Entrepreneurs Daa’iyah Fogle, a Claflin University alumnus, and Malcolm Lee, a graduate of Virginia Union University, are the winners of the NBA Foundation’s first-ever pitch competition in partnership with Black Girl Ventures. The joint competition, held in Cleveland, allowed college-aged entrepreneurs from HBCUs across the US to participate and pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges. The entrepreneurs eligible to participate in the competition were all Black Girl Ventures’ NextGen Program members. The scheme was created to support the next generation of Black and brown business leaders attending
YouTube has officially opened grant applications for the #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund Class of 2023. The $100 million funds will amplify and nurture Black voices in the creator community. The grant program, which the video platform first launched in 2020, was primarily designed to help support and nurture Black creators and artists, from musicians and lawyers to gamers and fitness instructors. The scheme has welcomed over 300 grantees from the United States, Kenya, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, and Nigeria in just over two years. The program has not
After shooting his music video “House I Built in the metaverse, Snoop Dogg has decided to explore a series of new ventures. According to a tweet by trademark attorney Michael Kondoudis, Snoop Dogg, real name Calvin Broadus, applied for new trademarks for his new digital cannabis project. The musician filed a claim under the brand names “UNCLE SNOOP” and “UNCLE SNOOP’s.” The virtual business will provide various products, including virtual clothing, headwear, footwear, energy drinks, and pre-rolled hemp cigarettes. Users can also purchase virtual cannabis and downloadable cannabis products authenticated
Mary J Blige has teamed up with medical tech company Hologic for her upcoming Good Morning Gorgeous tour. The singer will grace the stage with R&B singer Queen Naija and Grammy-award-winning artist Ella Mai. She will also be dedicating the show to raising awareness about Black women’s health. The Good Morning Gorgeous tour, which Hologic will present in partnership with The Black Promoters collective, is set to kick off on Saturday, September 17. The journey, which will begin in Greensboro, is expected to hit 23 cities across North America, including
TikTok user Natasha (@tashathecaptain) worked as a tech lead at a drink distribution company. She helped create new systems to help support drivers who may have experienced technical issues traveling across the country. After three years, she decided to resign after feeling overworked, underpaid, and a lack of recognition for some of the new initiatives she had implemented and created to help build the company. After attending her first-ever tech conference in Colorado, Natasha was taken aback by the lack of diversity. After realizing she was the only Black woman
Shonda Rhimes and Netflix are partnering on The Producers Inclusion Initiative and The Ladder. These are two new and paid programs to expand opportunities for emerging creatives in TV and film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Both initiatives are a part of Rhimes’ commitment to expanding the representation of those in front of and behind the camera and they are also underwritten in part by Netflix’s Fund for Creative Equity. According to a post from Netflix back in February, “the Fund has already committed $14.5 million toward programs that help
Meta Chicago is reportedly set to launch software engineering courses to bring more Black people into tech. The underrepresentation of African Americans in tech has been an issue since the 1970s when the Bay Area became Silicon Valley. And while one can say it’s gotten better, there is still a way to go. In 2018, according to Silicon Valley Bank, only 1% of venture capital dollars went to Black start-up founders, and Black employees made up only 2.8% of Google’s technical roles and 4.8% of their entire workforce. More recently, Twitter reported
Calaxy, a Black-owned web3 social marketplace, has raised $26 million in strategic funding co-led by Animoca Brands and HBAR Foundation with support from Polygon. This raise follows a $7.5 million seed round in 2021 with investors like Animoca Brands, Red Beard Ventures, ArkStream Capital, NGC Ventures, and Genesis Block Ventures. The seed round also had support from NFL player Ezekiel Elliott, “The Bachelor” Matt James, and former PayPal head of Blockchain Strategy Jonathan Padilla, among others. Calaxy aims to build a new infrastructure that allows content creators, ranging from small influencers to big-time celebrities, to
If you search ‘migrants’ on Tiktok, you get a host of videos from desperate individuals trying to secretly enter lorries and being caught out to news about the thousands of young men that have lost their lives trying to make the journey. But some TikTok videos and Instagram accounts that aggregated these videos of sea journeys show before and after footage alongside images of the same migrants walking along well-groomed European streets and posing in front of monuments like the Eiffel Tower. These videos may give the impression to some
Religion of Sports, the media production company founded by Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan and Tom Brady, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Shamrock Capital and joined by Elysian Park Ventures and Cerro Capital. The Series B funding round brings the company’s total to $66 million raised over three rounds. Chopra told The Hollywood Reporter that the raise will be used to help “grow the company from the production company model, which is what we have operated in for a long time, to really controlling our own destiny. To really bet
