The other day, I posted a poll on what post I should write next, and 57.1% voted for a “founders resource guide.” And because I’m working on a first-time founders course, I thought I’d focus the guide on first-time founders. Here we go… In this post, you’ll find: Founder Basics A Note for Underestimated Founders Resources And although the concepts that I share in the Founder Basics are simple, in the +1,000 startups I’ve reviewed for investment, I’ve seen first-time founders skip these foundational blocks, spend a lot of time and money, and
Latinx founder numbers are growing at a faster rate than any other group and we’re expected to yield $1.4 Trillion in US GDP. A couple of years ago, I started my journey in supporting Latinx founders as an investor at Backstage Capital through the Accelerator and with this post. And I believe what I wrote then even more now! TL;DR Latinx entrepreneurs are a strong force to be reckoned with! With capital and support, we can grow our businesses to produce in the trillions — trillions that can better the lives of our
Last summer I gathered over a dozen womxn of color startup founders and small business owners to connect in Seattle, Washington. We shared our backgrounds, experiences, expertise, challenges and successes as a collective given the historical and systematic exclusion in the business ecosystem. We bonded on our common experience of being ‘the only’, steadily pioneering our own industries. We would have never thought that six months later the world would be facing a global health crisis and we’d be scrambling to secure funding to survive. On average, womxn of color
Arlan Hamilton — founder and managing partner at Backstage Capital — summarized best why investing in Black Female Founders (BFF) isn’t just important, but could produce high yields: “Less than 0.2 percent of all early-stage venture funding goes to Black women, while we make up approximately 8 per cent of the U.S. population and are one of the fastest-growing entrepreneur segments in the country,” Arlan wrote. “It is my firm belief that because Black women have had to make do with far less for centuries, equipping them with early-stage capital that is
Over the last 12 months, several people have reached out to me asking the question, “How can I get a job in Venture Capital?” I don’t have a silver bullet to answer to this question, but I will share useful steps to consider when breaking into venture. What this post won’t cover are common routes into venture through doing an MBA or moving from an M&A role at an Investment Bank into venture capital. Those routes are well documented and very much conventional. 1. Learn the Fundamentals It is essential
