Rap or go to the league. Stream and/or become an influencer. These are paths that are capturing the attention of the majority of black youth. It’s a risky path if not done properly. One must be honest about their own natural talents that will allow them to succeed. NIL money is not guaranteed just because you’re a D1 athlete. The majority of NIL money goes to a select few elite athletes, particularly in football and basketball. While these paths can be great foundations or side hustles, they are not sustainable growth strategies for the majority of black youth. Let’s go through some of the math for fun.
Basketball
~1% of male high school basketball players go Division 1. With ~540,000 male high school basketball players that implies less than 6,000 open slots. ~50% of D1 male basketball players are black. So we have ~3,000 open D1 slots for a very large group of black youth (~1.1M).
Now let’s go deeper. Outside of the NBA (~450 players), there are only a few top international leagues where players consistently make over $100,000 (local currency and cost of living adjusted). Optimistically we can assume out of the ~20K professional basketball players worldwide, ~25% make over $100,000. So ~5,000 jobs worldwide that pay decent for putting a ball through a hoop and sweating hard. Outside of the NBA, there’s very few guaranteed multi year contracts.
Using the same 50% stat for black D1 players (which is optimistic) we can assume there’s ~2,500 open jobs for black basketball players that pay decently well. This directionally makes sense. It assumes that the majority of black D1 basketball players can hoop overseas for a least a year assuming they don’t make the NBA and got some minimum level of playing time.
Now let’s go into tenure. While the average NBA career is ~5 years, the median is closer to ~2-3 years. If you’re a top 30 pick, your rookie contract is anywhere from ~$2.8M/year (30th pick) to ~$13M/year (1st pick) over 4 years. 30-60 is in the $1.3-$2.8M/year range. Team options for year 3 and 4. Assuming ~40% goes to the tax man, a 30th pick is looking at an income of ~$2M post tax per year for two years. If you’re the 60th pick you’re looking at ~$800K post tax per year for two years over your rookie contract. The number one pick is looking at ~$4M per year for two years. This doesn’t include NIL money and doesn’t factor in expenses.
This is great money. If you can do this then you absolutely should go for it. But be honest. At some point in college do you see yourself being one of the top 60 basketball players in the world around your age? Math is math. We’re talking 0.01% of your high school basketball class across the country. This ignores the world basketball population your age. To be in the 1%, let alone top 0.01%, you need to have super elite talent. Black parents owe their children the respect to run this math and make an assessment. Are they truly on the D1 starter path? If not, fine to keep playing basketball but they need to build a career in something else.
Other Sports
Football: ~1M high school football players. ~28,000 D1 football players. ~1,700 active roster players in the NFL. Minimum salary of ~$500K to $600K post tax. Median NFL career of ~2-3 years. ~50-70% of the NFL is black. Math isn’t great here. Injuries are usually worst than basketball. Shorter career. Lower salary.
Baseball: ~450K high school baseball players. ~1,200 MLB players. ~6% of MLB players are black. Minimum salary of ~$400K post tax. Median career length of ~2-3 years. This is tough.
Tennis: You already know. Great sport to learn though for health and longevity.
Golf: You already know. Great sport to learn for business networking.
Track: Great for landing a scholarship. Unrealistic to bet on this being a sustainable career post college
Influencers & Streaming
Goldman Sachs estimates there’s ~50M people worldwide making money as creators. ~13% make over $100,000 per year. These numbers are a bit better at the surface. ~6.5M people is a lot of people right? Well not quite. Over 4.3B people have access to a smartphone and that number is increasing. Everything flows to the top. Same vibe as sports & rap (doesn’t even need a breakdown, IYKYK). Need to be in the top 0.1% to make a decent living. ~50% of creators make less than $15K per year.
What is the tech blueprint?
A plea to black parents to assess if their kids have solid math and logic skills. If so, please consider pushing them to STEM. To be clear, STEM can also mean tech sales. In the non essential worker and blue collar world, you’re either creating stuff or selling it. All process/admin jobs are getting automated away. Estimates of STEM jobs where workers are needed is ~1-3M in the U.S. alone.
The best part? You can try to be an influencer and/or streamer while working your STEM job. Unlike being a professional athlete or rapper, you can usually put in a light 40-60 hours per week and move up in your STEM career. Many can coast at 20-40 hours per week. This leaves ample free time to build businesses on the side. It also puts you at the forefront of technology trends, which are rapidly changing the world.
~80% of black youth are on Tik Tok daily. Consuming mindless garbage for the most part. Occasionally consuming useful content for their knowledge base. Meanwhile there are serious talent gaps across key technology areas in healthcare, food & agriculture and Web 3. We haven’t even touched advanced manufacturing yet but you can see the need from the water blueprint alone. Augmented and virtual reality is at the very early stages with promising growth prospects. See below for McKinsey’s breakdown on the talent gap.
Barriers to Entry for Black Software Engineers (SWE) Specifically
There’s some big ones outside of the historical discrimination pre 1960s Civil Rights Era. In no particular order:
Lack of SWE role models for the youth
Lack of sponsorship for junior and mid career black SWEs to advance in their careers
General bias in workplace
Interview process gatekeeping
The Dymnd conclusion is that current Black SWEs that are not self employed need to start side businesses ASAP and/or mentor with existing career programs promoting black SWE talent. All the issues mentioned above about are a result of working for companies that do not have influential black representation at the ownership level. Culture at every company flows from the top. When starting these companies, it’s important to avoid falling into the same habits that plague the current status quo. This allows these new founders to attract high quality talent across racial boundaries and develop a culture where junior developers receive quality support from diverse senior developers.
YouScience and Black Girls Do STEM conducted an analysis on the exposure gap for black students. Specifically looking at their aptitude vs. interest levels for various STEM Careers. For computers and technology, there’s a 50% exposure gap.
Key Blueprint Stakeholders
HBCUs - For talent development (undergraduate and graduate).
Plexo Capital - Funding diverse fund managers that invest in technology companies that hire SWE talent.
Robert Smith - Founder of Vista Equity Partners, one of the most successful technology private equity funds in the world.
David Steward - Founder of World Wide Technology. Richest black man in America.
Career programs - Examples include All Star Code, Black Girls Code, Hidden Genius Project, Black Girls Do STEM, Color Stack. Issue here is all of these programs are reliant on corporate sponsorships. The same corporations responsible for the talent gap issue to begin with.
Coding bootcamps - For mid and late stage professionals who want to learn technical skills.
Black software company founders - Can hire full time SWEs, offer internship programs, and act as mentors.
How Will Dymnd Help?
By providing a robust self improvement app to help prospective SWE talent achieve their career goals. We do this by working directly with career programs. Daily action yields results. Becoming a SWE requires lots of studying, code practice and networking. Track your daily progress on all of this through Dymnd.
If you’re a black software founder considering raising venture capital, feel free to leverage our guide here. Dymnd is all about promoting health and wealth. This tech blueprint speaks to the wealth side of the equation. But it comes full circle. Every founder will go through The Struggle. We believe that having a high quality executive coach and wellness coach is essential to pushing through this period. We believe that coaches should be able to offer clients high quality tools (like Dymnd) to help clients achieve their goals.