The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU) and Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) have announced $50,000 in scholarships for 14 first-generation Latino students pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). According to research by the Pew Centre, Hispanic and Latino workers make up 17% of the workforce but only 8% of people working in STEM. TELACU and SoCalGas’ collaboration couldn’t have come at a better time. The companies have partnered on initiatives to address social inequality and help students navigate the education system over the last three decades.
Founder and CEO of Resilia, Severtri Wilson, is the definition of #BlackGirlMagic. Nearly two years after raising $8 million in a Series A funding round, Wilson has made history again for making the largest raise ever for a Black female-founded tech company, according to AfroTech. Who is Severtri Wilson? Severtri Wilson is the founder of the SaaS platform, Resilia. The entrepreneur has been described as “different from your average tech company founder” as a Black woman with no coding experience and no co-founder. A year after earning her master’s degree from
The latest figures from Crunchbase have revealed that Black founders raised just $187 million in the third quarter of this year, considerably less than the $350 million WeWork’s Adam Neumann raised for his latest venture. TechCrunch reports that this quarter’s figures mark a significant and continued decline in capital for Black-owned businesses. In total, Black founders have raised just over $2 billion in venture capital funding this year – although this may seem like a lot – it’s a massive decrease from the record-breaking $4.72 billion raised in 2021. Lack of
Venture capital (VC) investment in African startups has seen a 33% increase compared to this time last year, according to gathered by The Big Deal. This follows similar reports of funding for African startups hitting new records in the first half of 2022. So far this year, more than 800 investors have contributed to at least one $100K+ startup deals on the continent. Investors have also been far more active than in previous years. For example, 250 firms made at least two investments (45% more than in 2021), and 60 partook
Serena Williams is making big moves in the venture capital world. After announcing earlier this year, that she would be stepping away from tennis, Williams has embodied the phrase ‘put your money where your mouth is, by investing over $100 million in early-stage startups. Ugandan-based fintech, Numida, is the latest business to benefit from investment from Serena Ventures. The fintech recently raised $12.3M in a pre-series A funding round led by Serena Ventures. Participation included the Pan-African VC fund, Launch Africa, Breega, Soma Capital, Y Combinator, and MFS Africa. What is
Nigerian startup Stears has announced a $3.3 million seed round led by MaC Venture Capital which included Serena Ventures. What started as a written media publication by a group of Nigerian graduates is now a growing data insights company with its sights set on rivalling the likes of Bloomberg. Backed by Serena Ventures Serena Williams was playing in the US Open when the seed round for Stears came together. Nevertheless, according to Serena Ventures’ founding general partner, they were keen to invest and fought “tooth and nail” to get in.
Funding for African startups has hit a new record between January and June. According to reports, the African market is the first to see more than a single digit of growth which was extremely unpredictable considering the slowdown globally. Venture capital deals within the African region reached a striking $3.5 billion in six months, with no other continent coming marginally as close to Africa’s startup funding growth. Of the 300 companies that benefitted from this funding, 27% were led by female founders or had at least one female founder. This is
From street vendor to software engineer, Devin Jackson, founder of We Build Black, is on a mission to achieve socio-economic change by offering the community tech education and professional development. We Build Black, founded in 2017 by Devin Jackson, is a non-profit organization that has evolved from a one-person-only team to a volunteer-run group that aims to support thousands of members looking to advance their careers. Unlike traditional software engineers, Jackson never went to high school or college; he instead set up his own business selling graffiti t-shirts and comedy tickets on
Since its launch in 2021, Stackwell Capital has worked hard to eliminate the racial wealth gap, and the launch of its new Robo-investing app is a testament to this. The app which has launched yesterday and is currently available for download in the App Store. The program, intentionally designed for the Black community, has given users endless opportunities to enhance their knowledge of the financial market. New data has revealed that white households hold eight times more wealth than Black households. Additionally, only 34% of Black households invest in the stock compared to white
Technology giant, Cisco, has made a $5 million commitment to the Black Economic Alliance (BEA) to support the next generation of Black entrepreneurs at HBCUs in the Atlanta area. Approximately $3 million will go towards expanding the Center for Black Entrepreneurship‘s (CBE) programming at Spelman and Morehouse Colleges, as well as developing graduate programming at Clark Atlanta University. An additional $1 million will provide high-quality products and services to the three institutions, which will “will help close the racial technology gap.” A further $1 million will be donated to the
