interview: “we need people to tell their own stories” – afrostream ceo tonjé bakang’s plan for better representation with streaming media

For me, it started with #BlackTwitter. This was the first time I clearly saw the lines of connection drawn amongst my culture; seeing Blacks connecting via their experiences. Now, in my twenty-six years of existence, of course I’ve come across similarities between me and other Black people. Who doesn’t get even a fraction of an ‘at-home’ feeling when they’re around someone who they know has a higher chance of having shared the same experiences as they have? Even so, it was my childhood, the family functions, the ass-whoopins, and more that were reflected back at me as I ran through the memes. It was as if these complete strangers had been right there with me, like a hidden extended family I had no knowledge of. This experience strongly validated how we as a community offer our warm greetings; addressing each other as ‘brother’ and ‘sis,’ regardless of any prior affiliation (or lack thereof). For Afrostream CEO Tonjé Bakang (pictured above), this realization of cultural connectivity occurred via television programming. He explained in an interview with Ebony Magazine that watching such classic Black TV shows as Martin, The Jamie Foxx Show, and The Fresh Prince, showed him that as a people, “we are bound” and “have this invisible connection because we share the same cultural heritage.” While we’ve both encountered this feeling, the difference between Bakang and I is clear: he took it, magnified it, and ran with it to ensure every individual of African descent could have the same chance to experience that feeling on the same level. He created an online streaming service for African & African-American content. 

By Miz Kane, AFROPUNK Contributor

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(Photo credit: Dikom Bakang Tonje)

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Coming from Cameroonian ancestry, but raised in Paris, France, Bakang was able to find a conductor between Blacks from Africa, France, and America: Black cinema. Raised by parents who valued education, that same standard for knowledge supplied the young entrepreneur with the confidence to move forward and create a startup currently valued at $10 million. Afrostream, a streaming video-on-demand service that just launched in September, has been making waves and gaining recognition around the world regardless of the fact that it’s content is French and English subtitles-heavy. Having recently landed a multi-year deal with Sony Pictures Television, it looks like those yearly subscriptions available to audiences of African and European regions will be increasing with the influx of content. At first mention, it is easy to summarize Afrostream as the ‘Black Netflix,’ but for cultural connector Bakang, there is so much more to the philosophy of the brand than that.

“Afrostream is a way to watch content that has an intimate relationship with who I am,” says Bakang. “Even if sometimes the content comes from countries where I never went, I can still learn about myself, where I’m from; I can be inspired because those people look like me or they share, in a way, certain values. There’s a direct link between those stories: those characters, who I am, and who I could be. This thing is totally natural. This thing is being able to see our stories and being able to share it with the world. Not just the billion Black people on Earth, which is a huge market. Beyond that, who’s going to tell the stories of the first Black African people in Egypt? Who’s going to tell the stories of the King of Mali? All those past stories. Who’s going to tell that? Who’s going to produce movies about Black people in space? Who’s going to talk about the first African people who came to Paris without being slaves? History is told by the winner. With time, those days have changed because now with technology, [a lower cost] to produce content, and because we are all connected, even if you’re not the winner or you’re not the majority in the country or the world, now you’re able to collect with other people and tell your own story. That’s why I do Afrostream.”

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When asked about tailoring content to the niche audience of Afro-descendants, Bakang explained how he felt it was better to have a concentrated VOD service rather than for consumers to have scattered access to Black cinema: “We want to see different types of representation of our self in different context, but all on the same platform. For a lot of people, Black movies—when I say Black movies, I’m talking about African-American movies or movies produced in sub-Saharan Africa—for a lot of people, that type of content has no value. For them, there’s going to be one or two titles in like, a generic platform. I know that Netflix has about 50 titles featuring a Black American lead, but those titles don’t have a huge value. But when you take all the content, all those stories from all over the world and you put them on the same platform, then that platform has a huge value.”

Even with a service geared towards a niche audience, Bakang was capable of finding sponsors who were able to see the value in Afrostream. Before he had the chance to encounter those investors, Bakang ran into a lot of ‘no’s’ on the homefront.

