How Detroit's Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative got started

(FOX 2) - How do you get computers to talk to one another?

While already a question that's been answered in this era, it was still something that computers couldn't do when they first emerged on the scene in the 1980s. That is, until three like-minded individuals came up with a new business venture that would solve that problem. 

It would net them millions of dollars - and trickle down into something else entirely different and perhaps just as impactful.

David Tarver's story begins in Flint, at a time when auto jobs were plentiful, affording him a good education, which eventually led to a full-time engineering job in New Jersey. The year was 1984, when he approached two others with an idea.

"Our first product was a product aimed at testing dial-up modems in the laboratory so people could develop more effective and higher speed dial-up modems," said Tarver.

They would work from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., then head to Tarver's home and work several more hours in his basement. The head-spinning amount of work would pay off at just the right time with the technology still in its infancy - and ready to take off.

Their first project cost $16,950 - about the same as a BMW 3Series. 

"When we started the business, we didn't know it would be possible for three Black guys to go into the basement and start a technology company and make it a world-class operation," said Tarver.

But, 11 years later, they sold the business for $32 million - giving him an endowment that would one day allow him to pay forward all the help he received. In reflecting on his self-made business, Tarver says it didn't start on its own and outside resources were badly-needed to get them where they got.

He picked Detroit as the home base for his new venture and in 2014, opened the Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative.

"We just had a band of volunteers who came together to advocate for people, focusing on the needs of urban communities and the opportunity that exists in developing businesses that improve the quality of life that exists in cities," he said.

His new mission? Find the next David Tarver - someone that can change the world if only they had the guidance he received.

"An urban innovator is somebody who designs a solution," he said. "And you look for an important problem - a problem that exists not only here but in a lot of other places."

The UEI would provide lessons to its clients, acting as a business library that members can access instantly and get the answers they need as they carve their own path. The amount of access would be based on the stage one's business is in. 

"First level is going to be free just to gain access and see what is going on. But if you want access to the profiles, the education materials, the meetings that we have and so forth, there is going to be costs associated with that," Tarver said.

While his earlier work on modems netted him millions, he sees this latest venture as his big experiment.

"Even though this is a not for profit organization, I feel strongly that one of the ways you measure how you are doing - if you are providing a service to people and people are willing to pay for it, you get the feedback and it keeps you honest," he said, "because if people are not joining and paying a membership fee, you might not be doing something right."

Learn more at urbanei.org