GARY: Next on "Start Up," we head to Harlem in New York City to meet up with Andre Peart, the founder of ConConnect, a company that has revolutionized the process of societal reentry by connecting formerly incarcerated people with resources and services.

All of this and more is next on "Start Up."

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♪ My name is Gary Bredow.

I'm a documentary filmmaker and an entrepreneur.

As the country continues to recover, small business owners everywhere are doing all they can to keep their dream alive.

So we set out for our tenth consecutive season to talk with a wide range of diverse business owners to better understand how they've learned to adapt, innovate, and even completely reinvent themselves.

♪ This is "Start Up."

♪ Recidivism refers to the percentage of former prisoners who have been arrested again for a similar offense.

The rate of recidivism seems to go hand in hand with the complications associated with reentering society.

The physical paperwork, the difficulty in finding gainful employment, parole responsibilities, and so much more.

And if the process of reentry could be streamlined, would recidivism rates go down?

Today I'm heading to Harlem in New York City to meet up with Andre Peart, the founder of ConConnect, a company that connects formerly incarcerated people with resources and services, making reentry to society a smoother process in the hopes of reducing recidivism.

I'm excited to meet up with Andre and learn more about this incredible business that's changing the lives of individuals in search of a second chance.

♪ ♪ ANDRE: I watched the show "Start Up" in prison.

TV is a big thing, right?

It's peace of mind.

It's learning.

Right?

And "Start Up" was a show that people can learn from.

So you can just imagine all the different ideas people were getting and, you know, things like that.

So, yeah, for me to be sitting here today, it's, it's crazy.

GARY: That's mind-blowing for me.

ANDRE: I know.

I was telling my business partner when they reached out and said, "If this all goes good, man," I said, "I was watching the show," I said, "I don't know if you watched it, but I was watching the show in prison."

GARY: Let's start by learning a bit about you.

Tell me where you're from, a little bit about your background.

ANDRE: I spent most of my life here in New York City.

Grew up in Harlem, moved to Yonkers.

Sort of grew up in a rough neighborhood in Yonkers, south side of Yonkers.

Ended up getting myself involved with the wrong things while I lived out in Yonkers.

Getting myself involved in gang violence, drug dealing, those type of things.

I guess I want to say I'm first generation gang member in my family.

There's no previous gang members in my family.

They're all college grads.

My father is from London.

British guy.

Doesn't have an inch of gang inside of him.

I'm just the first one to go into it, so I still had that instilled in me that you want to get an education, but I was already full-fledged going into this lifestyle.

Started getting drugs, started working for a drug dealer at that time.

I was on the corner selling drugs full throttle while still making sure I was going to get my GED and going to school at this time.

Once I was able to get the GED, put myself into college and then just made sure that I was able to like still make a schedule around living this life and being on the corner.

GARY: It sounds like you had a pretty good home life growing up, right?

ANDRE: Yeah.

GARY: So this was just a personal decision.

Is there anything that maybe growing up you think caused these decisions?

ANDRE: Yeah.

GARY: I mean, was it just the neighborhood?

And how much influence did or didn't your parents have at that time?

ANDRE: Yeah, I definitely tell you what it was.

I know exactly what it was.

It was exactly what I've seen growing up, right?

So it was a great home on the inside.

It was a lot of learning.

There was a lot of love.

Great family, brothers, sisters that are cops and doctors today.

But what happened was on the outside, there was not people like you in suits, right?

There was not parks and resource centers like in the Upper East Side where I have an office at today.

There weren't any of these things that I was able to see.

What there was, was those guys on the corners.

Drugs being sold in front of me.

So I just adapted to the environment.

GARY: Got it.

ANDRE: My mom didn't want to hold me in the house, she said, "Yeah.

You can go outside."

She didn't-- as innocent as she was, not being from this country, I don't even think she knew what she was letting me walk into.

