Maci Peterson – who has sent her share of accidental text messages — tried to put end to the embarrassing-text-epidemic with the long-adored app she launched when she was just 28-years-old. Peterson launched On Second Thought back in December 2014 as a texting app that allows users to “take back” a text up to 60 seconds after it was sent before it reaches the receiver. It grew with 42,000 users. Called “The Texting Savior” by AT&T, On Second Thought was reportedly a patented, mobile delay/recall technology that lets users take back
The Black Angel Group is a collective of angel investors from Google and Alphabet that invests intellectual, social, and financial capital in seed to Series A startups around the world. Black people continue to be underrepresented among startup investors and founders. According to Crunchbase, Black founders received little over 1% of the $147 billion invested in US startups in 2021. In the UK, about 3% of London-based founders who received venture capital funding identified as Black, according to a 2019 study from Cornerstone Partners. The group aims to be part of the
Kiaan Pillay runs Stitch, which offers a B2B application programming interface (API) focused on fintech infrastructure. The founder has announced that Stitch — one of the prominent players building and operating these APIs in Africa — has raised $21 million in Series A funding. The South African API fintech enables businesses to build, optimize, and scale financial products. With its API, developers can connect apps to financial accounts. This allows users to share their transaction history and balances, confirm their identities and initiate payment Per a statement released by the company, it plans
Despite diversity pledges, funding to Latino-founded startups in the US still lags—accounting for only 2 percent of venture investments last year. At POCIT, we try to be your go-to resource to find out the best resources and tools. Here are summits and conferences for Latinas to look forward to this year. It’s a glimpse at some of the opportunities to get involved in 2022. These may connect you to a mentor, advisor, or potential investor. Latinas in tech The ‘Your Transferable Skills: How to Identify & Leverage Skills to Advance
Duplo, a Lagos-based fintech, is attempting to tackle these inefficiencies by digitizing payment flows for B2B companies, starting with those in this industry. It comes after the company secured a place in Y Combinator last November and is taking part in the accelerator’s current winter batch. The YC-backed startup has also raised a $1.3 million pre-seed round led by early-stage pan-African VC firm Oui Capital to further its growth. A mix of local and international investors such as MyAsia VC, Y Combinator, Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola and Mono CEO Abdul Hassan
A new initiative, launched by Dream Legacy Foundation (DLF), an organization that runs innovative programs to boost entrepreneurship within the Black Community and Ryerson University’s business incubator, has just taken off.
Black creators say they were excluded from a TikTok event for Black History Month, which featured the self-acclaimed ‘queen of rap’ Nicki Minaj.
Mattaniah Aytenfsu is a 24-year-old UX engineer for YouTube and a budding TikTok influencer. Always being open to new opportunities and avenues led Aytenfsu to the land of TikTok, where she started posting videos revolving around the intersection of art, design, and engineering. She is the definition of the best of both worlds when it comes to art and tech. With multiple viral moments under her belt, it was one particular video that got the social media community buzzing — her painting that she turned into a musical instrument. Talk
Up to £23 million in government funding will create more AI and data conversion courses, helping young people from underrepresented groups including women, black people and people with disabilities join the UK’s world-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry. Up to two thousand scholarships for master AI conversion courses, which enable graduates to do further study courses in the field even if their undergraduate course is not directly related, will create a new generation of experts in data science and AI. The UK has a long history in AI, from codebreaker Alan
Luke Cooper, an established founder who spent years growing a Baltimore startup before selling it to a Fortune 500 company, is now starting a venture capital fund to support underserved Black founders. He aims to address the legacy of divestment from Black communities in the city of West Baltimore. The fund will invest in startups working within the insurance, cybersecurity, fintech, frontier enterprise, and healthcare-related technology industries. “As one of the only VC-backed Black founders here, it made me unique but it also made it super difficult,” Cooper told Technical.ly. “Even after a
