” he recalls of the old boys’

club that seemed to dominate his majority-white

workplace. “My big takeaway from my experience is

to be on the offense now, and be excited to make my

own opportunities.” He’s done that by launching a

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Handley always knew he’d launch his own business

one day. And when he did, it was, appropriately,

a family affair. In 2014, his brother, Tyler, shared

that he’d been researching how to test out tattoo

designs and learned that a special skin-dying fruit—

the jagua—was recently available for import to

their native Canada. “I immediately knew this was

something we could start,” says Handley, then a social

media strategist. “My brother is a natural leader, and

I’m a boots-on-the-ground, get-stuff-done [type].”

But the company’s success only fully hit Handley

when he and Tyler were able to thank their parents

for teaching them to be entrepreneurs in a big way—

by gifting them a percentage of the company. His

parents motivated the brothers to persevere when the

business took hard hits, and for Handley, being able

to give away a piece of what he’d built reinforced how

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about their vision. Now, he says, “My dad is always

checking our website to learn the names of new

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[how to greet them].” As Inkbox continues growing,

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are committed to running the upstart like a family

company, the efforts of two brothers. That part, he

says, isn’t temporary.

BRANDON BRYANT

IS CHANGING THE

(VERY WHITE) FACE

OF VENTURE CAPITAL

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