How David Gross Is Helping Black People Invest in Their Own Communities

Nipsey Hussle’s longtime business partner David Gross gives investment advice and speaks about the history and future of his Own Our Own initiative.

David Gross
Complex Original

David Gross

David Gross

Financial literacy isn’t about just saving up to say you saved up, but also using your investments to empower yourself and others. David Gross and Own Our Own are trying to help Black people do just that. The program “invests in Black communities and Black people to fill gaps created by a historic lack of investment and to unlock the untapped economic value that has always existed in our neighborhoods,” according to the official website

The project has similarities to the Our Opportunity initiative which Gross co-founded with his one-time business partner, the late Nipsey Hussle, but Gross clarifies that Own Our Own is its own entity. “With the passage of time, the world has changed, and the initiative has evolved a bit,” Gross told Complex over the phone. 

Own Our Own is working with high-profile entertainers and athletes all over the country to invest in Black communities and help local residents to become shareholders in what they hope will be a bustling portfolio of real estate ventures. They recently built Broadway Boxing Gym in South Central LA with the help of LA rappers D Smoke and G Perico. 

“All the shit that people say they want to do in the Black community, we’re going to put it to the test,” Gross says about his initiative. 


As part of Complex’s Get Money initiative, we spoke with David Gross about Own Our Own, an “investment 101” eBook he’s putting together, and general investment advice for people.

David Gross and Nipsey Hussle

Can you speak on your upcoming eBook? What are you looking to inform your potential readers?

It’s a very comprehensive intro to investment 101. It touches a bit on financial literacy, but I don’t dwell on the, “If you skip lunch and don’t go to the movies, you can save more money and start an LLC.” It’s really an intro to stocks, bonds, core investment concepts, compound interest, and compound returns. Explaining how inflation ties into investment, all in a very rudimentary way, but that also doesn’t speak down to the audience.

Did you write this yourself or in partnership with other entrepreneurs?

I wrote it myself.

What inspired you to put this book together?

There’s a pretty deep yearning for investment insight on the part of a lot of people in our community. There are a number of personalities popping up and organizations popping up to teach financial literacy, or specific aspects of investment to Black people. Some of it’s good, a lot of it’s bad, but that desire is there, which I think is a good thing. I’ve always wanted to do something real in the space, something that wasn’t just geared towards having to sell something to people, but just to convey solid information. My only criteria for it is I really want to reach people. It’s Own Our Own branded, which is our inner-city investment fund and initiative.


“The entire world of investment knowledge, theory, financial literacy—we hold it in our hands every day. You can find anything on the internet if you know where to look.”


You mentioned how there is a lot of financial advice for the Black community. Some of it’s good, and some of it’s bad. In a general sense, can you get into some ideas people should be more receptive to versus ideas that people should be more critical of?

It’s never my intention to tear down people who are trying to make a buck. However, my high-level view on the financial literacy space is that people should get a feel for who they’re learning from, and you always have to be wary of people who are selling you something. If not wary, realize that if there is a sale, there’s motivation behind something. It’s slightly different than a purely educational standpoint. There are tons of resources on the internet. The entire world of investment knowledge, theory, financial literacy—we hold it in our hands every day. You can find anything on the internet if you know where to look, or any library if you have a card. My view is that a lot of this game, if you have it, should be given freely. You should be directly guiding people to the right sources, not necessarily trying to profit, if this is a mission for you. That’s not to knock people who are selling a product to educate people, but I think a lot of the information is out there, and the people who don’t know what they don’t know just need guidance on where to get it and how to start.

David Gross

What valuable advice did you get at the beginning of your career from people who were invested in your progress?

Oh, I didn’t. I paid for it. I went to school and got a degree in economics and learned about finance and the foundations of business. I paid in time, four years, and $130,000. I paid in time and money for the information, and then I continued to pay for it, because I went and worked on Wall Street, and I made investment and finance a vocation. I exchanged my time for the knowledge and insight. I’ve spent half my life trying to understand business, finance, and economics, but academically and professionally. After working on Wall Street, I went back to business school and got a degree in quantitative finance. So again, I exchanged two years of my life and another six figures to learn finance at a deeper level, and then I went back to Wall Street.

All of my insight, it’s been a proactive pursuit on my part to go and learn it deeply from experts, and I’ve paid them for expertise. I’ve paid the schools, I’ve paid the professors, and then applied it in the real world by working. It’s how I’ve chosen to focus my professional life and what I’ve chosen to pursue. I do think I have a unique vantage point and with that, looking at people in the Black community coming from places like where I came from, where I didn’t have anyone in my family who knew business or had careers in those worlds, I think I was the first person in my family to go to college—definitely in my nuclear family. There wasn’t anyone giving me the game, but I was fortunate that I got into a great school where I could spend four years getting it. I think people who find ways, whether it’s through school, vocation, however you get it; if you care about our community, you give something back. The thing that I have that I can pay forward is the insight, knowledge, and guidance.

