Sojo, the British clothing alterations app, has been making strides for a while now but this time it’s hit a big milestone after raising $2.4 million in a pre-seed funding round led by CapitalT and Ascension, with Mustard Seed Maze and Vertex Albion Capital also in participation. Launched by 24-year-old Josephine Philips, the recent graduate first recognized a lack of easy and accessible clothing repairs after she became a top seller on Depop in 2018, buying and selling one-off vintage garments. To fix the issue, Philips launched Sojo, an app
OnePort 365, a platform that claims to solve problems by providing end-to-end digitization of freight management for stakeholders, is building an operating system for cross-border trade in Africa. It says its platform covers air freight, ocean freight, inland haulage (trucking, barge, and rail), pay-as-you-go warehousing, marine insurance, and customs brokerage. Traders can connect with shipping and inland transportation vendors and manage the entire process (from booking to payments), including real-time visibility of their shipments. When it comes to payments, OnePort 365 claims to aggregate different methods enabled by the Pan-African
While the tech world still remains a heavily male-dominated sphere, there are a growing number of female trailblazers paving the way. Here’s a bite-sized introduction to their achievements and stories below. Anna is a technical co-founder of Lioness, the women-led sexual health startup that built the world’s first and only smart vibrator that improves understanding of sexual pleasure and body through biofeedback data. Before Lioness, Anna worked at Amazon Lab126’s concept engineer team, and helped launch the Kindle Voyage. She also teaches at Scientific Adventures for Girls, a non-profit that
Timeless London-based watch and accessories company, Vitae, reached two major milestones last year securing $1million in sales and distributed 5,000 solar lamps to Sub-Saharan school children. The solar-powered lamps were distributed in partnership with Pen to Paper Ghana, a Ghanaian non-profit that works to deliver lamps to students so that they can complete their school work with efficient lighting. But now its founder William Adoasi has just announced that the brand is launching each limited edition watch with an NFT. Talk about innovative! In a video, Adoasi said: “It’s William
Floyd Mayweather has announced the drop of a new NFT Project called Mayweverse. The project will consist of 5,000 NFTs and is set to launch on Wednesday. Fans on Twitter, however, are not pleased with the announcement and accused him of scams, taking people’s money, and abandoning projects. There will be five different NFT cards with a quantity of 1,000 available for each. In a tweet on the official Mayweverse account, it tweeted: “The mint price will be 0.3ETH bringing you maximum profit and value.” Floyd had previously launched a
Online lending marketplace LendingTree published a new study on places with the most Black-owned businesses in the United States, based on the US Census Bureau Annual Business Survey data. Fayetteville, NC was found to have the highest percentage of Black-owned businesses in the US. Other metros in the South — including Washington, DC — join Fayetteville at the top of the list. Pittsburgh, however, ranked the lowest out of the 50 American metros listed, with a mere 1.0% of small businesses being Black-owned — a percentage that falls below the national Black
Founder of femtech startup Ruby Love, Crystal Etienne, joined forces with her husband, Jean, last year to start VC firm CaJE, a VC that focuses on investing in “soil” rounds, similar to a family and friends investing round. Crystal’s own startup has raised $15 million since it was founded in 2016. She bootstrapped the company from its humble beginnings to over $10 million within two years. But she still felt “cajed” many times while entering the new industry with very little help along the way, but overcame every obstacle. Jean ran his
Black Tech Nation Ventures operates as a venture capital firm. The Company invests in start-up and seed stage technology companies based in the United States. Last year the firm was able to close in on $25 million for its national technology venture fund — Black Tech Nation Ventures (BTN.vc) — in under a year since launching. David Boone, founder of BlendED, became BTN.vc’s first portfolio investment. Along with Boone are the Pittsburgh Pirates and First National Bank as fellow investors in the fund. BTNV’s partners emphasized that while the fund has a social
A £3 million cash fund for black founder-led tech businesses has been announced by Google. The Black Founders Fund, running for its second year, will be awarded to innovative European tech startups run by black founders. Recipients will need to demonstrate how they’re using technology to solve everyday problems. In return, they will receive up to $100,000, plus $200,000 in credit to use towards Google’s cloud services and advertising support, and mentoring by industry experts. “The UK is one of the most start-up-friendly environments in the world. Yet, Black start-up founders
TechLit Africa redistributes recycled technology to build computer labs in African schools. With 4,000 students and 20 teachers, the organization has built 10 computer labs in rural Kenya and is working on the next 100 computer labs. Nelly Cheboi, who grew up in a poor rural village in Kenya, landed a full scholarship to study computer science at Augustana College in Illinois and later built a school in Kenya, Zawadi, where she then started TechLit Africa. The program is unique because it teaches relevant classes; they hire local teachers to make
