Jackie Aina, renowned beauty influencer and co-founder of FORVR Mood, has announced a new partnership with Canadian whiskey company Crown Royal. In addition to the release of a limited-edition candle, the partnership will see $50,000 donated to Black Girl Ventures Foundation, supporting underrepresented women founders. Supporting Black Girl Ventures Founded by serial entrepreneur Shelly Bell in 2016, Black Girl Ventures (BGV) aims to empower underrepresented and underfunded small businesses by providing access to capital, community, and capacity-building resources. Aina’s partnership with Crown Royal is rooted in support of the nonprofit,
Cadana has raised $7.1 million in seed funding this year. Launched in 2021, the startup allows global workforces to integrate payments and payroll management into their systems. Cadana According to the company, the world’s largest payroll platforms and talent marketplaces use Cadana’s APIs to build compliant hiring products in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Founders Albert Owusu-Asare and Ameer Shujjah, who are originally from Ghana and Pakistan, gained years of experience working at Amazon, Esusu, and Goldman Sachs before founding the company. Although the pair appreciated their version of the
Breega, a Paris-based venture capital firm, has announced the first close of its $75 million Africa-focused fund, designed to back pre-seed and seed-stage startups. Expanding Horizons With Local Presence Breega’s new fund, “Africa Seed I,” marks its first foray outside Europe and aligns with opening two new offices in Lagos and Cape Town. These new locations join Breega’s existing offices in Paris, London, and Barcelona, enhancing its presence across the EMEA region. According to Ben Marrel, Breega’s co-founder and CEO, the firm’s approach is rooted in its “founders-for-founders” ethos, offering
This year, on Juneteenth, angel investing group Untapped Investing announced its launch to support Black and underrepresented founders. Founded by Mica Eades Mayo, Attica Alexis Jacques, and Felicia Mayo, Untapped Investing aims to create lasting change through purpose-driven ventures. Empowering Underrepresented Founders By investing in Black and underrepresented founders, Untapped Investing aims to generate opportunities that lead to generational wealth and sustainable growth. This collective effort will reshape the venture capital landscape, ensuring that visionary founders, historically overlooked, receive the support they need to thrive, they wrote on LinkedIn. Untapped
This Juneteenth, we want to celebrate some Black founders who have set out to uplift and support their communities. Commemorating Juneteenth Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned that slavery had been abolished – two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The first Juneteenth was observed in 1866 and has been celebrated by Black Americans ever since. It is often referred to as the country’s second independence day and became an official federal holiday
EqualSpace has opened a new co-working space in Newark, NJ to support minority-led businesses. According to Tap Into Newark, the new ES550 Tech & Innovation Campus is a 50,000-square-foot, multi-floor facility situated at 550 Broad St. and promises to be a game-changer for entrepreneurs of color. A Space For Minority-Led Businesses The inception of EqualSpace was driven by Citi Medina‘s vision to create a safe and supportive environment for minority talent, Blavity reported. Originally from Brooklyn, NY, Medina relocated to Newark and noticed a significant gap: no co-working spaces catered
Crunchbase has announced the expansion of its Diversity Spotlight feature to include companies in Europe. This expansion will allow up to one million additional companies on Crunchbase to add Diversity Spotlight tags to their profiles, enhancing the visibility of diverse founders and investors across the continent. Crunchbase’s Diversity Spotlight Crunchbase introduced its Diversity Spotlight feature in 2020 to centralize and highlight data about companies with diverse leadership and the investors who fund them. This feature indicates diversity in an organization’s leadership team, including founders and CEOs for startups and managing
Sara Wahedi is the founder and CEO of Ehtesab, Afghanistan’s first civic-technology startup. Ehtesab’s mobile app is designed to crowdsource and verify emergency event information, sending real-time alerts to users across Afghanistan. Refugee turned tech pioneer After fleeing Afghanistan as a child, Wahedi lived in Germany, the United States, and Canada. Her passion for her homeland drove her back to Afghanistan, where she worked a life-changing in 2018. On May 9, 2018, three explosions rocked Sara Wahedi’s Kabul neighborhood. As residents were left in the dark without any real-time information from
Supermodel Naomi Campbell has joined the board of SpreeAI, a new startup seeking to transform the shopping experience with AI. Founded and led by John Imah, SpreeAI lets each shopper become a model through its photorealistic try-on tool. SpreeAI SpreeAI allows shoppers to upload a single photo of themselves to see a photorealistic version of trying on outfits, with their size reportedly detected at a 99% accuracy rate. The product integrates into new and existing websites or mobile apps, offering retailers a hassle-free way to elevate user interaction and supercharge
Pretty Lux Co, the first Black-owned and woman-owned candle-making studio in Middle Georgia, is igniting a love for science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) through the art of making luxury products. Pretty Lux Co. Pretty Lux Co. was founded in July 2023 by Anikitia Abram to offer candles, skin, and hair products that are 100% vegan, cruelty-free, and created with minimal ingredients. Abram told Macon that the idea of Pretty Lux Co. was sparked by a personal journey of seeking solace and understanding during moments of anxiety. This search led
