Carl Dumesle

Introduction and Growing Up Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Taryell Simmons: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Rise Urban Nation. Today we're having a great conversation with my brother Carl about his career journey and HUGS. And no, this is not the free hugs t-shirt guy, but there is another brother out here who's all about hugs. Who is Carl?

Carl Dumesle: Thanks for the intro. I'm not the guy who gives free hugs, but I'll give you one if you want one. I'm originally from Haiti and I only moved to the US in 2019 for my MBA at the University of San Diego. I was an international student who came here for the in-person experience, and a semester later COVID happened and everything went virtual. I graduated in 2021. The reason I started HUGS is that when I moved here, I had a lot of issues finding housing. I lived in Haiti for the first fifteen years of my life, then moved to the Dominican Republic after the 2010 earthquake with my three younger brothers. I'm the eldest of four. They were thirteen, eleven and five, and I basically raised them until I moved out here nine years later.

Taryell Simmons: Thank you for sharing that journey. Big shout out to my people in Haiti. If I visit Haiti, where should I go and what should I eat?

Carl Dumesle: You should eat everything. All the food is amazing, and I wouldn't be a proud Haitian if I didn't say that. If you visit around New Year, our squash soup for Independence Day means a lot to us. My mom lives in Florida, and when I fly there that's the first thing I eat. As for places, go with someone you know. The capital, Port-au-Prince, is great to visit, along with the main cities in the north and the south, and there are a lot of historical monuments.

An Entrepreneur From the Beginning

Taryell Simmons: How would you define the industry you're in?

Carl Dumesle: I'm in technology, specifically real estate technology, or proptech. I'm the CEO and founder of the company. People call me an entrepreneur, but that's a broad term. I just like to get stuff done. I like to fix things, to assemble a small army, attack a problem and fix it.

Taryell Simmons: My parents were big on education: you're going to be an engineer, a lawyer or a doctor. Was it similar for you?

Carl Dumesle: I had a lot of influence from my parents. They both started businesses and were business owners for most of their lives, and that influenced me without me even knowing it. My mom was very big on school. She used to say, "Whatever you do in life, bring me a degree," even though she owned a business herself. Looking back, I emulated a lot of their behavior. At eleven or twelve, I sold cell phone games: I'd download a Java game and send it over Bluetooth to my friends. For a kid, I made a lot of money and stopped asking for an allowance. Then I went into Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and had a whole card exchange at school, then sold phones. In the Dominican Republic I got into the automotive business, importing and selling cars. I tried clothing and found out I didn't like it at all. But anything marketplace-wise, where I join two parties that want something and take a cut, I'm pretty good at.

Taryell Simmons: What was your first job outside of the businesses you created?

Carl Dumesle: At the end of my senior year of high school I worked at a call center, starting in sales over the phone. I went there for the uncapped commission, because I needed cash flow to invest in what I was actually doing. In my head, the job was my side thing. After that I moved into data analytics in the Dominican Republic, and here in the US I've worked with a commercial real estate firm called CBRE.

You Never Know How High You Can Go Until You Jump

Taryell Simmons: It's not where you start, it's where you finish. What's one thing those early jobs taught you that helps you in business today?

Carl Dumesle: You never know how high you can go until you just jump. This time last year, HUGS wasn't even incorporated. It was just an idea in my head. I had just graduated from an expensive school with no money, and we needed to build a marketplace platform with a budget of ten thousand dollars. I had no job, so I wondered where I'd find that. I started talking to people and networking, and found fifteen thousand. Then we needed a hundred thousand dollars to pay people, build the platform and handle the legal work. I was new here and didn't know anybody, and we ended up raising a hundred and sixty. Now we're going into our seed round and need about a million to a million and a half, and I'm in the same position again. When you jump, if you've done your job well and connected with the right people, someone will catch you before you fall. Then you jump again from a higher place. As long as you're passionate and consistent, you keep jumping higher and higher.

Taryell Simmons: Sometimes we're building the plane while we're in the sky. But you have to take the first step.

What HUGS Does

Taryell Simmons: Give me your elevator pitch. What is HUGS and what problem are you solving?

Carl Dumesle: HUGS stands for Housing Undergraduate and Graduate Students. We help international students find housing in the US through a proprietary credit scoring algorithm we developed, called the HUGS score. International students come to the US without a social security number or credit score, but to get an apartment you need a credit score. What annoyed me is that international students are thoroughly vetted by the federal government, and part of that process is providing evidence that we can afford to be here and that we're creditworthy. So if I've shown the federal government I'm creditworthy before even getting my visa, why am I deemed not creditworthy once I'm here? We take the exact same documents the government uses to assess your ability to be here and translate them into a score comparable to legacy credit scores, and we use that to help students find housing.