So I was selling a lot of drugs full-fledged when I got into my early 20s, across Upstate New York.

I was at a gas station one night, and then things just really took a really, really sort of, like, plot twist.

I bumped into somebody who was from an opposing rival gang at the gas station, and it turned into a big shootout at a gas station.

By this time, this is my 18th time being arrested.

But this is the charge that sends me away.

So any of these 18 arrests previously, none of them stick.

I was able to get acquitted in trial.

GARY: But this one... ANDRE: This one stuck.

GARY: This one stuck.

What were you charged with?

ANDRE: At first, I was charged with assault one.

I was charged with a possession of a weapon, and I was charged with drugs, possession of drugs.

GARY: What did they give you?

How many years?

ANDRE: So getting all that knocked down to just possession of a weapon, after a two-year, after about an 18-month case, I got sentenced to a 5 1/2-year case.

5 1/2-year sentence.

GARY: What was it like for the 5 years?

ANDRE: The first 2 1/2, 3 years of prison, I was still full-fledge in.

Full-fledged gang life.

Living the environment.

Selling drugs in prison, and just keeping the name that I had, because I was still just young and dumb.

At about 25, I want to say literally on my birthday, I just started, I seen change.

Just, it just was getting old.

Right?

I've been doing this since 15 years old, 10 years.

GARY: The lifestyle.

Just over it?

ANDRE: Yeah, it was getting old.

Finally heard it during the 5 years, I heard it my whole life, when you go to prison, there's nobody gonna be there, you know, other than your family.

That's all that was there.

So there was no, anybody that I've sold drugs with, anybody that I had risked my life for.

There was nobody there.

It is lonely in there, and I got 3 more years left to go, and I can make this a lonely 3 years, or I can try to change from this point on.

And that's where things started really changing at.

♪ ♪ GARY: What is ConConnect?

ANDRE: ConConnect is a technology platform that helps formerly incarcerated people connect to service providers, case workers, social workers, employers, acquire healthcare, legal resources.

But CNN called it "LinkedIn for the formerly incarcerated."

That's where the vision came from.

So it came from me finding LinkedIn.

But that's what it is.

It's a technology platform that redefines what it looks like to come home from prison today.

Which is, after those 5 1/2 years, it looked like, "Hey, Andre.

Here's this 40 bucks.

Here's a ticket to a bus shelter.

You'll meet with parole within 24 hours, and they'll have some more papers for you with some organizations that can help you."

And 40 bucks was done within the first day of living here in New York City.

GARY: Yeah.

The first like 10 minutes.

ANDRE: Yeah.

If you put 650,000 people that are getting released a year on that same route, and then you wonder why 54% of them go back to prison within the same year, you can sort of just think about how far do they get with the money they're released with?

That alone.

So with ConConnect, we started to redefine that through technology.

These people get phones within 30 days of being released.

Data shows that.

I had a phone my second day of being released.

So ConConnect for me at that time would have been really pivotable in just being able to find healthcare my same day.

Mental health, housing, transportation.

And then an employer who's not gonna criticize me.

So that's what we are today.

Working in about 27 different states and just really changing the way that people come home from prison.

GARY: What was the sort of "aha" moment that you thought, "I'm gonna do this"?

ANDRE: I was in a shelter.

I had met with some mentors, and a mentor says, "Hey, get on LinkedIn and create a profile.

Just start to get the hang of it.

Tomorrow, let's meet.

I'll help you, like, fancy it up, and then I'll show you how to reach out to some recruiters."

When I got on LinkedIn that same night myself, I was like, wow, this network is really cool.

This is like, you build connections, you know, they're really selling it to you when you sign up.

And I had that light bulb idea and said, "Wow, I need to build something like this for people like me."

Imagine if we had our own network to find everybody-- with all these things, but exclusively for us.

Because we're a large population.

We're one third of the US population is formerly incarcerated.

GARY: One third?

ANDRE: One third is justice impacted.

