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Course: Entrepreneurship > Unit 1
Lesson 3: Marc Ecko - Founder of Ecko UnlimitedMarc Ecko - Founder of Ecko Unlimited
Marc Ecko, Founder of Ecko Unlimited, discusses his origins as an entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial culture of Hip Hop. Describing graffiti as the extreme sport of art, Marc talks about how this form of artistic expression was his gateway to entrepreneurship and offers advice to young people. Created by Kauffman Foundation.
Want to join the conversation?
- Is the video ended supposed to end abruptly (mid sentence) at3:35ish?(11 votes)
- Umm... i'm the type of person that listens to hip hop but , who is Mark Ecko ?(0 votes)
- Mark Ecko is the founder of Eckō Enterprises which a clothing line. It is a very popular brand in the Hip-Hop industry.(9 votes)
- Is this made by khan?(2 votes)
- Yes. Khan made this video, or at least hosted the interview. Someone at Khan Academy then made the graphics, who may or may not have been Sal himself.(2 votes)
- I've had the Pleasure of Meeting Marc Personally, and Thank You for the Book! From Guts to Skin is the Consistant Theme in Your Speaches and Book. What Outlets would You Connect Entrepreneurs to, like which ONE would You HOPE a Golden Idea to Fall and Where! Which Fly in Which Web?(2 votes)
- I like the part when he told us that all the kids said they all an artist and while we are grown up. Only a little of us admitted it!(2 votes)
- Explain how Marc Ecko created his empire and how it influenced him and society?(1 vote)
- how did he get the money to start ecko(1 vote)
- He probably kept selling his T-shirts like he said and started off from that.(1 vote)
- Is it just me or does anyone pick up the the rap vibe of this interview?
Besides being an artist and entrepreneur the man is a poet!
I love the line about graffiti being the extreme sport of art.
To me the "interview" was very poetic.(1 vote)- I definitely sensed the rap vibe. In our society, rap is seen as something listened to only by thugs, but this guy made it have a greater meaning.(1 vote)
- What is Marc Ecko's background? Where was he raised? Schooling? Family?(1 vote)
- Marc was born in New Jersey, possibly raised there. He has two sisters, Marci and Sheri. Marc attended public school.(2 votes)
- Where is Marc Ecko now?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- My name is Marc Ecko. I am by nature an artist. I came up at a time when it was a very unique window in popular culture. Hip hop was emerging. There was an entrepreneurial
virus that is hip hop that rock and roll didn't
quite have in the same way. There was a little bit more self loathing amongst the rock set in terms of the commercialization of their work. Where in hip hop, it's been embraced to go create industry around your ideas. It's become a part of the ecosystem because it's coming from nothing, right? And there's kind of this implied element of social justice as well
in the business born out of what is hip hop and street culture. So that's kind of baked
into the DNA of what we do. I love this fact that folks were making something from nothing. And my peer set were
founding value basically in the ether amongst themselves. Four rappers would get
together, rhyme in a circle, and all of a sudden, it was like, Oh, let's make a mix
tape, like from nothing. I wanted to fit into that ecosystem. I couldn't rap, I couldn't
break dance, right? But I did connect to art, so I kind of started to
parrot the art of graffiti and started painting t-shirts. I love the emotive, the feedback. Both the financial feedback,
that someone would pay me, as a 15 year old kid, to
make them this t-shirt. And then they'd wear it with such pride and kind of beat their chest. And there was that kind
of emotional transaction that was really powerful and
created the feedback loop to want me to go and dig deeper. And pull on that thread,
and keep unfolding what eventually became this
path of entrepreneurship. It wasn't like I onboarded,
because someone said, "Be an entrepreneur." I onboarded because I
wanted to realize my dream. And I was an emotional, artistic kid. And graffiti was kind of like
the extreme sport of art. That was a moment of luck for me. So many people were like, Graffiti's a gateway to crime, right? For me, it was a gateway
to entrepreneurship. Go figure. I've really kind of been a curator of pop culture for let's
say males 16 to 40. And that's been my lane. Having come up in the 80s, around hip hop and skateboarding culture and kind of the emergence of technology. I've just kind of
trafficked in my hobbies. The things that I consumed as
a kid are now the business. Young people know instinctively
what it is they need to do. They just need to go out
there and get it done. Shifting from what is
effectively a consumer mindset to believing in themselves
to be a producer. Going from I am consumer of X to I am maker of Y. That's an aspiration that
is amongst all of us. But some of us, we just
don't know how to do it. We kind of doubt ourselves. Why is it that you go to a
classroom of kindergartners. You ask them, who in
this room is an artist. Everybody raise their hand. You ask that same cohort 20 years later, no one raises their hand. Maybe one guy, and they look
at him like he's a freak. Something's wrong there. You have to connect to your
artist, your instigator. You know, it's right
brain, it's left brain. It's chocolate, it's peanut butter. You have to find that.