#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Marcus Bullock, Founder & CEO, Flikshop
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Using Postcard Tech to Keep Families Connected
Marcus Bullock knows firsthand the impact a strong familial support system has on the lives of incarcerated people. As founder & CEO of Flikshop, he’s set out to make sure that families have accessible communication to facilities across the country. He spoke with Engine about reentry resources for incarcerated people interested in entrepreneurship, what policymakers should know around efforts to reduce recidivism, and his goals for Flikshop moving forward.
What led you to founding Flikshop?
At Flikshop, we build tech that helps keep families connected to their incarcerated loved ones. This is very important to me because I went to prison when I was a 15 year old kid. My best friend and I got arrested for carjacking, and I was sentenced to eight years in adult maximum security prisons. My mom made a promise to send me pictures and letters and she saved my life with those letters and photos. I knew that I needed to be able to figure out a way to give back to the brotherhood that I had in prison. And after a successful startup in the construction space, I leveraged that revenue to launch Flikshop.
Can you talk about how Flikshop works? What’s the user experience like?
Our users download our app for free and then they’re able to add a photo and a quick message. We take that photo and message and print it on a real, tangible postcard and ship it directly to any person in any prison anywhere in the country.
We’re also building a Flikshop “neighborhood,” which we’re very excited about. We call all the people who are incarcerated our neighbors, and we want to figure out how to be able to get reentry resources into prisons, well before people come home. We’re able to leverage the data we have about incarcerated populations and provide it to the neighboring college in a rural town that wants to be able to support our people, or the nonprofit organization that wants to provide them with Uber gift cards to job interviews, or the nearby church that wants to hold a donation drive for shoes or suits or dresses so that our people can go to a job interview and feel like they’re dressing for the part with dignity. These are all massive players to successful reentry, and we’re able to help connect everyone.
Speaking of reentry resources, Filkshop has a “School of Business.” Can you tell us more about what that is and what inspired it?
I’ve gotten to see how many opportunities there are in the tech and innovation ecosystem. It's a big bag in tech, and I’ve thought a lot about how I can introduce these opportunities to some of my peers, folks who live in the same neighborhood as I live in or who live in the cells that I lived in. I feel blessed to have a bit of social capital now and a bit more access, and I want to create pathways for some of these women and men that are coming out of prison.
Our School of Business is a corporate-sponsored program where our partners support a cohort of learners that are coming out of prison and want access to career and entrepreneurship education. Formerly incarcerated people already have a ton of barriers when they come home, and, given we have a lot of the same experiences, we’re in a unique position to help them. We listen to the same music, we wear the same clothes, we can make the same jokes. We have parallels that help us create social trust and help us deliver the School of Business curriculum in a meaningful way.
Why are postcards such an important way for people in prison to communicate with their loved ones, especially as compared to legacy means of communication?
When I was in prison, my mom struggled to afford 15 minute phone calls with me. She had to change a lot in her life to be able to afford to stay in touch with me, including moving to a smaller apartment so she could afford a $700-$800 monthly prison phone bill. For her, it was a no brainer—she knew she needed to talk to her son, who was a kid basically growing up in an adult maximum security prison. In a lot of these facilities, the phone companies charge these exorbitant rates, and we’re seeing more and more companies charge for the ability to have loved ones in prisons access emails, use Internet kiosks, etc. That’s why we focus on postcards. We knew that if we did our jobs correctly, we could scale this tool, begin to democratize communications inside of prisons, lower the costs, and force some of these other providers to revisit their business practices and how they facilitate family connectivity.
What kind of rules do you have around what people can put on the postcards, and how do you enforce them?
It happens few and far between, but sometimes people will try to put inappropriate types of messages and photos. Sometimes it’s the content of the messages, sometimes it’s photos from girlfriends or wives, etc. Initially, when we first launched and we saw that this was going to happen, we had a manual review process. As we continued to grow, we had to build the technology to do that review because we have thousands of postcards that are being shipped, so now we’re using an AI tool that scans each one of our postcards. And we’ll give users whose postcards have been flagged their Flikshop credit back so they can submit something else. People are usually pretty responsive when we ask them to fix what they’ve submitted. It's like how Chick-fil-a is closed on Sundays. You know that, but go you on Sunday anyway, and it’s always closed. So you head home and think, I’ll come back Monday morning instead.
What should policymakers who want to support entrepreneurship for those who were incarcerated be thinking about?
The first thing is access to capital and what those opportunities look like for people who are coming out of prison. Now I'm blessed to have a bit of social capital and access to people that can help me understand how I can access the funding I need, what a capital stack looks like, etc. I thought the only way to be able to build a company was to generate revenue, but when I first started talking to investors, they asked whether I’d raised any venture capital or had any angel investors. I had to ask, “What is venture capital? You mean to tell me there are people with a big bag that are writing checks for startups?” It would also be great to have better access to government contracting opportunities. We all know that the government is the biggest procurement partner in the country. But if you’ve never done it before, you don’t know where to start if you want access to those opportunities.
Another issue is the massive barriers around occupational licensing. When I first came home, a friend of mine who owned a development company encouraged me to get a real estate license so we could work together. I raised some money between my family and my church to take classes at community college, which required money for books and bus fare. I did well in the class and passed the test, but I couldn’t get my license because I have a felony conviction. I’m resilient, so I figured out how to go to the next thing, but a lot of folks won’t be able to do that, and that’s going to put them in a position where they go back to doing the things that put them in prison in the first place.
And generally, employment restrictions around people who’ve been convicted of a felony keep a lot of people out of work. When I got out of prison, I had been out long enough that I didn’t have to check the box on job applications that said “yes, I’ve been convicted of a felony within the last seven years.” Recently-released folks aren’t so lucky. I was able to get a job at a paint store that allowed me to start that journey into employment and entrepreneurship.
And then finally, policymakers have to look at reentry support holistically. That could be programs for entrepreneurship, but it’s also as simple as removing barriers to essential things like housing. I've been home for years and started successful companies, but we still have to put only my wife’s name on our apartment applications. And reentry support has to start in prisons, but new policies are making it harder for folks like us to go in. Prisons will say that people are sneaking in drugs, and that justifies really broad policies that make it harder to bring in things like mail to keep those in prison connected to their loved ones or bring in training and resources to help them with reentry when they get out.
What goals do you have for Flikshop moving forward?
Right now, we’re spending all of our time on The Neighborhood. How do we build a community of service providers, government agencies, local and national, that have been thoughtful about wanting to support people and how do we get those resources back into prison? So I envision us over the next year or so crafting this massive community of supporters that will allow us to begin to extract the visual data that helps us articulate the power of those kinds of investments. And then over time, we'll learn how to attach that to recidivism numbers. Right now, the recidivism rate is 76 percent. We want to get it down to 35 percent by 2030. We believe that we're uniquely positioned to be one of the companies to help make that happen.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email advocacy@engine.is.
