Hi everyone. This is Jason Rodriguez with Zpryme. I’m here with Eunice Chendjou, she is a VP of partners at OpenTeams in Austin Texas. Eunice, How are you doing today?

Eunice Chendjou:
I’m doing great, Jason. What about yourself?

Jason Rodriguez:
I’m having a great, great day in Texas. It’s a little hot this afternoon, but it’s been a good one there. I wanted to see if you can start off first with telling us a little bit more about OpenTeams and your work there.

Eunice Chendjou:
Yeah, definitely. I’m a co-founder of OpenTeams and we started last year. OpenTeams is a B to B marketplace for open source services and support. Really what we provide to our clients is a one stop shop for all their open source needs. We work with a network of partners who offers different open source services, everything from consulting, migration, open source maintenance, you name it, we help you find the right partner for your needs. And I started OpenTeams last year as the chief operating officer and our company has grown tremendously in the last year and a couple of months that we started and I am currently the VP of partners. My role really is to help us grow our partner network.

Jason Rodriguez:
For 2020, there’s a lot going on, obviously. I’d like to get your thoughts, what do you think of 2020 so far? But then also in the long run, how do you think 2020 is going to impact society?

Eunice Chendjou:
2020 has definitely shown us a lot of ups and downs. To be honest, there’s been a lot of changes, there’s been a lot of changes, a lot of transition that has happened in such a little amount of time that I’m pretty sure people have been calling it, what is really the new normal. For my particular case and my company, we were getting ready to raise a seed round at the beginning of this year, early March. And that was exactly during the time that the pandemic really started affecting the US. It was definitely a heat on us. It had to make us rethink about our strategies. Not necessarily pivot our idea, but really focus on our priorities within the organization. And I think to some people, it might have hurt them, but I think it really helped us make sure that we were aligned with what our vision and our vision of the company was.

And I know one of the biggest one is probably remote working. My company was already a remote company so it wasn’t a big transition in that. But I think one of the biggest thing that I see and biting a lot of companies is realizing that remote working is the future and more and more companies are going to be more acceptance of, hey, I think my employee is actually more effective and efficient when they’re working remotely, instead of having to bring them at an office space.

Jason Rodriguez:
Speaking to your experience as an entrepreneur, as an immigrant and as African here in the US, there’s a lot of folks who might be wanting to start a business, of both brown and black people in the country. And then the state of the world is what it is. What advice would you give to them who may be doubting if they could even, or if they even should try to achieve their dream?

Eunice Chendjou:
I actually think right now at this moment is the best time to start a company. And the reason why I think so is because of the circumstances that have happened in the last couple of weeks, it has opened eyes to a lot of people and show them that something is wrong some way. If anybody that is conscious look around them, they’ll realize that, hey, why is it that I don’t have any black employees in my company? Why is it that all the companies as a VC or any organization out there, why is it I don’t have many black founders within my portfolio? And I have seen a lot of companies, a lot of VC firms, a lot of investors take the leap and say, “Hey, I want to provide feedback. I want to get on phone calls with black founders. We want to understand how we can help you prosper as a startup founder, as an entrepreneur.”

Eunice Chendjou:
As a leader within an organization, more companies have started paying attention and said, “Black lives matter, we want to see more black leaders. We want to see them grow within companies.” My company, definitely took the step of saying, “Hey, we need to see more black employees within the organization. What do we need to do in recruiting that we can do to improve this particular situation?”

Eunice Chendjou:
For any entrepreneur out there thinking about starting a company, I will say, there’s no better time than today. I like to think of things as looking at them as an advantage. You could say, “Oh, I’m black. I’m a woman, I’m an immigrant. I’m an African. I have an accent.” And pick all of that and make it seem like it was working towards your disadvantage. But if you think about it, it is an advantage because you stand out of the public. People remember me for the things that I have as an immigrant and as a woman and as an African because I stand out of the public. Definitely don’t think twice, definitely take the leap and go for it.

Jason Rodriguez:
You mentioned that the work of VCs and how they can step up. What other advice would you have for VCs or large corporations to help fight racism? We’ve seen some very big names jump out there. Nike that’s done an amazing job from the front. Ben and Jerry’s also, Michael Jordan and his company and several others. What other practical advice do you have for them to help fight racism?

Eunice Chendjou:
Definitely educate yourself and educate your employees. There are a lot of resources out there on how to become a more inclusive and diverse company. I would definitely recommend that for both VC firms and corporations. For a corporation, I would say, look at your recruiting pipeline. Look at where you guys, how are you guys employing? I know a lot of companies that only employ based of a relationship. Well if you only employ based on relationship, then you only hire the people that look like you. But if you decide to get out of that comfort zone and actually look at predominantly black colleges. There are so many companies out there that are starting just to hire future black employees or black talent. Look into those organizations to be able to find those talents.

And whenever people are within your organization, or black people within your organization or black founders are within your portfolio, what do you do to help them succeed? What do you do within the organizations to help them climb the ladder? Do you provide mentorship? Do you provide upskills training? If it’s a portfolio company or on IT systems, what are the resources out there available for you to provide your black founders? Because sometimes some of the sectors that the white founders might be in, might never be an opportunity for the black founders. Are you making sure that everybody gets a slice of the cake?

Jason Rodriguez:
I wanted to conclude with kind of getting your advice in terms of how being an entrepreneur has helped you bring that skillset to your team and your company to be agile, to actually improve during this pandemic? How has that really helped you?

Eunice Chendjou:
I think as entrepreneurs, we learn that that challenges either break or make you and it is only those who fight and work hard and hustle and really figure out the different routes and not just a straight line that eventually make it out. I think really making decisions fast. If you have to pivot, pivot fast. If you have to fire somebody and that is not the best thing to do, but it does, I think, just make the decision as fast as you possibly can. Because in crazy moments and in uncertainty times, it is really you can’t be slow in making decisions. We had to, our own company, again we were in the space of raising money and because that was not necessarily an option at that particular time, we had to figure out, okay, how can we put strategies? Where do we need to be looking at to start getting more and more clients in this particular time to be able to survive?

And really that’s what we did. And what I found, like I said, we couldn’t raise money. I guess, we have to close or maybe we can get this customer. We have to figure out how to people. I know some of my co-founder friends that had a physical product and they had to completely change it to a digital product. And it was very thought, you really think about it. And then they made a decision as soon as you possible can, because that particular time can make or break your company.

Jason Rodriguez:
Eunice, it’s been a pleasure. And thank you so much for coming on and sharing your thoughts and your insights, particularly in this critical time in history. And appreciate the call to action and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Eunice Chendjou:
Thank you. Thank you for having me, Jason.