Why Brian Ferguson is creating a Yelp for returning citizens

In 2002, Brian Ferguson seemed to have it all planned out. He was well on his way to law school, on track to graduate from West Virginia University in three years with a 4.0.
Then his life fell apart: he was accused wrongfully, he says, of first-degree murder, sentenced to life without parole, and sent to a maximum security state prison for eleven years.

There was nothing for them; and if there was, they didn't know about it.

He tried to make the best of his new environment, he said. “I made a point to surround myself with people who were focused on getting out,” doing legal work on his case, reading and helping younger inmates attain a GED. “I didn’t want to lose who I was because of my environment,” just because “the law said that I was going to die in prison.”
With help from the top-gun law firm Covington & Burling, which provided his legal defense pro bono, he lodged a successful appeal. In October 2013 the West Virginia Supreme Court found that Ferguson’s defense attorney had suppressed key evidence that could have exculpated him and ordered a retrial.
He walked free in November 2013, and that’s when another trial began: the job search.
He had never completed his college degree and missed quite a few technological developments while he was in prison. “I was familiar with computers but circa 2002,” Ferguson said. He could not find full-time employment.
Still, he had several advantages compared to other returning citizens. “I came home to a house, to a family that could sustain me the time I was getting back on my feet,” he said. Many of his friends “had to worry about [their next meal] from day one.”
And yet they faced “total wilderness” when looking for resources like food, health care, mental care, drug treatments, employment and housing guidance. “There was nothing for them; and if there was, they didn’t know about it.”
Ferguson recalls his case worker at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency pulling out a list of career, housing and other resources available to returning citizens from a dusty binder. “He’d only have a sheet or a couple sheets of papers,” he said. “Half of them didn’t exist anymore.”
Ferguson realized that the process would be easier if there were a way for returning citizens to widely share the most helpful and current resources they found. “I wanted to create something where everybody could benefit from word of mouth,” said Ferguson. So he decided to launch Start Line, a Yelp-inspired platform where returning citizens can look up, share and rate the resources they’ve found.
Formerly called Angel’s List, Start Line was cofounded with his half-brother Albert Ferguson and kicked off with a donation from Halloran Philanthropies. In January, the organization began a fellowship at the Georgetown-based Halcyon Incubator and is currently seeking a technical founder.
Start Line aims to launch two pilots in Chicago and D.C. by next year. Though the Fergusons aren’t certain if they want to aim for a nonprofit or a startup model, they hope to make revenue from a jobs board, subscription fees for a government-facing platform and premium listing options.
Meanwhile, Brian, a Northeast D.C. native who attended Sidwell Friends School — the Obama daughters’ alma matter — and Coolidge High School, is getting ready to go back to the classroom next September.
One thing he learned in prison, he said, is that “people can deal with a lot more than they think they can.” But for many returning citizens, he said, “the problem was access” to the right resources.