📍 6001 Cass Avenue, Detroit – July 22, 2025
What happens when you put 30 founders, a microphone, and an open invitation to dream big in one room?
You get Black Tech Saturdays Pitch Day—a full-day experience that started with a sound bath and ended with some of Detroit’s most powerful grassroots ideas taking center stage. No gatekeepers, no barriers—just people building for the people.
This wasn’t your standard pitch competition. There were no slides, no sharks—just raw ideas, community-centered vision, and a room full of support.
From reimagining education and financial access to reinventing transportation and creative expression, the themes that emerged throughout the event were clear:
Access over exclusivity
Purpose over profit
Real-world impact over hypothetical scale
Founders weren’t just pitching products. They were pitching lived experiences, hard-earned lessons, and solutions for the problems they saw in their own neighborhoods.
Whether it was a wearable speaker inspired by Detroit’s musical legacy, a mobile cultural activation unit built from a shipping container, or an AI-powered manifestation app rooted in healing—every idea had a heartbeat.
Marcedes shared a powerful story: a pregnant woman stranded between hospitals with no nearby EV charging station. Her pitch introduced Celer Energy’s Tillium system, a solar-powered, fast-charging battery platform using hybrid solid-state technology and microgrids. It’s designed for safety, resilience, and emergency use—solving critical infrastructure gaps in vulnerable communities.
Daniel presented 40 Acres, an app that lets users invest $100 into Detroit real estate projects while learning about Bitcoin and ownership. His vision blends fractional property investing with financial literacy, turning real estate from a wishlist into a wealth-building tool for everyday people.
Keyon spoke about closing the digital health gap for elders and underserved communities. His pitch focused on teaching seniors how to use digital tools like telehealth and social media through the Advancing Better Health Equity Initiative, combining care, confidence, and community training to make technology more inclusive.
Donvan pitched Creator Connect, a marketplace app where users can hire local creatives through a real-time map interface. The app helps creators gain visibility, book gigs, and access creative opportunities—all while working within their clients’ budgets. His pitch emphasized the potential of tapping into a $2 trillion global creator economy.
Kwaku introduced Container, a mobile creative activation unit—literally a 20-ft shipping container transformed into a cultural installation. Artists reimagine the space to tell their stories, and the container is placed in underrepresented areas to amplify Detroit talent. His pitch detailed a partnership with Visit Detroit and a city-wide tour launching this fall.
The pitch competition doesn’t stop here.
Every week leading up to the Digital Empowerment Summit, founders can submit virtual pitches for a chance to win $1,000 weekly microgrants. The summit will culminate in $100,000 in total funding awarded to community-driven innovators.
This structure isn’t just about funding—it’s about visibility, accountability, and iteration. Each pitch is a step forward, a public commitment, and a seed for something bigger.
July 22nd reminded us that the strongest ideas don’t always come from incubators or investor decks. They come from lived experience. From the need to fix something now, not later. From the courage to pitch your idea, even if it’s not “perfect.”
Detroit showed up. The community listened. And the next generation of builders made their voices heard.
This is what local innovation looks like—messy, meaningful, and powerful as hell.
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At this month’s Vibe Coding meetup, we explored how AI tools like Cursor can speed up projects—or derail them without clear direction. I shared the Renaissance City LaunchPad, a cultural shift and support ecosystem empowering community organizers to build, own, and sustain their own technology.
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As spiritual healer using AI and Web3 to build Solis Copia, Temple of Light, a nonprofit rooted in sound, retreat, and transformation, Rechelle's journey shows what’s possible when vision meets the right tools—and invites others to do the same.