The UK startup ecosystem is failing Black entrepreneurs with innovative ideas. It’s clear that an entrepreneur’s ethnicity can affect their access to VC in the UK as recent data shows that Black founders received just 0.24% while women from this community got a mere 0.02% of the total venture capital invested over the past 10 years. But one organization, Black Valley, is trying to change the landscape for Black founders through its founder’s program. The 8-week program includes weekly 1:1 mentoring sessions, workshops on themes like ideation, product, solution-fit, marketing,
The accuracy of facial recognition has improved drastically since ‘deep learning’ techniques were introduced into the field about a decade ago but there’s still a long way to go. A few years ago – the world’s largest scientific computing society, the Association for Computing Machinery in New York City, urged a suspension of private and government use of facial-recognition technology, because of “clear bias based on ethnic, racial, gender, and other human characteristics”, which it said injured the rights of individuals in specific demographic groups. So this is clearly a big issue
Sudo Africa, an API platform that enables you instantly issue physical and virtual cards with more control and flexibility at scale, has raised $3.7 million in pre-seed funding. What makes the startup different from others? While banks take weeks or months to give cards, Sudo Africa claims to just take days. In partnership with licensed card issuers, the company’s infrastructure allows itself and any developer or merchants that come on its platform to issue virtual and physical cards to their customers. And on the platform lets businesses control and program cards to
Meet Shannon Morales, a single mom of three and founder and CEO of Tribaja, a tech talent marketplace based in Philadelphia that pairs Black and Latinx employees with companies committed to diversity and inclusion initiatives. Through her company, Tribaja, Morales, 34, provides Black and Latinx employees interested in the tech field with education and training and pairs them with tech companies she’s vetted as being truly committed to inclusion and diversity. Her company also offers 100% free coding, software engineering, data science, project management training, along with so many other
This year, search interest for “Black in tech” reached a five-year high in the US, according to Google. The demand for Black people in tech is clearly skyrocketing and POCIT is part of the flock of leading publications trying to provide you with the latest updates on the people you need to look out for. Here’s a list of some of our favorite Black people in tech and articles you should have a read of to get some inspiration and advice. Imposter Syndrome, Believing You’re Enough And Raising $40M –
Emtech, a Black female owned central bank digital infrastructure provider, targets emerging markets where payments infrastructure need aligning with digital innovations — to improve efficiency, introduce new products and services that are likely to promote financial inclusion, and in ensuring the secure movement of money.
Binga founded the Binga State bank in 1908 in Chicago and it was one of two pre-eminent Black-owned financial institutions in the US until its collapse during the Great Depression. Born in Detroit in 1865, Binga established himself in Chicago first as a real estate broker during the Great Migration. He was able to buy homes at a cheap price from white locals fleeing their neighborhoods in the wake of Black Americans moving in from the South. After buying the homes – he was able to fix them up himself and
Serena Williams’s early-stage venture capital firm, Serena Ventures, has raised an inaugural fund of $111 million that will invest in founders with diverse points of view. The achievement comes nine years after she first started the project and has taken on a portfolio of more than 60 angel investments. The investments were all backed by the athlete’s own money. For those who aren’t aware – an angel investor is an individual who uses their own funds to support a start-up company or project. “As an angel investor, you can only
Born in Los Angeles, Nwandu grew up in a foster home after her mother was killed by her father in a tragic episode of domestic violence. Fast forward to 2014, which by all accounts, looked like it was the year that Angelica Nwandu’s adult life was in a downward spiral. She failed her LSAT and GMAT exams because she couldn’t afford test-prep classes while all her friends were graduating. But her life turned around years after and now she owns one of the largest media brands on social media –
Zuora, Inc, the leading cloud-based subscription management platform provider, announced that Valerie Jackson will join as the company’s first Chief Diversity Officer, in November 9, 2020 and since then she’s been making waves. Jackson has been leading Zuora’s diversity and inclusion strategy and initiatives across its global workforce. As the newest member of the executive team, she reports directly to co-founder and CEO Tien Tzuo. She made the move to technology as she has always viewed it as an industry of innovation, core to building the future and changing the
