One address for a world that has a hundred.
HBCU CLLCTV is an index, a newsroom, a network and a directory pointed at the same audience. It started as a diagram on a sheet of paper and the site is still shaped like that diagram.
The idea
Culture is this network's most underpriced asset.
Everything else follows from that sentence.
More than a hundred institutions, generations of alumni, an unbroken cultural output that the rest of the country borrows from constantly, and no common front door. The value is obvious and it is almost entirely uncaptured, because there has never been a place where all of it is indexed in one form.
The Collective is not trying to replace a campus site, an alumni association or a conference. It is the layer above them: the thing a stranger uses to find any of them in under a minute, and the thing those organizations use to find each other.
Free is a design decision, not a launch promotion. A directory is worth something in proportion to how complete it is, and charging at the start guarantees it never gets close.
Straight answers
What is actually built.
Most sites at this stage imply everything ships. Here is the real state of each branch, and it is on the homepage too.
How it gets built
Index, then habit, then economy.
In that order, and the order is the strategy.
The directory comes first because it is useful to a stranger on day one and needs nobody else to show up. The news and the network come next, because they turn a lookup into a reason to return. The Venture Lab and the token come last, because both are worth something only in proportion to the audience already standing there.
Run in reverse, which is how this idea is usually attempted, you get a fund with a logo and no distribution.
Join the Collective to be told when the next piece opens.