E-commerce platform Gander announced today the closing of a $4.2 million seed round co-led by Harlem Capital and Crossbeam Venture Partners. Gander, which collects and embeds user-generated video content into retail sites so shoppers can see what a product looks like in real life, was launched in late 2021. It also has a creator marketplace, which gives brands direct access to the video content. This round adds the startup’s founder Kimiloluwa Fafowora, 26, to the growing list of Black women who have raised $1 million or more in VC funding.
Calaxy, a Black-owned web3 social marketplace, has raised $26 million in strategic funding co-led by Animoca Brands and HBAR Foundation with support from Polygon. This raise follows a $7.5 million seed round in 2021 with investors like Animoca Brands, Red Beard Ventures, ArkStream Capital, NGC Ventures, and Genesis Block Ventures. The seed round also had support from NFL player Ezekiel Elliott, “The Bachelor” Matt James, and former PayPal head of Blockchain Strategy Jonathan Padilla, among others. Calaxy aims to build a new infrastructure that allows content creators, ranging from small influencers to big-time celebrities, to
Five to Nine, which makes event management software, has closed a $4.25 million seed round led by Black Ops Ventures. Other investors in the round include Slack Fund and Cleveland Avenue, with Mike Gamson, Sterling Road, and Concrete Rose Capital as repeat investors. The company’s software lets enterprises plan programs for their employee resource groups, which enable employees who share characteristics or experiences to come together, share resources, and connect. Jasmine Shells and Denise Umubyeyi launched the company in 2018 to help organizations manage, structure, and track employee events, meeting development programs, and Employee Resource Group (ERG) initiatives. “Five to
Lagos and San Francisco-based Klasha has received an additional $2.1 million to complete its $4.5 million seed round. The startup, which provides multiple products for the cross-border commerce space in Africa, raised this new financing from a group of international investors co-led by American Express Ventures, the strategic investment group of American Express. The round also included Global Ventures, the MENA-focused VC that has backed the likes of Tabby, Helium Health, and Paymob. Jess Anuna first founded Klasha in 2018. At the time, the company’s focus was to make it easier for
Snoop Dogg and his son, Cordell Broadusm, have become partners in the world’s first NFT restaurant group. Snoop’s Dr. Bombay’s Sweet Exploration, an immersive retail dessert experience based on his Bored Ape NFT and Dr. Bombay character, will soon open in the Los Angeles area under the Food Fighters Universe (FFU) umbrella. FFU was founded in March by Orange County entrepreneurs Andy Nguyen, Kevin Seo, and Phillip Huynh—the team behind Bored & Hungry, the world’s first NFT-themed restaurant. FFU is a collection of 10,000 unique food fighters on the eth blockchain. Each purchase will fund the world’s
International calling app Talk360, which enables people to make reliable and affordable calls to any landline or mobile phone worldwide, has secured $4 million in funding as it prepares to launch a new pan-African payment platform in mid-2022. The seed round of funding was led by leading African venture capital investor HAVAÍC, 4Di Capital, and several prominent fintech angel investors. Talk360, a leading Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) player in Africa, enables people to make international calls through its app for a fee. It is built so that only the
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, this week announced the news that it is linking up with the Canadian performer, The Weeknd, for his After Hours Til Dawn Tour to provide “an enhanced fan experience.” The so-called ‘experience will reportedly manifest in a number of ways, including via a collaboration with The Weeknd’s creative incubator HXOUSE to produce an exclusive NFT collection and co-branded branded merch. “Binance is all about the community, about people, about inclusion. I was impressed by their focus on users and innovative edge,” said The Weeknd. “It made perfect
If you search ‘migrants’ on Tiktok, you get a host of videos from desperate individuals trying to secretly enter lorries and being caught out to news about the thousands of young men that have lost their lives trying to make the journey. But some TikTok videos and Instagram accounts that aggregated these videos of sea journeys show before and after footage alongside images of the same migrants walking along well-groomed European streets and posing in front of monuments like the Eiffel Tower. These videos may give the impression to some
Religion of Sports, the media production company founded by Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan and Tom Brady, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Shamrock Capital and joined by Elysian Park Ventures and Cerro Capital. The Series B funding round brings the company’s total to $66 million raised over three rounds. Chopra told The Hollywood Reporter that the raise will be used to help “grow the company from the production company model, which is what we have operated in for a long time, to really controlling our own destiny. To really bet
LeBron James has officially become a billionaire, according to Forbes. This makes James the first active NBA player to reach the milestone and the second NBA player to reach billionaire status, joining retired basketball star Michael Jordan. It comes after he landed the number two spot on Forbes’ 10 Highest-Paid Athletes of 2022 list, following Lionel Messi, who snagged the number one spot. Now that James is said to be worth an estimated $1 billion, let’s break down the numbers. James has made $387 million from the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat, and Los Angeles
