Syclus (Sick´less) is a NYC-based Black-owned company that combines money/finance, hip-hop culture, and technology in new and entertaining ways to help create the first financially successful generation of under-resourced Black youth. Syclus was created to break the cycle of poverty by empowering the emerging consumer segment to become productive participants in the U.S. financial system and not only achieve their money goals, but elevate their goals by helping them become role models to their peers and parents.
It is Syclus' strong belief that financial literacy changes a community by playing an important role in promoting the quality of life of individuals and families. As such, we are dedicated to accelerating financial inclusion within historically challenged neighborhoods through innovative initiatives of personal financial literacy, and we trust that educating and empowering our youth is critical to building and sustaining strong communities for the future.
"The liKuiD School Bank Program reimagines high school through community-based,
student-centered design"
Syclus’ flagship product is liKuiD, an academic and life skills educational initiative, which consists of a competitive stock market challenge for high school students (9th to 12th grade) from historically-excluded communities. Played individually, student participants compete amongst themselves and learn about finance, leadership, critical thinking, strategy and team-building, all while remaining directly engaged in the classroom and real world. Over the course of ten (10) weeks, teams are given virtual cash that they are responsible for monitoring and developing using real-time trading.
liKuiD School Bank Program
Compete with students from within your school and implement your own trading portfolio strategy!
Learn more about our financial inclusion and literacy strategy!
Nasdaq Stock Exchange
(Times Square - NYC)
The Delivery
A competitive differentiator of the Syclus brand is that it employs popfy™ (päp-fī/), the abbreviation for popular (pop) finance (fy), a language that mixes hip-hop culture to creatively teach an entertaining brand of finance. popfy behaves as the culture of Syclus, and the lifestyle brand's core aim is to engineer the convergence of innovation x design x technology in unique ways to shape the experience of how the >$830B emerging consumer segment interacts and relates to money; and by doing so, highlights the scary subject's importance today, and in the future, by seamlessly aligning it with their daily lifestyle choices.
A powerful feature of popfy™ is that it inspires, empowers, and entertains the urban youth market by incorporating HipHopEd - a personalized and engaging learning environment that focuses on the use of hip-hop and its elements in teaching and learning both within and outside of the traditional school setting. Importantly, this competitive strategy gives us the uncanny ability to cultivate a robust community with the core intent to create an emotional connection with Black youth by fostering authentic storytelling experiences they are comfortable in and can share with their peers.
Opportunity
For centuries, Black Americans have not been given the opportunity to build generational wealth given their lack of fair and equal access to useful financial services and education. As a result, the wealth gap in America is at an all-time high. In 2019, the typical White family had nearly eight times (8x) the net worth of the typical Black family, and by 2053, statistics show that the median income of Black families in the U.S. will fall to $0. As such, it is a must that underfunded Black youth understand and navigate the complex global financial system, including a financial institution's value proposition and how it behaves as the center of their entire lifestyle.
Syclus exists to equip the aforementioned underfunded Black youth with the tools and skills to address the following social and economic justice issues:
» High poverty rate
■ At 18%, the Black poverty level remains far more than double that of white Americans (7.3%); and 23% of Black people live in high-poverty neighborhoods
■ More than a quarter (25%) of Black children fell below the poverty line in 2019, compared to 8.3% of white children
» Lack of financial literacy, which contributes to wealth and racial inequality
■ Currently, only 16.4% of U.S. high school students are required to take a personal finance course to graduate (4% of low-income students), highlighting that often those most in need of financial literacy, Black and Brown communities, are left behind
» Large unbanked population, largely due to lack of distrust and confidence in financial system (14% vs 2.5% of white households)
■ In 2020, Black households were 5.5x more likely to be unbanked than white households
» Lack of Black representation within the stock market (33%)
■ While publicly traded stock comprises 24% of the wealth of white families, it makes up just 13% of Black wealth
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Syclus' mission is closely aligned with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and we utilize the SDGs as a lens through which we ultimately view our impact in the world.
