Ep.19 Gang Leader Turned Venture Capital Investor - Karl Lokko On How He Turned His Back On Crime.
Working Hard with Grace Beverley
sophie@grace-beverley.com
4.2 • 904 Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2022
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Karl Lokko is an ex-gang leader turned activist, campaigner, influencer and entrepreneur. Growing up on a tough estate swarming with gangs, Karl's childhood was far from plain-sailing, witnessing his first shooting when just 12 years old.
Though at the time this had felt shocking, within four years Karl found himself behind the trigger, eventually becoming the ringleader of his own notorious gang. Before he was even 16, Karl had already been shot at, cut on his face, stabbed in the chest and watched one of his best friends get killed.
Karl finally pivoted when he met Pastor Mimi Asher, the mother of a fellow gang member, who showed him a way out. Resulting from Mimi's courageous counselling and mentorship, Karl was able to gain perspective, zoom out on his situation, and turn a life of crime into a life worth living.
Since then, Karl has dedicated his life and career to helping others do the same. Karl also leads the vision for Black Seed, a community and seed fundraiser to exclusively support black-led start-ups. With an embarrassing 0.24% of venture funding reaching black founders, Karl is leading the Black Seed team to tackle the systemic racial disparities in investment, their vision to find the next black unicorn and transform Brixton into Silicon Valley.
Today’s episode will completely blow your mind. As he describes it, Karl’s story reflects the journey of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly - the complete transformation of his life into something utterly unrecognisable.
- Karl's childhood in South London
- Where Karl's involvement in gangs began
- When Karl couldn't join a gang, he created one
- The problems within the system perpetuating gang culture
- How and why Karl eventually turned his back on crime
- The beginnings of Karl's first business - a rehab centre.
- The initial idea for Black Seed
- The horror show that are Black Founder statistics
https://www.instagram.com/blackseedvc/?hl=en
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Transcript
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| 0:29.6 | What I think did start my overall dark evolution was when I witnessed someone being shot for the first time. |
| 0:38.3 | Gang culture was always there ready to kind of like ensnare us. |
| 0:41.3 | I never had enough clout to join the existing gangs and my first response was if I can't join when I create my own. |
| 0:48.3 | A friend of mine's dad was murdered over a PlayStation game. I was like, I don't want my dad to die. |
| 0:53.3 | My brother's being mugged repeatedly. |
| 0:56.0 | I'm like I don't want him to be mugged anymore. I had initial kind of like thoughts of leaving this behind. |
| 1:02.0 | It became apparent to me that what we were doing actually wasn't winning. So I was like, all right, cool. I've got these ideas of initiatives that can move things along for my community and I was |
| 1:10.9 | like, right cool, I'm going to have to pitch this to them and eventually like it began to build some traction. |
| 1:15.6 | What would you say to someone's parents who was in that situation at that time, that kind of turning point that you had? |
| 1:22.6 | Words would genuinely fail me. This is systemic. |
| 1:40.5 | Hey guys, welcome back to working hard, hardly working. |
| 1:46.9 | I cannot tell you the journey you are about to go on with this podcast episode. |
| 1:52.9 | I mean, it was unbelievable. The story of Carl's life and career, I've heard it before, |
| 1:58.2 | and I will never get used to it. And I think that the most important thing here is, |
| 2:08.1 | particularly growing up in London, this is not unusual, the kind of way it started and the reason for him having gotten into the things he was in. |
| 2:18.0 | I can't wait for you to listen to this story because not only do I think that it really clearly paints out the issues that mean people often have no other choice than turning to the types of violence and gang culture that Carl was involved in. |
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