So... GARY: Wow.

ANDRE: One third of the US population.

650K are getting released annually.

That number hasn't slowed down for a long, long time.

So it's a really, really big market and a really big impact market, too, as well.

GARY: What was the process for you when you got out?

DANIEL: I was very fortunate.

You know, my family put me in contact with a job, a manual labor job when I first got out.

GARY: How about for a person that has no family that wants the help?

DANIEL: Oh, it's almost impossible.

You know, I know people who spent six months, a year in shelters, um, just trying to survive, just trying to meet their basic needs.

They had no access to transportation, especially like, where I'm from, I'm from the country, I'm from the Catskills.

And if you don't have a car, if you don't have somebody to drive you anywhere, it's impossible.

You're just stuck.

GARY: Yes.

DANIEL: You have no resources.

You have no means of, you know, surviv-- or no means of providing for yourself.

It's extremely difficult.

GARY: Talk me through the process.

If, uh, you know, somebody gets released, how do they find out about ConConnect and what happens step by step with them?

DANIEL: Yeah, so we work with a lot of probation and parole departments.

And when people are released, they let them know, "Here's this resource for you.

Let's get you signed up."

They create their account, and once they create their account, they fill out all their needs, any goals that they have.

And through that, we're able to connect them with those service providers that provide to those specific needs, um, and we'll help them meet their goals.

GARY: What was your first step in turning it from an idea, this needs to exist, to actually making it exist?

What was step one?

ANDRE: I need to make some money to build it.

GARY: Okay.

ANDRE: Tech app.

You're talking 100K, right?

If you outsource it, maybe 50, 60K.

At the time we're talking about, I'm released.

I'm cleaning toilets at a local gym right on 125th Street here in Harlem.

So I don't know how long that was gonna take to get that money.

But that was the idea, get the money first.

GARY: You wanted to build, you wanted to earn the money yourself and pay yourself.

ANDRE: And build this app.

Right.

Traditionally not understanding the venture capital world, really not understanding investment and not really learning, knowing that world, I just know at this time, if you want to build something, you got to build it yourself, right?

Started working with an organization called the Five Ventures, who now uses ConConnect today.

And they help formerly incarcerated people who want to become entrepreneurs, sort of just learn those first steps.

So I researched, found them, and started there.

I also started working, you know, two jobs, now at a shelter and the local gym to start to save up faster.

I'm able to start building this app within a year of probably thinking about it.

GARY: How did the process of build-out go?

ANDRE: So it went terrible, right?

GARY: Oh, no.

I knew there had to be something here.

ANDRE: They were like beginner developers in India.

They did bad code that if I wasn't making the money I was making, and I just had that 40K, that've been done.

We probably ended up spending about 60K in development for the app from switching around developers.

We were able to have something to put into market and to show to potential investors, and that was our goal.

And before we even really went to go show to potential investors, I was at dinner, and investor Barry Givens called my phone.

Literally while I was at dinner, and was like, "Hey, Andre, I just seen your profile on F Six, and you're still at ConConnect, you're the CEO, right?"

I was like, "Yeah.

I am."

He's like, "I'd love for you to pitch to our investment committee and potentially come to Atlanta."

GARY: That is not a call you get every day.

ANDRE: No, it's not.

GARY: Wow!

ANDRE: I got into the program, received a 120K investment initially.

GARY: Amazing.

ANDRE: Went through this three-month program in Atlanta.

Me and my business partner, Daniel Justiniano, graduated the program, left that with about 500K.

GARY: Was it like an incubator?

ANDRE: It was an accelerator.

We left that with about half a million dollars in investment.

We're currently at $800K in that investment range today.

And we're rebuilding the app that I started, right?

We're rebuilding the app to expand it, hire a bigger team, get into prisons, and really redefine what reentry looks like for people coming home from prison.

♪ ♪ GARY: What does the sales process look like?