“It was so hard,” Bakang admits before pausing to gather his words. “I’m pissed off about one thing. I was looking for a nice way to say it, but (laughs) I’m pissed about one thing. I tried to raise money in France. We have a great traction. We have a huge following on social network. We have the press excited about Afrostream, but going to venture capitalists (firms that give money to startups and products like this), nobody wanted to invest in Afrostream and we were one of the hot startups in France, you know? By chance, we’ve been admitted to the biggest incubator in the world, which is Y Combinator. They’ve started companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit—huge companies and they selected us between 30,000 startups and we’ve been one of the 100 who did the program. Because of this program for people to raise some money during the summer, Afrostream is a global project. We tried to reach rich people in different countries in Africa: Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon. We tried to reach rich, African and Black people in Europe. No Africans and no Black Europeans invested in Afrostream and I’m just like, why? In the U.S. it was different. We had the chance to have great, huge companies who invested in Afrostream, but also, people in Black Hollywood who invested in us and that’s great. Everything is very rare, but the fact that those people invested in the startup of a French guy from African origin is great. This thing proved that we are, as a global community, evolving. It proved that if you have a good project and it makes sense, people can trust you. It’s not about who you know because, some of them, I just met a few weeks before they invested in Afrostream and I’m not American. All those barriers and still.”

Those investors in Afrostream Bakang speaks of have a proven track record of knowing a good product and service when they see it; Afrostream was not a startup they wanted to let get past them, in the least. “I can drop some names because I think it’s important,” the young CEO shares. “There’s a guy named Charles King. He was the first Black talent agent in a huge agency in Hollywood. Now, he has his own studio called Macro Venture.There’s another guy named Troy Carter, he’s the manager of John Legend and he was also the manager of Lady Gaga before. He invested in a lot of companies like Uber and Spotify in the early days. He was a judge on Shark Tank. Those great people believed in me and they still believe in me. They helped me. The thing that I’m pissed off about is you go to Africa and no one sees the value. A lot of them had a tremendous amount of money. To help you understand the way I think, I never begged for money. The way I approach investors is I say, ‘OK, this thing is an important thing for you. That’s the only way you have to see it because if you invest now, you will make a lot of money over my business. Yes, I need the money to build it, but it’s a win-win.’ When you talk about business, it’s just business; it’s all bank. Those people will invest in you and your team because they expect, one day, to make an exit; to make money. I never went into a meeting and said, ‘Afrostream is meant to fight the lack of diversity.’ Never. Afrostream is not here to fight the lack of diversity; Afrostream is here to tell the stories that people want to watch. It’s different. Maybe the result is the same, but the approach is totally different.”

With money coming in to support the vision that is Afrostream, the next step was obvious: find and acquire content. Taking pride in selecting quality cinema for the subscribers of the streaming service, it’s important to Bakang and his team to only license movies and shows that meet their requirements. Beginning the process with a rough start, they quickly learned that they may have underestimated the lengths at which they would have to go to even obtain a contact to acquire any media of interest.

“At first, when I started the project two years ago, I selected my dream content through the websites of film festivals,” Bakang explains. “There are so many Black film festivals in the U.S. and festivals in Africa. I thought, ‘OK, I can start with at least 50 movies and then, we will see.’ I went through years of festivals, I collected all those titles, and I tried to reach the filmmakers and producers. Most of it was independent movies and then I realized how hard it was to reach them. Most of them didn’t have a Facebook page. When they did have a Facebook page, they never replied to my direct messages. Then, on their website, they had all the information about the film and the cast, but not even an email address. All those things made me crazy for a month. Then, I decided to engage with studios. Every studio has this huge convention in Cannes in the South of France called Mipcom, which is like a content market. I went there and there you have all the studios, all the networks of the world, and they all meet and do business for four days. I invested to go there and I had the chance to be a speaker because my project, at the time it was just a project, was so different in its business approach and technological approach. People were interested so I had the chance to talk with the top management of Hollywood studios; that’s how I’ve been able to start the conversation and be able to sign deals with them. And about the independent producers: when they started to read the articles about my story and to see the excitement around Afrostream, they started to send us some emails. It’s still a process, it’s still very hard to connect with them. So, what is the process to choose the films and license movies? Quite frankly, right now it’s just like, ‘OK, what is the technical quality? Does it make sense for us? Is there a lot of stereotypes or not?’ If not, the answer is yes; we license the content. Then, we use those different types of content and see how our subscribers react. Through their behavior, we learn how to choose the best content for them. We have to think a lot and then, we’ll be better at choosing them. Basically, it’s not just my personal taste.”