Taryell Simmons: Having a warm home to come to is the best hug you can receive. What steps did you take to get this started?

Carl Dumesle: You have to jump, but you have to know where you're jumping to. Before it was a business in my mind, it was just a problem I didn't understand why still existed. So I developed a solution and tested it every step of the way to try to prove myself wrong. In my first semester of the MBA, I joined a pitch competition on campus to see if the idea resonated with people who had never heard it. I had never pitched before, especially not in English, and my team won the whole competition, with scholarship money too. Then we won another one, and another, refining the concept each time. We incorporated in 2021, but I'd been working on it since 2019. I wasn't assuming success, but I wanted to remove the likelihood of failure as much as possible before I started.

Talk to People and Ask at the Right Time

Taryell Simmons: Pitch competitions connect you with people in the industry and angel investors. What's one lesson you learned through that process?

Carl Dumesle: Talk to people. When you start something, you don't want to share the idea because you think someone will steal it. There's no lack of ideas out there. It might have been in somebody's head, but I did something about it. If someone can easily replicate your idea and do it faster, either it wasn't that unique or you weren't the person to do it. More often than not, you'll find help. Don't be afraid to ask for what you need. Closed mouths don't get fed. Once I started asking people for money, all of a sudden we had money. Be honest, be clear, and go into every meeting prepared, with a specific purpose, so it's productive for everyone.

Taryell Simmons: My grandma used to say that too: closed mouths don't get fed. And they say there's no such thing as a dumb question, but I used to stay quiet.

Carl Dumesle: I'm naturally curious, so I keep asking until I understand. I don't think there are dumb questions, but there might be dumb moments to ask a question. Read the room and time it well, but always speak up. As a kid I asked a lot of whys, and I learned how many I could ask before getting shut down.

Taking an Active Approach to Growth

Taryell Simmons: You're wise at such a young age. What's one good lesson life has taught you?

Carl Dumesle: Take an active approach to your growth. You're going to grow in one area or another, wherever you spend the most time and effort. A lot of people don't control where they grow, and years later they don't recognize themselves. It doesn't have to be a lot. Just orient your life in a certain way. Every few months I look at myself and ask: how have I grown, where have I grown, and where do I want to grow? You become a more intentional version of yourself. If I'm who I want to be, that's the best version of myself I can be.

Advice for Getting Into Proptech

Taryell Simmons: Tech has so much room for growth, especially for Black people. What advice would you give someone who wants to get into proptech?

Carl Dumesle: Narrow down exactly what you're trying to work on, and if you can relate to it, even better. A lot of solutions are broad and overlap, so things blend in. There's a clear distinction between hardware and software, and there's appetite for each. Software businesses are cheaper to start, typically grow faster and have fewer headaches. Hardware creates a better connection because it's physically there, but it's a lot of work and very expensive to start.

Taryell Simmons: If I'm Pan-African and don't have access to that capital, how do I get my foot in the door?

Carl Dumesle: I didn't have any money either. I went back to my school, which has a free legal clinic, and they set up my company for nothing. Law schools often do pro bono work so their students can practice, so you can go to any law school and ask. You can find the same for finance and hiring. To raise money, people say do a friends and family round, but I don't have a lot of rich family. HUGS raised most of its money through crowdfunding on WeFunder. People who resonated with what we were doing invested and supported us.

Where HUGS Is Headed

Taryell Simmons: Where is HUGS in its journey right now?

Carl Dumesle: We officially launched in August 2021 and started monetizing instantly, which is a big deal for a startup. During our first week we placed our first student. We started with two or three thousand dollars a month in deals, and now we're clearing almost fifty thousand with a lot in the pipeline. Next is fundraising, then bringing more people on full time and branching out of San Diego into the rest of California. As for proptech, it's moving very fast and I don't see the ceiling.

Taryell Simmons: What are your last words of wisdom, and where can people find you?

Carl Dumesle: Just jump. Whatever you do, in business, relationships or your personal life, you never know where it's going to take you. I came here to do my MBA and get into consulting, and I'm doing something completely different that's way more fun. You can find me on LinkedIn, where I'm pretty active, and HUGS is most active on Instagram at hugs.intl, which means HUGS International. We'll post every event there.

Taryell Simmons: I'm a huge fan of what you're doing and I can't wait to see what comes next. Thank you, Carl, and thank you all for being part of this episode of Rise Urban Nation.