The Black Duo Creating A Metaverse Ecosystem For Black Women In Business
Former bankers Lyndsae’ Peele and Casey Ariel are turning to web3 to empower and uplift Black women entrepreneurs with Zubachee, their “metaverse ecosystem for Black women in business.”
The pair plan to onboard one million Black women onto the metaverse by 2023.
What is Zubachee?
Zubachee aims to become the go-to space in the metaverse for Black women entrepreneurs to find the tools and support needed to scale their businesses.
Zubachee is also developing a curriculum and planning events to educate Black women needed to run profitable business operations.
While Black women create 42% of all net new businesses started by women in the United States daily, they often lack access to capital.
Zubachee will catalyze B2B trade among Black women-owned businesses through payments via Zubachee’s nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to tackle this.
From there, the fintech solution will mint NFTs which can be traded against the services offered by in-community members. These services will include marketing, virtual assistance, legal assistance, and copywriting.
Zubachee will incentivize community members to engage with events, each other, and the marketplace through instantaneous rewards.
The Journey
Former bankers Peele and Ariel turned to entrepreneurship in October 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and increased public demands for social justice.
Ariel is also the founder of Blaze Group, an agency that provides business development coaching to Black women. Peele is the founder of Kingdom Vision Enterprises, a firm that provides financial strategy to CEOs of color.
Peele told Technical.ly that the pandemic highlighted the need for access to capital, and by the summer, they had agreed that a web3-based solution would help them provide financial security for women and bridge the digital divide for their community.
“We relied on bootstrapping initially and using funds from our own businesses. However, we were fortunate to receive support through a successful crowdfunding campaign,” she said.
The Kiva micro-lending site led the crowdfunding campaign and raised almost $10,000, which was used for research, development, and staffing for Zubachee.
“We are aware of the numerous accelerators, workshops, and resources available for entrepreneurs to access,” Peele said.
“However, many of these options are outdated and do not effectively cater to our cultural needs. The disseminated information often lacks representation from individuals who can resonate with Black women in business.”
The women also host the ‘Zubachee Radio’ podcast where they discuss their journey of pitching, capital raising, and technical engineering.