One obvious inquiry for any prospective subscriber is a basic one: what kind of content is offered through the service? Bakang supplies the answer to this budding question in detail: “We have a partnership with Black&Sexy TV. We are licensing two shows from them: RoomieLoverFriends and Hello Cupid. What I like with them is the quality of their shows is incredible. Then, we have an African TV show called Windeck. It’s produced in Angola and it’s glamorous; it’s [based] in the fashion industry. Then, we have movies like, The Last Letter with Omari Hardwick; the guy who plays Ghost (on Power). We have this South African street dance movie called Hear Me Move. We, also, have a movie that I love called Njinja and it’s about the Queen of Angola. It’s a historical movie and it’s the fight between this Queen and the Portuguese. It’s great. The type of movies we have are very diverse. Also, we’ve signed a deal with a big studio. We have a huge deal with Sony. So, we have some big mainstream movies like Bad Boys with Will Smith. It will be a good mix between high quality, independently-produced TV shows and movies and also, studio movies.”

When you hear the story of any CEO or any other highly successful entrepreneur, there are always details of struggles and roadblocks faced on the way up. Bakang is no exclusion to this rule as he definitely has encountered his share. Interestingly enough, for a man as passionate and confident as the Afrostream founder who knows obstacles are just temporary, what he validates as a struggle is not what you would initially assume. One roadblock, in particular, that stood out to Bakang? Finding Black romantic content.

“What we’ve learned is that our audience is mainly female and that’s interesting because when I started the project, I was surprised by that data,” Bakang reveals. “Then, I thought, ‘Why? Why so many women?’ I know that in the media, women consume more than men and that’s the one who decides for our families. Then, I realized that how, as a Black woman, can you feel good about your skin, about your hair, about the way you love when the definition of beauty in the media is everything except you? At one point, you want to see Black love. Not just interracial love when it’s a Black woman, but a Black woman with a Black man in love with common issues. We saw that that content performed very well on Afrostream; the content that shows some type of romance overperforms. It’s really interesting because in the country where we launched, before Afrostream [it was] almost impossible to see those stories. In a sense, it’s really strange because as Black people, as African people, we experience love everyday like everyone. Why is it so rare? Why is it so difficult to access those stories? I guess, that’s really what we’ve learned since the launch of the subscriptions.”

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(Photo credit: Afrostream Inc)

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Dealing with the expected and unexpected struggles of running a business, Bakang holds an outlook on life that motivates him to move past any problems he meets along the way of fulfilling his goals for Afrostream.

“It’s my vision,” Bakang divulges. “It’s the way I’ve been raised, the way I live my life. I don’t do it for the title. I don’t do it for the job. I don’t do it because I want to be famous. I don’t do it because I want to meet famous people. I just do it because, even if it’s tough (the media industry is very tough), it’s the only way I see that I can improve the lives of millions of people. I don’t know why I took that as a mission. I remember in the early days when I was 14 and I dreamed [of being] a filmmaker and a producer; it was to tell stories that would really inspire people like me. The thing that gave me the strength to push is that what we are building with my team is inevitable. It’s inevitable billions of people will want to watch content that represents them. It’s inevitable that those billions of people will use a new device to watch it. It’s inevitable that a content creator will be able to produce content without studios. What we are building is inevitable so I feel like when there are obstacles, they are just temporary. When I see them coming, I say, ‘Hmm, let’s be smart.’ We try to avoid them or go through them, but I know that behind those barriers, there’s an audience willing to watch the content and use my service.

Feeling that his life’s mission is to inspire others, Bakang takes that personal philosophy and utilizes Afrostream as the perfect platform to catalyze his self-proclaimed role in life. Once again utilizing his upbringing as a strength to push his brand and himself forward, Bakang takes action on his vision by not living inside of the box, but on the edge.

“Maybe it’s because when I grew up, I was raised in an educated family and so, I had access to stories about my origins,” Bakang shares. “I had enough information to be confident about where I’m from and so those things inspired me. Also, it’s because I’ve been able to speak another language; that’s the one I learned in France. I’ve been able to speak English and kind of understand English so I had no choice. Being that I had access to that content, my self-confidence was stronger than all the people that I know. That’s why I’m like this. Sometimes people I talk with say, ‘Tonjé, you don’t fear anything!’ I fear a lot of things, but I am confident about some basic stuff because of the way I’ve been raised. Sometimes people extend the box society put them in. Sometimes, unfortunately, their parents, friends, and neighbors expect them to stay in that box because they’ve been raised in that mindset and it feels comfortable. It’s not that comfortable, but it’s what they know. They think if you go out [of] this box, it’s going to be worse. I don’t know, I need to feel alive. I feel alive when I take risks. I feel alive when I have a huge goal and that’s being selfish. The first week when we launched Afrostream, I received this message on Facebook from one of our subscribers. She told us that she finally found herself because of Afrostream. Knowing that while I’m talking to you, there are people who are watching content on Afrostream right now and they choose us. They choose to use their time watching the content that we bring to them and they feel good about it. This satisfaction is what gives me the strength to take risks and because I take risks, I feel alive. Eventually, my service, my personal story, and the story of my team will inspire other people. From what I know, we only have one life. I try to make the most of it now.

