Oregon-based ‘A Kids Company About’ secured 93% of the funds from Black investors. He managed to raise a $1 million seed round, where the smallest check was $1,000. A fund headed by Barack Obama’s financial advisor led the Series A round. Backstage Capital and Emerson Collective, both of which invest in underrepresented founders, also participated in the round alongside several Black angels. Jelani Memory, who launched the business in 2019 when it was known as A Kids Book About, also accepted a range of investments as small as $5,000 from
Black tech entrepreneur Bill Spruill reportedly turned his employees into millionaires when he sold his startup Global Data Consortium for an undisclosed amount. Global Data, which he launched make in 2012, makes software that verifies the identity of people behind online transactions, an important step in eliminating potential fraud. Though financial details have not yet been revealed, Spruill described the deal to Axios as a “Bronto-level transaction,” which was acquired by NetSuite for $200 million in 2015. When Spruill started the Global Data Consortium he only raised $5 million from investors – this is rather
Influencer marketing agency Fanbytes has been acquired by digital media agency Brainlabs for an undisclosed fee. The UK-based 65-strong business was launched by its chief executive Timothy Armoo, chief operating officer Ambrose Cooke and chief technology officer Mitchell Fasanya in 2017. Fanbytes now works with a client list that spans Samsung, Nike, Ubisoft, Mattel, Estée Lauder and H&M. The agency also formed a talent management business dubbed Bytesized Talent. Now, it represents some of the biggest creators in the UK like EmandLoz (fashion and entertainment), and Mr Tov (comedy, lifestyle
Cummins is hiring on pocitjobs.com When speaking to Kasturi Sahasrabuddhe, IT Project manager at Cummins – it’s clear that she’s finally happy where she is. Much like a lot of us – she’s tried and tested different careers from electronics engineering, Business analyst to an IT manager, and along the way she has learned dozens of skills that have helped her thrive in her current position. Sahasrabuddhe doesn’t shy away from speaking about her goals, including giving back to the younger generation and teaching others to remain their authentic selves.
Madona is an Android Engineer III at Streem-Frontdoor, a Women Who Code Mobile Lead, and a developer who enjoys sharing her Android knowledge and teaching women how to make Android applications. “As an Android Engineer, I work on implementing new features that transform the ARCore experience into the Streem SDK. Also, work on fixing reported bugs from clients, analyze, optimize, and improve the codebase,” she wrote on her Linkedin, adding, “I Work closely with iOS and back-end engineers to discuss implementation detail and architecture.” Why did you decide to join
Emmanuel Okeleji is the co-founder and CEO at SeamlessHR, a cloud-based HR and payroll technology company that recently announced its $10 million series A. His work and entrepreneurial experiences span multiple industries, including healthcare, agriculture, and education. By the end of medical school, Okeleji had gone through a Goldman Sachs investment banking internship and kicked off an incorporated software development company alongside his current co-founder, Deji Lana. One of the tools they built back in the mid to late 2000s, a software tool for cooperatives, is still in use today.
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
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
During Joanna Smith-Griffin’s time at Excel Academy Charter Schools in Boston, working as a student engagement director, she noticed the glaring truancy her school suffered from and became determined to do something about it. That’s when she realized something seriously needed to be done and she launched ‘All Here. Smith’s company is an edtech curbing chronic absenteeism in K-12 schools with mobile messaging powered by article intelligence (AI). On the startup’s website, it says: “We foster student success using mobile messaging powered by artificial intelligence. Our AllHere Advisor (AHA) communicates 24/7 via automated
