Karat, the world’s largest interviewing company, has just announced a strategic investment from Serena Williams to significantly scale Brilliant Black Minds, a program that improves access and inclusion across the technology industry. Brilliant Black Minds was launched to close the Interview Access Gap that disproportionately impacts Black software engineers. The scope for the initiative was realized after Black engineers Karat and Howard University surveyed said their confidence levels increased with more interview practice. There’s no doubt that Black software engineers face multiple barriers to entry for jobs in the tech
daba, an abbreviation for “Democratizing Access to Business in Africa” is set to launch soon and aims to give individuals interested in investing in exclusive markets in the continent of Africa the chance to do just that. The waitlist, which is reported to have quietly opened in the fall of 2021, has reportedly grown to more than $2.5M USD in capital pledges toward promising African investment opportunities. Established as Africa’s first social investment application, daba’s mission is to make investing in Africa possible for investors of any level. To elevate their commitment
Entrepreneur Jordan Edelson has announced his next venture with the launch of TradeZing, a live-streaming, social engagement, Web3 platform designed for Millennial and Gen Z traders. The platform claims to “harnesses the power of community and content creation across stocks, cryptocurrency, NFTs and the Metaverse to educate, elevate and entertain.” TradeZing’s announcement comes on the heels of their sponsorship of Bitcoin 2022 in Miami, the world’s largest Bitcoin conference of the year. It aims to create a community and provide traders with fun, educational and entertaining content. Featuring livestreams on trending
Crypto payments infrastructure firm MoonPay received $87 million from an array of celebrities as part of its $555 million Series A round including Drake and Snoop Dogg. The Miami-headquartered startup received a $3.4 billion valuation after closing its Series A funding round last November. The investment was led by Coatue and Tiger Global Management. The firm provides payment infrastructure to let people exchange fiat currencies and crypto using all traditional payment methods, such as debit and credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. MoonPay has previously acted as a kind of “concierge” for
After securing $32 million in a Series A funding round back in February, Canela Media became one of the largest funded Latino-owned companies. The New York-based digital media technology company was launched in 2019 in an effort to cater to Latino and Spanish-speaking communities and it claims to currently reach more than 50 million unique Hispanic viewers across its over 180 premium Spanish-language websites. Canela’s streaming-video app, Canela.TV, is entirely free and supported by ads. Its app, which was launched in 2020, offers on-demand licensed and original shows, as well as
Njoku Emmanuel is somewhat obsessed with coding. After his father seized his laptop for reportedly “coding too much” and not focusing on his studies, he dropped out of school to focus on coding. Speaking in-depth about his experience, he said: “any time I was going to school, I was going to charge my laptop and code. I didn’t tell my parents. When they gave me money to buy textbooks, I used it to buy coding courses on Udemy.” His father somehow found out he has been missing classes and invited him
Isoken Igbinedion was just 10 years old when she had a “very dangerous encounter” with chemical relaxers that caused her natural hair to fall out. After this experience – she then went on to spend the next 20 years using extensions to give her hair a chance to regrow and in that time, she realized how much friction there was in the hair products and services market. Now at 30-years-old, she’s the CEO of Parfait, a Black-owned company that uses AI and facial recognition technology to provide custom wig products
Global digital payments giant Visa has opened up an innovation studio in Kenya, its first in Africa and sixth globally, after posts in Dubai, London, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore. The goal is to bring developers, Visa’s internal and external clients, and other partners together, to jointly build innovative payment and commerce solutions. It comes after the company previously used its existing innovation hubs to design products for the African market, including a collaboration with Nigerian Fintech Paga to develop new merchant acceptance solutions involving QR codes and NFC technology. “Sub-Saharan
Hive Wealth by Impart Media, a community-first mobile app that helps people grow their wealth and leave a legacy for future generations, officially announced it received $600K in funding from Black Tech Nation Ventures. Through Black Tech Nation Ventures, Hive Wealth is now able to address massive financial inequalities that millions of people of color in the USA experience. “We are thrilled to announce Black Tech Nation Ventures as our first institutional investor,” said Yvette Butler, founder of Hive Wealth. “BTN Ventures and Hive Wealth share a common mission of building generational wealth. We are excited
ChainIDE, a firm helping develop company MVPs, and Conflux, a software delivery service for engineers, have teamed up to launch ‘The Hydra Developer Bootcamp’ for Web3 developers in Africa. The bootcamp aims to provide cohort members with hands-on blockchain 101 training, insight into the African blockchain, crypto industry, and a unique outlook on the future prospects of the Metaverse and Web 3. More than 200 people have reportedly already signed up for the event, according to TechCabal, while the first two modules have already attracted more than 500 views in
