Black-owned cardiovascular telehealth provider, Moving Analytics, has raised $20 million in Series A funding. The funding round, which Wellington Access Ventures and Seae Ventures led, also included investors Philip Ventures, Aphelion Capital, Nueterra Capital, SteelSky Ventures, and Citi Ventures. Moving Analytics, co-founded in 2013 by Ade Adesanya, Harsh Vathsangam, and Shuo Qiao, has partnered with cardiology offices and cardiac rehab facilities to expand access to secondary prevention for all patients. The platform specializes in cardiovascular prevention and uses a virtual cardiac rehab program, Movn, to support patients who have recently
A new study has found racial and gender bias in the job performance feedback given to business employees. Textio, an augmented writing platform, surveyed over 25,000 business employees and also analyzed actual performance feedback documents, and noted consistent patterns of inequity by gender, race, and age. Latinx and Black employees were more likely to receive job performance feedback that was negatively biased and not actionable. What did they find? According to the findings, Asian people get more feedback than people of any other race—25% more than white people—and Black men
Africa’s tech ecosystem has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, with 2021 seeing a record number of investments. The year 2021 was a great one for startups globally and Africa in particular. The continent saw total venture funding exceed two and a half times what it was in 2020. This figure amounted to an impressive $4.77 billion. As far as distribution is concerned, 30 African nations raised at least $100,000 in funding across the year. The ‘Big Four’ countries, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, and Kenya, received 81% of the investments. Five of the eight
Black-owned investment firm Fearless Fund partnered with Louisiana-based foundation ProSeed to renovate and rebuild schools in Ivory Coast, West Africa. The partnership aims to transform the educational system in West Africa, giving students the tools needed to succeed in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Fearless Fund, co-founded in 2018 by serial entrepreneur and angel investor Arian Simone, and American actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, works to invest in women of color-led businesses seeking pre-seed and seed level investment funding. The VC firm, built by women of color for women of
Award-winning African spirits group, Spearhead, has raised $3 million in investment from venture capital firm Pendulum to help deliver their products to the world’s bars. Spearhead, co-founded by UK-based entrepreneurs Chris Federick and Damola Timeyin in 2021, is a multi-award-winning business with an extensive portfolio working with premium brands. The company launched to challenge the cultural basis and the lack of African representation in the spirits industry. Their award-winning Premium African Spirits, Vusa Vodka and Bayab Gin, are made solely from African products and capture Africa’s premium craft and creativity.
Kinly has announced a new partnership with data aggregation platform MX, a financial data aggregation tool, to help the company build and enhance its custom-built financial tools. The Atlanta-based financial tech company, Kinly, is dedicated to helping Black Americans build generational wealth. The platform offers members a range of benefits, including a Visa debit card and early wage access. In addition, it gives members access to financial education to help them improve their economic outcomes. The partnership with MX will see the platform introduce a range of embeddable user interfaces
Black-owned money movement, Zazuu, has raised $2 million in investment funding in a new venture round. The startup, which works to build a more robust remittance for residents in the diaspora, has quickly evolved to become the world’s first cross-border payment marketplace. Zazuu, co-founded in 2018 by Kay Akinwunmi, Korede Fanilola, Tola Alade, and Tosin Ekolie, is on a mission to ease the difficulty of sending money back home, which is currently expensive, slow, and unfair to millions of migrant customers. The platform has helped empower customers by building an
They’ve been spat on, called racist names, harassed in grocery stores, and violently attacked. Since the emergence of COVID-19, some combination of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theory has been weaponized to target people perceived to be Chinese. The violent consequences of online disinformation targeting Asian American and Pacific Islander communities demonstrate the power of the internet to stoke racial resentment. Misinformation, disinformation, and online hate speech have led to widespread violence in India, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka in the past several years. Conspiracy theories targeting the AAPI community have caused upswells in hate crimes
Some of you might have heard about Antler, an early-stage VC firm that invests in some of the most “exceptional” (their words, not mine) founders worldwide. Well, the firm founded by Mark Zuckerburg’s classmate Magnus Grimeland, has a 3-month accelerator program each year. Did Mark and Magnus work together? Not exactly. Magnus might have worked for Mark at TheFacebook, as it was then known, if he weren’t also juggling classes and athletics and caring for his infant son, according to Forbes. Antler, launched in 2017 in Singapore, is striving to combine
On 13 July, coding school Holberton announced that it had agreed to be acquired by the African Leadership Group (ALG). It comes more than a year after Holberton managed to raise $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Redpoint Ventures. Daphni, Imaginable Futures, Pearson Ventures, Reach Capital, and Trinity Ventures also participated in the round, which brings Holberton’s total funding to $33 million. The original promise of Holberton was that it provided students — which it selects through a blind admissions process — with a well-rounded software development education akin to a college education for free.