15 New Grants Available For Black-Owned Businesses In The US

To help support the progression of Black talent, Braze teamed up with other leading technology providers including Amplitude, Branch, mParticle, and Radar back in 2020 to offer free software to early-stage startups led by Black founders.

Now, the American cloud-based software company based in New York City is pleased to announce the expansion of Tech for Black Founders (T4BF) with the introduction of 15 new grants.

To be eligible for consideration, interested participants must be a Black founder based in EMEA or the US with a company that has fewer than 100 employees, and is either bootstrapped or has received under $30 million in venture funding.

Since its inception, the T4BF network has grown to over 43 partners including Airtable, AWS, Foursquare, Greenhouse, Notion, and Stripe.

To date, a total of 16 US-based, Black-founded businesses have taken advantage of free access to Braze technology and support resources through the T4BF program.

There’s a need for such schemes because today, only 1% of founders are backed by venture capital in the US are Black.

Following the selection of 15 business recipients, the program will offer access to the Braze platform and related education, including a free ‘Growth package’ for 12 months, with onboarding services and over 25 hours of educational content in Braze LABs.

Customer Engagement capabilities include unlimited push notifications, webhooks, and in-app/in-browser messaging for up to 250,000 monthly active users. Email costs cover up to 10M emails and two IP addresses.

In 2021, Braze provided grants to 16 Black-founded businesses in the US, including Plain Sight, a social platform that facilitates networking in virtual spaces.

Plain Sight was reportedly able to leverage Braze’s technology to drive personalized communications, optimize user experiences and increase retention.