Andre Swanston is one of the few Black men to sell a tech company for nine figures. Swanston founded Tru Optik in 2013. He was driven to have a solid work ethic by his father, who ventured from the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis to the United States and worked several jobs to support his family, according to Forbes. The younger Swanston obtained a finance degree from La Salle University and a business degree from the University of Connecticut between 1999 and 2004. He would then secure a job as a financial advisor at Ameriprise Financial and later take on a post at JPMorgan Chase & Co. as vice president of investments between 2010 and 2012, per his LinkedIn. During the early 2000s, he owned nightclubs and restaurants, he shared in a Q&A with TransUnion. He also invested in local advertising to bring more exposure to his businesses. It was then that Swanston made a discovery that would prompt his pivot to the tech industry full time as the founder of Tru Optik. The system is “an...