Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO regularly tops the UK charts, pulling in 6.6 million streams a month and more than £1 million ($1.2 million) a year in advertising. He’s had a roster of high-profile guests, including Molly-Mae Hague, Craig David, Liam Payne and Piers Morgan, and despite this, he still says: “I don’t think of myself as an interviewer or a podcast host.” In an interview, the man who seemingly has it all reveals some truths about his journey. He is, after all, the millennial who dropped out of university
TikTok user Natasha (@tashathecaptain) worked as a tech lead at a drink distribution company. She helped create new systems to help support drivers who may have experienced technical issues traveling across the country. After three years, she decided to resign after feeling overworked, underpaid, and a lack of recognition for some of the new initiatives she had implemented and created to help build the company. After attending her first-ever tech conference in Colorado, Natasha was taken aback by the lack of diversity. After realizing she was the only Black woman
Shonda Rhimes and Netflix are partnering on The Producers Inclusion Initiative and The Ladder. These are two new and paid programs to expand opportunities for emerging creatives in TV and film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Both initiatives are a part of Rhimes’ commitment to expanding the representation of those in front of and behind the camera and they are also underwritten in part by Netflix’s Fund for Creative Equity. According to a post from Netflix back in February, “the Fund has already committed $14.5 million toward programs that help
LifeTagger, a business with the aim of transforming an organization’s information, service, and experience delivery, has announced its partnership for the third consecutive year with NOLAvate Black’s 5th annual Black Tech NOLA conference, to provide attendees with exclusive content. Black Tech NOLA is the largest convening of tech creatives in the south celebrating the intersection of tech, art, and culture. It was first launched in 2018 but in 2020, Black Tech NOLA received over 1100 registrants and participants from around the globe for its first-ever virtual event with talks, panel discussions, virtual
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.
Balancing entrepreneurship and childcare can be a daunting task, made worse by the pandemic. The rising costs of childcare in the UK and the USA are forcing an increasing number of primary caregivers – the majority of whom are women – to juggle both business and caring for their children. Thousands of childcare centers that closed temporarily because of lockdowns are still at risk of shutting permanently. These centers tend to be low-margin businesses with low levels of cash reserves and may not be able to reopen due to the additional expenses
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
“Focus On Being So Good They Can’t Ignore You”: The Black CEO Who Sold His Startup For Eight Figures
In an industry that lacks serious diversity, Timothy Armoo has beaten the odds. He’s launched a startup, raised investment, hired, scaled, and sold his business. He’s done what every aspiring business owner hopes to do – all at the age of 27. But much like many other founders, particularly those from marginalized groups, his journey has been far from smooth sailing. Armoo founded his social media advertising business, Fanbytes, in 2017, with Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya, building it up to employ 65 people. What does it do? The London
Telecommunications company, Comcast RISE, has announced that it will award 100 businesses in the area with $1 million in grants. The grants will be available to small businesses that are owned and operated by women and people of color including Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and Asian American owners. Atlanta makes up one of the five cities included in the Comcast RISE Investment Fund, which has allotted a total of $5 million to be distributed across 500 businesses. To date, the company has been able to provide $16 million to businesses owned by people of
A Black marketing specialist has taken to Linkedin to complain about his experience applying for a job at Monzo Bank and has questioned whether the firm’s job application process is racist. Before explaining what happened, Charles Oben wrote ‘Does Monzo Bank have an application process that is intentionally racist?’. Sharing his experience, he said: “I applied to Monzo late last week, for their Growth Marketing Manager position. I spent a lot of time on my application (one of my responses is over 5 pages long), so I was rather dismayed