Can you speak to the value of artists and entertainers who have the means to reinvest in our communities, and do so in a way that actually serves the people in the community?

It’s obviously important. Disproportionally, a lot of the wealth in the Black community is from entertainers and athletes. If they’re the people, then it matters because we need them to invest. But I think more important than them investing in the communities that they come from is using their platforms to influence the people that look up to them to view the world differently and operate differently. That’s what I think the real significance and power of entertainers and athletes are. They’re the people that all of the kids from our communities want to be like and what kids in other communities want to be like. That ability to shape minds, ambition, and what people want from themselves is powerful. That’s culture-defining, so I think that’s the symbolic importance and value, but also they define what a lot of young people in our community want to be. That’s the power and responsibility that they have. Secondarily, of course you get a bag, and you come from one of our communities, you should go back and invest and try to invest in a meaningful way that creates pathways of opportunity for other people.


 “If you care about our community, you give something back.”


While navigating the corporate world and capitalism, you can find yourself in some moral and ethical quandaries. What’s some advice you would give on how people can navigate the circumstance of building capital, but doing so with integrity?

I don’t think that there’s a unique set of challenges or incitements specifically in the corporate world to trade on your integrity or your values to get ahead. I think they exist in arts, sports, academia, and every part of the world. You’re going to be faced with moments or decisions that, underneath them, have some sense of right and wrong, and you have to decide. Your decision-making and how you live your life has to be grounded in a belief or principles that you stand on, and you don’t compromise even if it’s for money or advancement or so you can get along with everyone else in whatever the environment you’re in. I don’t think it’s unique to the corporate world or finance or the money sectors. I think it’s in every industry and part of society. You’re faced with moral quandaries and dilemmas at some point in your life, and you just have to have something firm within you that you can rely on to resist the pressure from the outside or the temptation to do something easy to get ahead.

Can you speak on the ‘Our Opportunity’ investment initiative you had with Nipsey Hussle, and how that’s going now?

It’s evolved, and while Nip was 50/50 the co-creator and vision behind that, we didn’t get to launch while he was alive. With the passage of time, the world has changed, and the initiative has evolved a bit. Even the branding, it’s now evolved to being the Own Our Own brand. 

I could tell you, high-level, what Nip and I came up with and were working on. We had this vision of uniting the Nipsey from every city. When I say “the Nipsey,” there are people in every neighborhood who are visible, trusted, prominent, loved, who give feedback into the neighborhood like Nipsey did in L.A. Our vision was to find those people in each one of the major inner cities throughout the country, bring them all together in one fund/investment vehicle, and all collectively invest in our communities. So, let’s say you pick the person in Philadelphia, whether it’s A.I. [Allen Iverson] or Meek Mill. [Rick] Ross in Miami, there’s a million people you could pick in Atlanta, Damian Lillard and Marshawn Lynch from Oakland.

That was the high-level thesis. There are people who really love their communities, put on for their people, and are trusted by their people. Let’s come together and invest in our communities in a different way. Let’s go and own the land and the real estate and keep it in our hands for generations. We wanted to make an actual investment, leverage the symbolic impact of that to encourage others, so there could be other groups besides ours that do the same thing. And like I was saying earlier, how entertainers and athletes can shift the mindset because they drive culture, our investment was intended to do that. We wanted to make real investments that created opportunities and facilitated pathways to success in our communities, but at a higher level. Like, help shape how people in our communities view each other and view themselves and the worth of their communities. That was the idea behind ‘Our Opportunity,’ and we never got to launch while Nip was alive.

It’s now evolved, basically just in branding. Initially it was grounded in opportunity zones and that legislation. It’s a pretty significant incentive to invest in inner-city communities. But the shift—and we would have probably shifted if Nip was still here, because we were always trying to figure out how we could do it with the entertainers and athletes, but also in partnership with the community. The way opportunity zone legislation works, it’s really hard for the average person from our communities to partake in opportunity zone investments because you have to be investing capital gains. So that means you own something that you’re selling for a profit, and those profits you can take and invest. Well, if you look at all the metrics and stats about inner-city communities, household net worth is approximately zero, and there’s no savings or investment, so logically a lot of people from our communities don’t have capital gains for investments. We didn’t want to move in a way where it was just the one-percenters of the Black community doing this thing, so our structure now is we’re trying to partner people in the inner city to invest alongside all the sports and music heroes. 

I can give you the first example: It’s a boxing gym on the East Side of South Central and our visible partners in it are an artist named D Smoke from Englewood and another artist named G Perico who is definitely a west coast icon, and it’s his actual neighborhood. They’re our visible partners and are buying this boxing gym that shut down because the owner had died. So we’re opening it up and bringing it back, and they’re investing their own money into this fund to do it. Still, we’ve created a way for anybody from that neighborhood, from the east side of South Central, to also invest alongside myself, D Smoke, and G Perico. 

