Brent Craige — Tech for Gulf South Small Businesses
New Orleans, Louisiana

I help small businesses adopt tech.

Most Louisiana businesses aren't tech companies. All of them need tech. I set it up — so you can get back to running your business.

Work with me

What I actually do for owners

No jargon, no 40-page proposals. We find what's costing you time and money, and I set up the tech that fixes it.

1

Get Seen

Content, social, and ad campaigns run the way a real publication runs them — because I run one. Built to bring customers in the door.

2

Get Time Back

Practical AI set up inside your actual workflow — intake, follow-ups, reporting, the busywork. The tools that work, none of the hype.

3

Get Found

Websites, booking, and online presence that convert. If a customer can't find you, buy from you, or book you in under a minute — we fix that first.

Brent Craige on a conference panel
Why me

I built Louisiana's largest Black-owned publication. From scratch.

Newtral Groundz isn't a side project. It's a working media operation — publishing, live events, music, and studios — built in New Orleans with New Orleans money.

That means every tool I recommend, I've already run at scale: the content systems, the ad campaigns, the AI workflows, the websites.

When you've run the machine yourself, you know exactly which tech a small business actually needs — and which is a waste of money.

That's the difference between me and a consultant who read about it. I'm an operator. You get what works, because it's what I use.

Work With Newtral Groundz
My story

New Orleans East kid. Still here.

Every stop on this list happened because I bet on this city instead of leaving it.

McDonogh 35

Where it started

Graduated from McDonogh 35 Senior High — the first public high school built for Black students in New Orleans. That history isn't a footnote for me. It's the whole frame.

Tuskegee University

Political science, Alpha Phi Alpha

Studied political science at Tuskegee — an HBCU built on self-sufficiency. I learned how power, media, and money actually move, and I pledged Alpha Phi Alpha along the way.

2017

Came home. Built Newtral Groundz.

New Orleans is rich in culture and poor in media infrastructure — our publications weren't rooted in the culture they covered. So I built one that was: a platform for the stories no one else was telling. It's now the culture channel of New Orleans, grown to 500K+ followers across the internet.

Web3 era

NFTeacher

Short run in the Web3 space where I launched NFTeacher, a school in the metaverse built on the Ethereum blockchain — teaching people the tech before most institutions had figured out what to call it.

2022

JammAround — the biggest pitch prize in the country

My co-founders and I built a collaboration platform for musicians and won IDEApitch at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week — a $400,000 investment prize, the largest in the competition's history and the biggest pitch prize in the nation that year. We were the first Black-led startup to win it. From there: an $880K pre-seed, a top-50 finish in Pharrell's $1M Black Ambition competition, and selection into Andreessen Horowitz's Talent x Opportunity program.

2024

Created Jazz Bounce

A new subgenre fusing New Orleans jazz with bounce, launched under Newtral Groundz Music and fronted by the masked artist Mikecol. It's now a registered trademark with millions of streams, vinyl pressings, and live shows like the Jazz Bounce Lounge that sold out in 30 hours.

Now

Biz Bayou

Turning all of it back toward the businesses that hold this economy up — helping Gulf South owners adopt the tech that big companies take for granted, and telling their stories on the way.

YouTube

Latest from the channel

Business breakdowns, founder stories, and field notes from the Gulf South. New uploads show up here automatically.

Biz Bayou · Newsletter + Video

Business news and playbooks for the Gulf South.

Every issue: what's working for small businesses down here, which tools are worth your money, and what I'm building in real time. Written and filmed in New Orleans. No fluff.

Brent Craige speaking on stage above the Mississippi River in New Orleans
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