Diddy Accused Of Stealing The Idea For His Black Business Discovery App From A Young Black Developer

June 9, 2021 by Nick Fenley in Music with 0 Comments

Diddy Accused Of Stealing The Idea For His Black Business Discovery App From A Young Black Developer

As Sean “Diddy” Combs launches his new app to support Black businesses, he’s facing accusations of actually stealing the concept from a young Black developer.

Last week, Diddy announced his new app, Shop-Circulate. The app is conceptualized as a way to help people discover and support Black-owned businesses. In an Instagram post that has since been deletd, he wrote:

“Building Black wealth starts with investing in Black-owned business and giving entrepreneurs access to the consumers needed to build sustainable companies that can thrive”

Despite these sentiments, Diddy is actually being accused of ripping the idea off of an up-and-coming Black entrepreneur. Drixxon Kyser conceptualized and developed an app called Circulate, which is aimed at supporting Black-owned businesses, and he accused Diddy of high-jacking his idea (and his app’s name).

In a video uploaded to the app’s Instagram page, Drixxon Kyser stated:

“Have you ever had your heart ripped out of your chest? For the past year, I’ve been building, developing, and promoting my Black business discovery app, called Circulate. This past Wednesday, P. Diddy announces he’s creating a Black business discovery platform, called Shop-Circulate.”

He continued:

“This is what the Black entrepreneur faces all the time. We go underfunded, we can’t get loans, we don’t have a network to get resources from. Like look man, I’m a kid from the South Ward of Newark, New Jersey. I can’t fight this machine all alone. I need help… And if somehow this reaches the ear of P. Diddy, you can email me at [email protected].”

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A post shared by Circulate & B-Heard (@circulatetheapp)

In a follow-up video a couple days later, Drixxon Kyser continued to call out Diddy, saying:

“P. Diddy, did you do your homework? When I heard Diddy and Sales Force are launching a Black business marketplace called Shop-Circulate, I was surprised–because I’ve already created and launched my own Black business discovery platform called Circulate. I launched last November, after doing my homework.”

Drixxon continued:

Out of respect [for] all the entrepreneurs working in the space, I did a case study on every single one of them–including the two platforms that P. Diddy purchased to form his. So my question is, who didn’t do their homework? It looks like we copied you or that you copied us, when the goal is circulating the Black dollar and uplifting our community… We must protect our ideas, culture, and wealth.”