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Ingressive Capital, a $10 million venture capital fund launched by Maya Horgan Famodu with its headquarters in Nigeria, celebrated a five-year-mark last week. Horgan Famodu launched Ingressive when she was just 25. Today, at the age of 31, her fund is focused on leveling the playing field for female entrepreneurs: about 40% of its portfolio companies are founded or co-founded by women. In 2020, Ingressive doubled its fund to $10 million, with backers that include Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund, Michael Seibel of Y Combinator, Techstars, and others. The fund that invests

“Try not to use the word minority, say underprivileged or underserved; otherwise, if you say minority, investors will make certain assumptions.” “What assumptions?” “Oh, you know…” That was an interaction between a first-time Black founder and a white venture capital (VC) investor who was supposed to be advising her. Speaking to POCIT, she said she felt several investors she had spoken to had an unconscious bias towards her as a founder and the audience she was targeting. While she understood POC markets were ‘small’ in her native country – on

Public protests demanding justice for Black people killed by police have brought a reckoning to the business world, with executives forced to resign, companies overhauling internal policies, and employees quitting in protest. For the tech industry, this reckoning has been going on in some form since 2014. The industry, which prides itself on agility, had previously failed to move the needle on workplace diversity and take complaints seriously. While there’s been an improvement over the years, some may argue it’s still failing to take robust action. In October 2019, Pinterest, a giant in the sector,

Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO regularly tops the UK charts, pulling in 6.6 million streams a month and more than £1 million ($1.2 million) a year in advertising. He’s had a roster of high-profile guests, including Molly-Mae Hague, Craig David, Liam Payne and Piers Morgan, and despite this, he still says: “I don’t think of myself as an interviewer or a podcast host.” In an interview, the man who seemingly has it all reveals some truths about his journey. He is, after all, the millennial who dropped out of university

Josh Malemba had no idea that an after-school hobby would turn into an impactful business. Now at the age of 20, the Leicester student has created his very own company, CodeSuite, and he wants to teach the next generation how to get into the tech world Code Suite is an educational company that breaks down barriers of entry for young people wanting to get into technology by teaching them coding skills. The student has a passion for educating and encouraging young people to develop digital skills that will help them

Nana Ghartey’s voice assistant software may have started out in his grandmother’s house, but it’s now being used by the thousands of older and visually-impaired people all over Ghana excluded by Western voice technology. How did he get into tech? Ghartey taught himself mobile app development and built desktop applications, websites, and eventually mobile games, none of which were part of his school curriculum, by reading the programming textbooks that an uncle visiting from the US had left behind.  Here’s his story. In 2010, the wealthiest American tech companies had

Balancing entrepreneurship and childcare can be a daunting task, made worse by the pandemic. The rising costs of childcare in the UK and the USA are forcing an increasing number of primary caregivers – the majority of whom are women – to juggle both business and caring for their children. Thousands of childcare centers that closed temporarily because of lockdowns are still at risk of shutting permanently. These centers tend to be low-margin businesses with low levels of cash reserves and may not be able to reopen due to the additional expenses

Diana Vicezar is a Paraguayan entrepreneur studying Computer Science, Cognitive Science, and Data Science at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. Originally born in a small country called Paraguay, home to roughly seven million people, the technologist is set to work for Meta this summer as a project designer intern. Apart from her UX designer experience – she is also the founder of Mapis, a platform designed specifically for international students on a mission to help them access the career guidance they need during internship and job hunting in the United

A Black marketing specialist has taken to Linkedin to complain about his experience applying for a job at Monzo Bank and has questioned whether the firm’s job application process is racist. Before explaining what happened, Charles Oben wrote ‘Does Monzo Bank have an application process that is intentionally racist?’. Sharing his experience, he said: “I applied to Monzo late last week, for their Growth Marketing Manager position. I spent a lot of time on my application (one of my responses is over 5 pages long), so I was rather dismayed

Humane is hiring on Pocitjobs. Mark David Blake is a software engineer working to deliver on Humane’s promise of innovative technology. The 33-year-old, who attended an HBCU, joined the company last year during the pandemic. Despite only working there for less than a year, he says the company’s dedication to diversity, inclusion, and good work culture is like nothing he’s ever seen before. Blake’s journey isn’t your typical textbook pathway – after initially not wanting to go to college to initially struggling academically in college – his journey is one

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