Founded in 2018, Base10 Partners is helmed by managing partners Adeyemi Ajao and TJ Nahigian. Now it’s just been announced as the first Black-led VC firm to cross $1 Billion AUM with its new fund. This new early-stage fund follows a $137 million fund in 2018 and a $250 million Fund II in 2020. Previously – the firm invested in about 30 companies per fund with large lead checks of up to $15 million that would give it 15% to 20% stakes in a startup. The San Francisco-based firm uses a
Black content creators continue to lead the way in online spaces such as Instagram – from memes, and dances to the way in which they have utilized the app for digital activism and campaigning on important issues. But for far too long – these same creators have often been cast to the side, not credited, and even paid less by advertisers and brands. A report published last year by the communications company MSL and educational organization The Influencer League stated that the pay gap between Black and white content creators
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
Brazilian companies have started to explicitly seek out Black and Indigenous workers to diversify their ranks, a step to reverse the deep inequality that has racked the country since the area was first settled centuries ago. The country is LinkedIn’s third-largest market, after the United States and India, with 55 million users, or one in every four people in Brazil. So naturally, employers would advertise jobs there. But in February, a think tank in São Paulo was looking for a financial coordinator that would be willing to take on the
Just 15 at the time of his conviction, Marcus Bullock was sentenced to a penitentiary full of men twice his age. Now he is the founder of Flikshop, a mobile app for people to upload and send digital postcards with photos and messages that make their way to their loved ones currently incarcerated. To use the Flikshop app, users pay 99 cents to send a message and upload a photo that can be sent to prisons and jails across the nation. Bullock also has a Flikshop Angels program that allows people to
Microsoft said this week that it had fired some employees and terminated partnerships in relation to allegations made public Friday of bribery in its sales efforts in the Middle East in recent years. The disclosure came regarding allegations of bribery and corruption in Microsoft operations in the region made public by a former manager for the company named Yasser Elabd, who worked for the tech giant throughout the Middle East and Africa from 1998 to 2018, when he says he was fired. In an essay published Friday on Lioness, an outlet that documents
Social media giant Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, Inc., faces prosecution in South Africa for unfairly trying to block local startups from using its WhatsApp Business Application Programming Interface (API), a government agency said Monday. It comes after the country’s competition regulator, the Competition Commission, said in a statement that it has referred Meta Platforms and its subsidiaries WhatsApp Inc and Facebook South Africa to the Competition Tribunal for prosecution for abusing its market dominance. According to Anadolu Agency, the commission alleges that Facebook in July 2020 threatened to
Briana Marbury, executive director of the Interledger Foundation has spoken candidly with POCIT for an in-depth interview. As one of the only Black women leading the major tech philanthropy, she is overseeing a $100 million foundation and the Grant for the Web fund that has already committed more than $10 million to projects around the world. Growing up in Detroit, she witnessed the lack of financial access that many people who were living below the poverty line endured, forcing them to use predatory check-cashing services and now she’s working directly
Ahead of international women’s day – Instagram announced that it will be introducing a special tag for professional accounts and influencers that ensures they receive credit for their content. The enhanced tagging feature lets Instagram users show additional information on “People Tags” on their posts. Beyond just a profile’s username, the tags will highlight the creators’ self-designated profile category (titles are chosen from Instagram’s list of categories, like “rapper” or “fashion stylist” or “photographer”) as well as their account’s full name or title. The information is shown when users tap
The pandemic has had widely varying effects on different generations, races, nations, sectors, and genders. And while there is a lot going on in the world right now we want to take a moment this International Women’s Month to celebrate women who have landed a new gig in the tech industry from IT to cybersecurity. So to brighten up your day we’ve compiled a list of inspiring tweets from women of color.