How does this app, program, how does the tech, how does it make money?

ANDRE: We know that all the areas of how these nonprofits and government agencies have got to help people like me come home from prison, they do it really manual.

Right?

Email, fax.

People wait.

People like me and my co-founder, we have to wait for these people to handle these referrals, handle our cases, get us healthcare, and by the time you know it, I'd rather have went and sold drugs, and I'm back in prison.

GARY: Right.

ANDRE: They use ConConnect to streamline their day-to-day operations, and we charge them per seat, per user.

So every user has to pay per seat.

And we bill them annually, ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 per seat.

For employers and corporations, we charge them per job post.

So they get on our platform, they can post jobs ranging from $100 to $150, or they can work with our team directly and we'll place talent for a 15% placement fee.

GARY: Since this is new, you probably don't have this data yet, but this could have a massive impact on recidivism rates.

ANDRE: Yeah, um, yeah, exactly.

You think of how fast it takes 650,000 people come home, if they're connected a lot faster to those resources, to those case workers and get healthcare and get all these things, and their work is getting streamlined.

It all depends on this case worker.

If they get the work done faster, recidivism is lower.

So, yeah, that's what our software does.

GARY: And do you have to like sort of connect and reach out to all of these individual resources, you know, based on the state that you're in?

ANDRE: Yeah.

So whatever state, whatever markets we feel like we want to go in, we make those relationships with those nonprofits.

But we do more than just make that relationship.

We are providing them the software to do everything a lot better.

They see the value.

Yeah, it's a bill, but it's a bill that saves money and brings in other returns.

So it's just been a great turnout on that end.

GARY: Has there been any pushback anywhere on this?

DANIEL: No, we're seeing a lot of people are really excited to work with us.

It's a tool that hasn't been created before.

It's a tool that is sorely needed.

GARY: Yeah.

DANIEL: Everybody is very excited.

The case workers that we meet who are enthusiastic, and there are people who want to see this community thrive, they're the ones who are really pushing us forward.

Without them, we wouldn't be able to be doing what we're doing right now.

GARY: Talk about the actual business itself.

Is it just yourself and Andre or do you guys have employees?

How do you scale and grow from market to market?

DANIEL: Yeah, so right now it is just Andre and us, and myself.

We have advisors that we work with who are great, and they're people who have really helped us to grow to where we are today.

Um, it's, uh... We're doing everything right now.

Marketing, sales, outreach.

We're doing everything.

And we do want to hire, that's the next step for us is hiring and building and growing nationally, because this is needed everywhere in the United States.

♪ GARY: I think there's quite a misconception out there that prisons, for the most part, operate for the purpose of rehabilitation.

ANDRE: Yeah.

GARY: But when people actually start to learn that prisons are profitable... ANDRE: Yeah.

GARY: ...it doesn't seem to make sense to me.

How can a prison be profitable?

What do you know about the subject?

ANDRE: Yeah.

What I know is that, from being in prison, is when I really started to learn that, one, there was no way that this place can be for rehabilitation if all you're giving me is a bed and a cell.

And that's it.

Programming was out of date.

Microsoft Office, Word, things that were really irrelevant and weren't gonna get me a good-paying job.

And then I started seeing the bigger things and where the bigger focuses were on, and that was seeing people working in DMV units, learning that, oh, wow, these people are getting paid a dollar an hour.

Not even a dollar, maybe.

I think it was, um...

I think it was about 75 cents an hour to answer the phones and be customer service reps for the DMV.

GARY: Okay, so they had prisoners, incarcerated people working for under a dollar an hour at the DMV?

ANDRE: At the DMV.

GARY: How is that--I mean, I just don't understand how that can even be legal.

ANDRE: I don't know how it's legal, but that's where it comes to the mass incarceration, the modern-day slavery.

And it's just really crazy for these men and women in there, they're gonna do it.

It's the best paying job in the prison.

