In a recent TikTok video, former Beauty and Style Editor at Essence magazine, Blake Newby, opened up about her journey into venture capital after spending many years working within the editorial and digital realm. After one year as Beauty and Style Editor at Essence magazine, Newby has set her sights on a new journey: helping small Black beauty brands excel to new heights. “So, as of Friday, I am no longer a Beauty and Style Editor. I know that I have detailed the volatility of the editorial industry – I’m
Leading alcohol e-commerce shop, Drizly, has announced the launch of its ‘Sip with Purpose’ program, dedicated to supporting and driving BIPOC-, LGBTQIA-, and woman-owned brands in the alcohol industry. The platform’s ‘Sip with Purpose’ Brand Accelerator Program is now open for applications. The initiative, which will be highly beneficial for underrepresented founders, aims to provide businesses with a $4 million media commitment to raise awareness and drive support for these brands. Drizly, founded in 2012, is one of North America’s largest online alcohol marketplaces. The platform, which offers a variety
Minneapolis-based e-commerce app, GoodCarts, has partnered with Shopify and Operation HOPE to help build Black-owned online businesses through the 1 Million Black Businesses (1MBB) initiative. Black-owned financial, educational platform, Operation HOPE, is a leading global provider of financial dignity education and economic empowerment programs for low-income or moderate-income youth. The organization founded by John Hope Bryant aims to create a whole new approach to community upliftment. Its 1MBB initiative, in partnership with Shopify, will help millions of Black businesses start, grow, and scale over the next decade to ensure the racial
Black Business Month isn’t over just yet! Amazon has announced that they are testing a new badge that aims to help boost the exposure of Black-owned businesses that buy and sell products through its online store. The initiative, which comes just after the anniversary of the app’s first Black Business Accelerator program, will highlight to customers when a Black-owned business sells a featured offer product. That way, customers can discover, shop, buy and support Black-owned businesses, ultimately helping small business owners expand their clientele and reach a broader demographic. “As part of
Angeles Investors have announced the winners of this year’s Estrellas award. The line-up features a collection of the top 40 funders and venture capital firms investing in Hispanic and Latinx startups. This year’s cohort exemplifies leadership in investing in top startups and Hispanic and Latinx founders, among the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. economy. Â Â “It’s exciting to see the number of top funders and venture capital groups investing in Latino startups grow,” said Adele Cepeda, Angeles Investors Board Chair and Director at BMO Financial Corporation. “In 2020, we started
Black-owned venture capital firm Brown Venture Group announced that it had received a $1.5 million investment from the Bush Foundation. Brown Venture Group, co-founded in 2018 by Dr. Paul Campbell and Dr. Chris Brooks, is an investment firm committed to investing in BIPOC tech startups and founders. The firm aims to help all startups in its portfolio grow as a brand through investment capital, training, and professional networks. By focusing on excelling in tech entrepreneurship, Brown Venture Group hopes its investments will help bypass many of the racial biases that
Silicon Valley-based startup, Sanas, is working to build real-time voice-altering technology that aims to make international workers sound more “Westernized.” For many years, Black workers have been advised to use their “white voice” when communicating with colleagues or customers in a professional working environment. Additionally, movie adaptations such as “Sorry To Bother You” show that Black workers achieve higher success rates when they choose to emulate a “whiter” voice. Despite the program working to “protect the diverse voice identities of the world,” many wonder whether the product is actively working to remove unconscious
African-based agri-tech startup iProcure has closed a $10.2 million Series B funding round to further expand its services to Uganda and Tanzania. The funding round led by Investisseurs and Partenaires included participation from Novastar Ventures, British International Investment (BII), and Ceniarth. iProcure, founded in 2013 by Stefano Carcoforo and Nicole Galletta, has grown to become one of rural Africa’s most significant agricultural supply chain platforms. Not only has the platform revolutionized agriculture supply chains in Africa, but it has also helped connect manufacturers and distributors with local retailers. Additionally, iProcure
If you’re a person with dark skin, you may be more likely than your white friends to get hit by a self-driving car, according to a 2019 study out of the Georgia Institute of Technology. That’s because automated vehicles may better detect pedestrians with lighter skin tones. The study’s authors started out with a simple question: How accurately do state-of-the-art object-detection models, like those used by self-driving cars, detect people from different demographic groups? To find out, they looked at a large dataset of images that contain pedestrians. They divided up the
New York-based Mobot has publicly launched its QA-as-a-service platform and closed $12.5 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by Cota Capital, a firm that recently backed Token.io, with participation from Heavybit, Uncorrelated Ventures, and others. Eden Full Goh founded Mobot in 2018 in New York after a decade of experience in engineering and product. Her journey? She dropped out of Princeton to build SunSaluter, a low-cost solar panel rotator used in developing countries around the world, with an entrepreneurship fellowship from The Thiel Foundation. After realizing the
