Phat Startup puts new spin on Silicon Valley Meet Phat Startup, a company that seeks to help people who identify with urban culture reach for their Silicon Valley dreams.

Kaja Whitehouse | USA TODAY

NEW YORK — The slang phrase "808" (pronounced eight-oh-eight) refers to the TR-808 drum machine, which is credited with defining the early sound of hip-hop music.

It's often referenced in popular music lyrics, including songs by Outkast, Lil Wayne and Britney Spears, where it is used interchangeably with "beats," including a beating heart. Kanye West named his 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak, after the term, which can also refer to the penal code for disturbing the peace through the sound of bass from a stereo, according to UrbanDictionary.com.

808 is not a term commonly associated with Silicon Valley tech start-ups. But if hip-hop-loving techies Anthony Frasier and James Lopez have their way, that might change.

Frasier, 28, and Lopez, 35, are the founders of Phat Startup, which organizes events to help people who identify with urban culture reach for their Silicon Valley dreams. Their new conference series, called Tech808, is expected to hit three cities this year, starting with Washington, D.C., in May.

The record Frasier and Lopez are playing puts a new spin on Silicon Valley culture, which is overwhelmingly white, male and privileged. Their events, which are quickly gaining fans, could attract a new generation of Hispanic and African-American youth to a tech world eager to boost its diversity.

"(Frasier) speaks directly to a community that is largely excluded and not part of the process today," said Mitch Kapor, a well-known entrepreneur and investor who is working with Frasier to bring Tech808 to Oakland, Calif.

"He serves as kind of a translator," said Kapor, founder of Lotus Development, known for its Lotus Notes software.

In addition to translating, Frasier and Lopez are also seeking to create a whole new culture — one that melds the world of lattes and venture capital with hip-hop lyrics and baseball caps.

"We are starting to create a community of entrepreneurs that come from urban culture and urban backgrounds," Frasier told USA TODAY. "Most of the people we appeal to won't ever go to Silicon Valley. So the question is, how do you get that information? That's what Phat Startup is about."

At its Tech808 conference in New York, for example, Frasier and Lopez supplied little black notebooks for attendees to jot down thoughts and lessons learned. The notebooks were inspired by a talk entrepreneur and investor James Altucher had given at another Phat Startup event, where he advocated people write down 10 ideas daily, Lopez said.

But Lopez and Frasier added their own flourish to the pads by emblazoning them with the word "Hustle" on the cover, followed by the phrase: "Made With Grind / Filled With Dreams."

They dubbed the final product "hustle pads." They also hired DJ ZeeMuffin to play music at the conference, which took place at New York University's Kimmel Center.

"Throughout the event they kept saying, 'Write in your hustle pad,' " said Nanci Odom, an information technology professional from North Carolina, who attended Tech808 in November along with about 400 others.

Odom, who also makes YouTube videos and posts about running and hip-hop through #rapontherun, keeps her hustle pad in her kitchen and looks at it a few times a week for inspiration, she said.

On the first page, she underlined the sentence: "You have to constantly show that you add value." On the second page, she wrote: "It's not about what I want. It's about what people want."

"It really stuck with me," she said of the lesson on the second page. "I think about it every day: How can I give people what they want?"

Frasier, who grew up in Newark, N.J., dropped out of community college and did a stint working the overnight shift at Kmart before founding Phat Startup.

What helped him get to the next phase of his life was a video game website he started called TheKoalition.com. That site, as well as his idea for an app to rate and check into mobile games, landed Frasier a spot in an intensive nine-week training course for minority tech founders hosted by NewME Accelerator.

The experience landed Frasier and his fellow NewMe colleagues on CNN's Black in America series by Soledad O'Brien in 2011.

That's also when Frasier met Lopez.

"I saw him on the show, I looked at him and said, 'This guy is just like me and he has access in Silicon Valley where I want to be,'" said Lopez, who grew up in the Bronx, where his family often turned to food stamps to help make ends meet.

Lopez reached out to Frasier on Twitter, where they started an online conversation that quickly evolved into a real-life friendship.

The duo bonded over their love of technology and their love of hip-hop. They started a Tumblr blog about start-up lessons gleaned from hip-hop lyrics.

The blog was intended to help them find "like-minded" people, Lopez said. But it quickly evolved into a platform to help people who grew up in urban environments — or who identify with urban culture — feel better connected to the world of tech.

"We became an education company by the force of the community," Lopez said.

Since kicking off in 2012, the company has thrown dozens of events and scored some big-name speakers including Ben Horowitz, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and "Young Guru," a famous audio engineer, professor and DJ.

Clips from some of the events can be found on the company's website. And a quick perusal suggests Frasier and Lopez are not exaggerating when they say their events are very different from a typical tech talk.

Within minutes of an interview with Horowitz, for example, Lopez quizzes the Facebook investor on rumors of his "crazy parties," "stadium-sized speakers" and whether his guests do any "twerking."

The interview, which takes place on metal folding chairs, is sprinkled with curse words and uproarious laughter. But it also hits on serious issues, including the difficulties of laying off employees and following through on your instincts when everyone else is saying you're wrong.

"Cowards can't lead," Horowitz tells the crowd at one point, followed by rapt silence. "That doesn't mean you're not scared," Horowitz adds. "I was scared, like, the entire time I was CEO," he says of his first start-up, LoudCloud.

Like Frasier, Lopez was drawn to computers at an early age, but growing up in the Bronx made it difficult for him to figure out how to translate his talent into a career.

"In my neighborhood, everyone called me 'Computer.' I didn't appreciate it. I thought I was cool," he said with a laugh.

When Lopez began applying for college, the adults in his life told him to become a computer technician, which Lopez now realized "would have limited me completely." Fortunately someone he met at Columbia University, one of the schools he applied to, advised him to study computer science because "everything else falls underneath it."

Frasier and Lopez eventually want Phat Startup to become a membership service that will give members access to educational materials, including their trove of online interviews, as well as discounts to their events.

They see potential in branded Phat Startup merchandise as well. Indeed, they already sell Phat Startup-branded T-shirts, which Frasier said have done surprisingly well.

"We never intended to make that a business ... but people buy it," he said, sounding somewhat surprised.

"The goal was to build this grass-roots movement in urban America around building your own company," Frasier said. But, like most things in modern society, the movement is slowly turning into a profitable brand, which Frasier describes as "an entrepreneurship urban lifestyle brand."