It's $75, I believe, every two weeks.

And for somebody with no family, that $75 is golden.

I feel like we're in a generation of, and we're in a time where people are more open to listening to change.

If not ready to change, listen to it.

And what I'm gonna do with ConConnect is give them the opportunity to do right, right?

GARY: Give them the opportunity, okay.

ANDRE: Give them the opportunity to use ConConnect.

If you're gonna have these people inside your institution, you're gonna have these people inside your prison, whether it's private, state prison, federal, then give them the opportunity to not come back, right?

And by that is me giving you an opportunity to use ConConnect software, so when you do send them home, you send them home with something.

GARY: Yeah.

ANDRE: Right?

And then you give them that opportunity to not come back and work in your prison or profitize off them.

And really just give them a chance to change their narrative.

GARY: Tell me about an experience that someone who's been released that's using ConConnect right now, like, what has been their experience?

ANDRE: So, Christopher Mabry, he came home from prison.

His parole officer told him about ConConnect at the time, and he was able that same day to apply to 914United, which is in Yonk-- which is in Westchester.

He got his financial literacy certification.

He got his OSHA license.

He's working in construction now, has his own apartment.

CNN went and did an interview on him, and he's living a great life, right?

GARY: How quick did that happen?

ANDRE: I think he was released, within 6 weeks, he was just, like, all full-fledged and cycled out.

It's typically 6 to 9 months to get acquainted and back into society and start meeting with these nonprofits and go through their cycle of how things work.

But we have other people on our platform, right.

903 people that we've been able to connect to like these different service providers throughout New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Atlanta, Georgia, California, Texas, and then various other states.

But we were able to just grow from 300 nonprofits when we were bootstrapped to about 900 nonprofits when we were accelerated through Techstars.

GARY: Is your goal to, on the, I guess the hiring side, the corporate side, to get them to open their doors more?

ANDRE: Yeah, definitely.

GARY: Folks with felonies, when you have a felony, there's very little options outside of entrepreneurship it seems.

ANDRE: Yeah.

Yeah.

There are.

GARY: But if companies are willing to take a look, that changes the game immensely.

ANDRE: And entrepreneurship is not for everybody, right?

Even for people coming home from prison, even if that's the only way.

So these corporations need to open up their doors and understand that even if I wasn't who I am today, I'm still great to work at JPMorgan, Bank of America, wherever I wanted to be at.

My past doesn't mean anything as long as I've gotten rid of it, right, and I've sort of, like, reformed myself.

So, yeah, I definitely wanted to make sure there's enough corporations to be out there just hiring people like me for those ones who are not gonna make it as an entrepreneur.

GARY: What do you think about the future?

How far can this go?

What is in your mind as like the ultimate plan for this?

DANIEL: We want to be inside.

That's the ultimate goal is to reach people before.

The sooner you're able to reach people, the better their chances are.

So we want to be inside the jails, we want to be inside the prisons.

We want to get them and let them know this is a resource, you know, available to them as soon as possible.

Our mission is to reduce recidivism.

Ultimately, that's what we want to do.

We want to see less people going back.

ANDRE: What we're gonna do, man, is literally just redefine how it really looks to come home from prison.

From the case worker you meet pre-release, your 90 days close to prison, ConConnect can be that platform that they're gonna be using to just send those individuals to the community, right?

Hey, through ConConnect, we've already built those community partnerships for you.

We already have you met up with a case worker, so within your first week of release, just you get on ConConnect and all your appointments will be there.

GARY: It's incredible.

ANDRE: And that's what we're, you know, we're working that out now with government, and that's what we want to do.

We can just imagine how much recidivism, so by 2030, we believe we'll connect a million people, save a million case workers hours and gotten a million people jobs.

So that's our 2030 goal.

GARY: I know all of this is still really sort of new.

ANDRE: Yeah.

GARY: Have you had a chance to take a step back and just reflect and realize how big it actually is, what you're doing?

