Investing in the future with Brandon Bryant

Foresight is an essential skill for navigating the business world, especially in finance. The ability to identify new trends and emerging markets is crucial to strategic planning and investing.

Entrepreneur and investor Brandon Bryant knows this well. While living in New York City and working full-time in investment banking, he and his future Harlem Capital co-founders decided to pursue a local small business and real estate opportunity. What started as a chance to invest in the community quickly grew into something much more.

“When we stumbled upon early-stage startups, we saw that, hey, we believe that the future of technology is going to be where people are making generational wealth,” says Bryant. “And what we saw was no one was prioritizing people of color and women, folks who looked like ourselves. So we thought to do that with our own capital.”

With a mission to empower the next generation, Harlem Capital was formed in 2015. Their bold goal? To invest in 1,000 diverse entrepreneurs over the next twenty years

Adapting for the future

While current events have changed the way we all get work done, things for Bryant and the Harlem Capital team have remained as busy as ever, with the firm closing a second fund of $134 million this past spring. And like many businesses today, Harlem Capital decided to commit to a fully remote work culture, leaning on the organization’s core values to maintain continuity.

“One of our core values is ‘process is religion.’ We like to build processes and institutionalize them for anyone to use in our firm,” he reveals. “Whether you're in-person or not, we want to build these processes to really help us block and tackle and continue to grow.”

Bryant and the Harlem Capital team’s aptitude for future planning has also extended to their internal operations, adopting solutions like Adobe Acrobat Sign to keep business moving.

“When you're not in-person, but you're able to have automated workflows, and you're also able to have these connectivity tools, it makes it a lot easier. And you kind of think, ‘Why didn't we ever use these tools before when we were in-person?’”

The flexibility and collaborative features of Adobe Acrobat Sign have especially proven to be boons for when time is of the essence, allowing for simple and secure document sharing and e-signatures.

“This actually happened recently. I was in Atlanta on a business trip, and a company that I'm working with in San Francisco sent legal documents to get signed off on a Friday afternoon,” he shares. “We had to ping the lawyers. They had to set it up on Adobe Acrobat Sign. And then we had to get everything signed, and wire the capital to invest in that company within two hours. Typically, these things take a lot of back and forth through email — but having a product and tool like Adobe Acrobat Sign made it pretty seamless.”

Bryant and the Harlem Capital team aren’t alone in acknowledging the benefits digital document solutions have ushered for today’s remote workforce. According to recent Forrester research, “Use Digital Document Solutions to Advance Your Future Fit Technology Strategy” 66 percent of North American IT and business decision makers agree digital document solutions enable a virtual working environment, and eighty-seven percent of North American business decision-makers agree that digital document processes help them better compete in their industry.

A bright outlook ahead

An eye towards the future has served Bryant and Harlem Capital well. Whether it’s placing his bets on the next up and coming startup or ensuring business critical documents are finalized, Bryant’s keen sense for what lies ahead has kept him one step ahead of the game. But he believes he’s not the only one embracing the changing landscape on the horizon.

“Harlem Capital is building in public to get to that end goal of really changing the face of entrepreneurship by investing in those 1,000 diverse entrepreneurs,” he enthusiastically explains. “And what we're seeing over time is that folks are really gravitating towards that big, hairy, audacious goal. And we're starting to win deals and win opportunities and being in doors that we probably shouldn't have been in, just because of our mission.”