If you look up Afrostream, you will find a massive amount of coverage from various, reputable outlets that are anxious to share even a bit of Bakang’s passion-driven story. While he has already reached so much success with his budding service, Bakang still is very modest while insisting that he is no position to influence fellow entrepreneurs as of yet; a clear indicator of his work ethic and the heights he strives to reach as a CEO.

“The evaluation of my company is $10 million, but this information has no value for me on an everyday basis; it’s just paper,” the startup maven confesses. “The only thing that I value is our traction, the progress, and the numbers we have. I don’t have any advice like I did something great and I need to advise people. What I can do is share my experience and my point of view. My experience is that as a person, not as a businessman, but as a person, I really don’t care about the money. I have no watch. I have no car. Actually, I don’t drive. I don’t care about fancy stuff. I’m not at all materialistic; I just don’t care. So, why has Afrostream been so successful? Because I only care about the impact that we can have on the people who we serve. Having this focus on your customer helps you to grow fast. The only thing I can share with entrepreneurs is don’t do it for the fame. Don’t do it in order to be rich very fast. Do it because you love what you do. Choose a field where you really feel comfortable and you think you could do that for 10 years without making any money. Because you’re really passionate about it, you’ll be able to convince people to join your team and put their talents at the service of your vision. When you’re passionate about it, and not about the money, but your goal and vision, people [will] want to be apart of it and you’ll be able to raise money.”

Getting a bit more candid, Bakang continues by offering some worldly advice he has shared with his younger brothers, who also, happen to be fellow entrepreneurs. Google: Dear Muesli.

“The world is huge,” Bakang proclaims. “It’s not because you’ve been raised and grew up in a country that all your success and happiness depends on this country. When I say that I had to go to the States to raise money, I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, but I grew up in France and Paris so, because I have no money in France, my life is over.’ No. Wherever there’s money–Oh, there’s money in the U.S.? Let’s do this. Let go there. It could be in China. Ok, let’s go there. The world is so big; don’t limit your opportunities. Don’t limit your vision.”

Ironically, while Bakang believes the idea of territorial loyalty scares many away from their dreams, being open to traveling to unfamiliar lands is exactly how the notion to create Afrostream was conceived. “I was in Malaysia and I saw how Malaysians used their smartphones to watch content and they were just watching Asian content,” Bakang discloses. “I was like, ‘Hmm, why does the industry expect Africans to watch content from the West when there’s so many similarities between Asia and some parts of Africa? [As in] landscape or the use of mobile phones and stuff. It was all because I was in trouble [had a problem] that I realized what I could do for my own people.”

At first, those who are not apart of the niche audience that Afrostream is geared towards may have some initial concerns with the VOD service: Why is only Black content offered? This excludes a vast amount of audiences; I’m not supporting this. Still, Bakang believes that even though Afrostream offers very specific content, it is a service for everyone to enjoy, while simultaneously spreading and sharing culture amongst the Black community.

“Black people transcend,” Bakang states. “What they love always becomes cool for the whole nation, for the whole society. I think that people will be like, ‘Hmm, what are those Black people watching and why does it look so cool, so interesting, and so funny?’ Think about soul music, jazz, hip hop culture, R&B, reggae; those types of music were, at first, defined as niche music. Now, people realized the reach is global. I have no doubts that with great stories, people will be interested.”

Much more than a streaming service, Afrostream represents the raw passion and strive Bakang has to inspire and connect cultures amongst the Black community world wide.  Providing a mirror of the hopes, dreams, struggles, and stories of Blacks, regardless of nationality, Bakang embeds a love for connectivity into his service that gives VOD depth.

The only downside to Afrostream? The service is currently not available in America. Yet. Even so, Bakang assures that he, “will find ways to reach the American audience.” With subscribers already showing signs of “addiction” to the young startup via Twitter, plans to produce original content in the future, and a way to access content where you’ll always be able to see yourself, Afrostream may be a service you’ll want to keep track of, anticipating its arrival in the States.

“The things we experience everyday in our lives on Earth during 60-80 years; those things matter,” Bakang exclaims. “We need people to tell their own stories because those stories are important as we need access to [them]. [Our] lives matter.  If you think that who you are, who your friends are, who your lover is, who your family is matters and you want to see that; [if] you want to talk about it and be inspired by it, Afrostream makes sense for you.”

* Miz Kane is a freelancing journalist all about promoting that #livelifeLOUD lifestyle.