ANDRE: Just recently, Michael Cohen, one thing he said to me, he said, "Andre, all you need is some capital now to just get your head down and get this thing rolling.

What you've created is really big."

And it's sort of like, was that day, it was like I sat down and was just like, alright, this is gonna be, you know, we're gonna drive this thing, you know, as big as possible, impact wise, revenue wise, business wise.

We're gonna do something, like, really great today.

GARY: Anything that you would do different?

ANDRE: No.

I wouldn't change anything.

GARY: Yeah.

ANDRE: You know, going to prison, for me to... doing all that, to be here today, other than ConConnect, I've lived a good life as a, you know, trainer, made decent money.

Things are just going well.

And it's all because of the change that I did inside that place, right?

So, yeah, wouldn't change anything.

GARY: Are your parents proud of you?

ANDRE: Yeah.

So my mom passed away.

GARY: Oh, I'm sorry.

ANDRE: My aunt is her identical twin sister, so it's the same, exact same beautiful personality.

GARY: Interesting.

ANDRE: I spend a lot of time with her.

She came to, she watched me receive my investment on stage.

GARY: Wow.

ANDRE: And she's been part of my life a lot ever since.

And yeah, man, she's super happy.

Just really happy.

I was the only one who, again, did bad out the group.

So for me to have this really big transformed change, she's amazed.

GARY: What advice would you have for folks out there that might be watching this, that are at that sort of pivotal moment in their life where they can take one path or another?

Being that you've been there?

ANDRE: Yeah.

I always tell people, go the harder path, right?

And the harder path, obviously, is not the path that contains the route of going back to jail.

The harder path is gonna be the go grab the second job, do work 9:00 to 5:00, go work 6:00 to 12:00, get on the back of the garbage truck real quick, and don't do this with a long-term vision.

I did everything that I just mentioned without a long-term vision.

They were always short-term visions to get me to a bigger step.

GARY: Got to.

ANDRE: And I always tell people just focus and keep on going, right?

Keep on going.

Take short steps with long-term goals.

GARY: Funded by both the US government and American taxpayers, the American prison system generates over $74 billion a year, and revenue increases are primarily based on the number of bodies behind bars.

I really don't know where to begin with this, other than to say what many of us already know: that the system is broken.

Each year, prisons are filled with more and more convicts of nonviolent crimes, like the possession of small amounts of narcotics, with federal laws requiring 5 to 15 years behind bars.

Of course, the best way to stay out of prison is to obey the law, but unfortunately, that's not always enough.

And while many people believe that the goal of the prison system is to rehabilitate people for a successful reentry, high recidivism rates and the current methods of revenue generation support a different conclusion, that maybe the real goal of the prison system is to increase their population.

But I'm much more interested in solutions than what many would pawn off as a conspiracy.

Regardless of the flaws within the system, what Andre has done with ConConnect is a game changer and nothing short of remarkable.

He's on a mission to provide formerly incarcerated individuals the immediate access to resources and opportunities that he did not have when he was released.

And it's working.

ConConnect is hope.

It's compassion.

It's empathy.

And it's the first real step in fixing a broken system, even if that system doesn't want to be fixed.

For more information, visit our website and search episodes for ConConnect.

♪ Next time on "Start Up," we head to Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, to meet up with Kelley Costa, the founder of Churn, a business committed to coffee, community, and delicious homemade ice cream.

Be sure to join us next time on "Start Up."

Would you like to learn more about the show or maybe nominate a business?

Visit our website at startup-usa.com and connect with us on social media.

♪ ♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ A long road ahead of us before we pay our dues ♪ ♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ A long road ahead of us before we pay our dues ♪ IAN: Awesome!

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We just got an order from Dinosaur, Colorado.

MAN: No way!

ANNOUNCER: Build a website to help reach more customers.

WOMAN: Wait, wait, wait, wait!

One more.

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♪