For Black and Latino entrepreneurs, there’s only one direction to go — forward. This is the message driving Square‘s small business accelerator program for Black and Latino entrepreneurs, FORWARD. The accelerator, launched in partnership with Social Change Fund United (SCFU), 1863 Ventures, and American Express, aims to provide Black and Latino entrepreneurs with the education, mentorship, coaching, and capital needed for their businesses to thrive. Black and Latino Americans are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs. In 2022, Black and Latino Americans filed more than 5 million new business applications, more than any other group.
When Olivia Hylton graduated from the University of Cambridge, she found herself struggling to make friends as an adult in a post-pandemic world. The 26-year-old spoke to POCIT about creating a meet-up app to empower Black women to make friends anywhere they go. Sistren is a digital platform that empowers users to make connections based on interests and proximity, with users able to create a profile, host events, and reach out to others that are local to them via the user directory. Hylton, who had never considered becoming an entrepreneur
Edtech startup Kai XR has raised $1.6 million in seed funding to expand its virtual reality (VR) educational resources to one million kids across the US. Kapor Capital led the oversubscribed round, which included Mitchell Kapor Foundation, American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact, and others. The Oakland-based edtech startup is making education more accessible through inclusive mixed-reality spaces that allow children to explore, create, and learn. From education to innovation Kai Frazier founded Kai XR in 2018. Through her time as an educator in the classroom and in museums,
Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse has reignited debates about whether the US government is doing enough to regulate financial institutions – but another debate is brewing. Here’s an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published on March 12: “Was there regulatory failure? Perhaps. SVB was regulated like a bank but looked more like a money-market fund. Then there’s this: In its proxy statement, SVB notes that besides 91% of their board being independent and 45% women they also have “1 Black,” “1 LGBTQ+” and “2 Veterans.” I’m not
After days of turmoil, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) customers are now able to access their money held in the bank. What happened to SVB? It took just 24 hours for US tech’s favorite bank to fall from grace. SVB served nearly half of US VC-backed tech startups and investors, according to the FT. But interest rates rose, bond values shrank, and with the tech industry slowdown, deposit withdrawals rose too. In a crude oversimplification: companies and investors pulled their money out of SVB amid economic uncertainty. To meet depositor demands for
Frequency People is the Black-owned social collaboration platform that lets creators control almost every aspect of the online communities they build. Individual users and businesses can create a public or private community to connect with those with similar interests. Followers can join these communities or networks and choose to pay for access to exclusive content. This means that brands, influencers, artists, and other creatives can seamlessly monetize their followers through ticket sales, ads, subscriptions to exclusive lives, AR content, and NFTs. Atlanta-based duo John York and John McAdory founded Frequency
Every year, Forbes spotlights the under-30s blazing a trail in their respective fields. With the release of the Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list, we’ve rounded up some of the Black and Brown tech founders recognized as powering a digital revolution. Lethabo Motsoaledi Co-Founder and CTO, Voyc Lethabo Motsoaledi is the co-founder and CTO of Voyc, which uses AI speech analytics software to monitor call center interactions and provide valuable insights. Motsoaledi and her co-founder moved their HQ from South Africa to the Netherlands in 2020 to take advantage of the
Google for Startups is accepting applications for its Black Founders Funds in the US, Europe, Africa, and Brazil, and its Latino Founders Fund in the US. This year also marks the first time Google for Startups has opened the US funds to the public. In previous years, Google reportedly selected US businesses solely through referrals. Less than 0.5% of funding goes to Black-led startups, even though 77% of them are revenue-generating and create an average of 5.4 jobs each. First announced in June 2020, the Black Founders Fund was launched as
Onu, founded by Lindsey Redd and Chine Ikoro, is a developer-first program designed to help engineers have a smoother workflow. The platform – yet to be launched – allows engineers to quickly turn their ops/CV-related scripts and workflows into internal tools without requiring frontend work. Redd and Ikoro are software engineers who met five years ago while working at Lyft and Stripe. The pair who are now YC founders started the initiative after experiencing first-hand how difficult it can be to operate in a fast-moving environment without internal tooling. Companies like Stripe have
Long before Apple implemented color emojis, Katrina Parrott had devised the idea to create a diverse range of emojis for all skin tones. In 2013, Parrott had a lightbulb moment after her daughter complained she couldn’t send emojis that looked like her to her friends. Despite not knowing much about what emojis were – Parrott decided to invest her money into designing a diverse range of emojis. According to a report by BuzzFeed News, Parrott used all her savings to hire a software engineer, illustrator, and copyright specialist to launch