That’s the vision, to go from inner city to inner city and hopefully get the prominent entertainers and athletes who want to invest in something real, but have the investment make a real impact and do it with the people. And not on some, “Oh, you get to cheer for us and watch us.” No, if you have $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, come invest in this. Invest in some shit that you can see, touch, and say you’re a part of that. And maybe you’re not in L.A., so you can’t see Broadway Boxing, but you own a part of Broadway Boxing, too. It’s one thing for people to speak angrily and be upset about gentrification and outsiders buying our real estate and investing, but take action. It’s one thing to criticize and be upset, but do something to fix it, so we created a vehicle to combat that. We’re making long-term investments in our communities, and we’re going to test everyone’s resolve. 

All the shit that people say they want to do in the Black community, we’re going to put it to the test. It’s here, we’ve made a way for everyone to invest. I’m investing, I have a few of the homies investing with me. We’re going to keep going, we’re going to take it to Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, DC, Cleveland, New Orleans, Memphis, everywhere. Every place there’s a large Black population, we’re taking it there. We will see how “about it’’ people are, but we’re committed, and that’s what Nip and I started.

David Gross

In October 2019, you put together an investor challenge through ‘Our Opportunity,’ and you were seeking 1,000 investors. Did you reach that goal, and how many current investors do you have under the initiative?

With that, we were trying to create new investors, not get them to invest in us. We were actually giving money to people to open investment accounts. It wasn’t us trying to get people to invest in us. We were really saying, “Hey, we want to create 1,000 new investors out of people who have never invested before. So go and open any investment account, show us it’s a new account, and we’ll put $100 in it because we want to spark that desire in you to start investing.” 

Did you reach your target goal?

I think we came a little bit shy of it. We gave away $30,000, so we created 300 investors, and then we had other celebrities or prominent partners give, and we got $10,000, so all together we got 100 new investors. I don’t know the final number, so I wouldn’t want to imprint, but I know we got close. We had a bunch of solid people on the initiative, and literally every dollar that came in, we gave $100 to everyone who started a new account. But I think it just cut out because pretty quickly 500 people signed up and showed us that they opened accounts. I just don’t think 1,000 people opened accounts. So, to be clear, that wasn’t us raising money for people, that was us giving money to people to encourage them to open an investment account.

When it comes to ‘Own Our Own,’  you said you were working with other prominent people in communities all over the country. You referenced the gym in L.A., but are there some other initiatives that are in progress in other areas throughout the country?

To clarify, ‘Our Opportunity’ is now ‘Own Our Own.’ Our Opportunity was the concept that Nip and I started, and that’s what it was going to be. It was going to be an opportunity fund that leveraged the opportunity zone legislation. We evolved from using the opportunity zone legislation because there’s not a way for poor people from inner cities to invest capital gains. So the concept evolved so that we can assure that anyone with $1,000 from an inner city can invest with us, which would have not been the case using the opportunity zone legislation. 

We want to invest all over the country. We want to invest in each one of those cities that I laid out, and more, like Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, DC, Cleveland, Memphis, New Orleans. Everywhere that there’s a large Black population, there are probably people from there who want to leverage their platforms and use their money to invest. We’re an investment fund, so we have to raise money for people, people have to get excited about what we’re doing, invest in us, and then we will invest back into the communities. We’re just now opening up the fund and fundraising right now, but ultimately we want to be everywhere. We want to do a traditional private equity fund. Like Blackston and KKR and Carlyle, we want to do what they do, we want to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and we want to invest it. The distinction will be, we’ll be primarily investing in inner cities.


“There’s a handful of things you can invest in, primarily stock indexes in the US. Anyone who invests in that holds it for 20 years, you’ll see your wealth grow, even if you’re investing $50 to $100 a month.”


What is some advice you can share from your book that could help readers and enlighten them in terms of investing back in their communities?

The e-book is just about investing—beginning to learn about investing. The broadest advice I can give is that the key to investing is saving, and ultimately, investing as much as you can and consistently across time, as well as holding investments for a long time. It’s not sexy, it’s not a quick flip, even though sometimes it does work out depending on what you invest in. The key to investing is just diligence, consistency, and patience. It’s pretty simple, actually. There’s a handful of things you can invest in, primarily stock indexes in the US. Anyone who invests in that holds it for 20 years, you’ll see your wealth grow, even if you’re investing $50 to $100 a month. If you do it every month, over the course of your adult life you will have significantly more money when you’re older or when you retire. That’s the key to investing. It’s not sexy, it’s not complicated. The complicated part is doing something where your gratification is delayed for years in the future.

Do you have anything else you want to share about Own Our Own or any other initiatives you have going on?

Yeah, go check out our website at OwnOurOwn.com, and hopefully some people invest. The key readers in inner cities, the future is people proactively doing the things that they want people to do. For communities with less resources, it’s collectivizing. There’s somebody who is going to read this and say, “I don’t have a lot of money to invest.” Well, grab your four or five homies who also might not have enough money to invest and put it together. Make it be enough and just start with what you have, and start now and keep doing it. That would be my advice. 

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