Fearless Fund has announced it has received multi-million dollar follow-on investments from Bank of America, Costco, and Mastercard. Investing In WOC Founded in 2019 by Arian Simone, Keshia Knight Pulliam, and Ayana Parsons, Fearless Fund invests in pre-seed, seed level, and series A women of color founders building scalable and growth-aggressive companies. Their portfolio includes Bitsy’s, the clean food and beverage brand co-founded by Gabrielle Union, Melissa Butler’s cruelty-free beauty brand The Lip Bar, Pinky Cole’s Slutty Vegan, and Sevetri Wilson’s Resilia. Read: Resilia Closes $35M Series B, Largest Raise Ever For A
A new report by Dropbox DocSend has shed light on the funding divide in the tech industry, particularly regarding race and gender disparities among founders. While 2021 witnessed record-breaking levels of VC funding and increased engagement with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, 2022 proved to be more challenging for historically underfunded founders. Turning tides In 2021, VC funding for early-stage founders experienced a significant boost, with record-breaking funding levels. Historically underrepresented founders also experienced a surge of investor interest driven by DEI-related investment initiatives in response to the murder
Early-stage investor Black Seed has raised £5 million ($6.25 million) with aims to create a Black Silicon Valley in London. The South London-based venture firm raised the money as an inaugural fund to invest in and support Black founders by investing in seed-stage startups. Founders Karl Lokko, Cyril Lutterodt, and founding member Yvonne Nagawa launched Black Seed to address the lack of funding Black founders receive in the UK. According to Techcrunch, the firm will focus on early-stage investing, serving as a kind of “family and friends” round for those
This article was first published by Rumbi Makanga on Medium. I was asked to give a talk by a London-based company for Black History Month in October 2022. Initially, I was going to title my talk Your Silence Will Not Protect You after the eponymous collection of essays by Audre Lorde and to honour the many silences I have nursed over the years and the vast silences I know countless Black people are forced into in their professional lives. It took a bout of illness in the last days of 2020 to
Black Tech Week, an inclusive tech conference focused on empowering entrepreneurs of color, is set to return to Cincinnati from July 18–20. “There isn’t a single DEI talk at Black Tech Week. That’s by design,” Brian Brackeen shared on Twitter. “‘No DEI talks’ are something that we are proud of.” Brian Brackeen is the founder of facial recognition software company Kairos and managing partner at Cincinnati-based venture capital fund Lightship Capital, which invests in companies led by underepresented founders. He is also the organizer of Black Tech Week. “Black Tech
Cornerstone VC has completed a pre-seed investment into Storia, the guided journaling app created by five-times bestselling author Elizabeth Uviebinené, to help people unleash their inner voice. The Power of storytelling Elizabeth Uviebinené, known for her bestselling book “Slay in Your Lane,” co-authored with Yomi Adegoke, has been at the forefront of literature catered to young Black women. Inspired by the impact storytelling had on her own life, Uviebinené developed the idea of Storia to help people uncover the stories that shape their lives. The journaling app combines AI-guided prompts,
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has recently announced the launch of its second fund under the Opportunity Growth Fund, now rebranded as the Open Opportunity Fund (OOF). The fund aims to raise and invest $150 million in startups led by Black and Latine entrepreneurs. New name, chairman, & access Taking the reins as chairman of the fund is serial entrepreneur and investor Paul Judge, who previously served as a founding investment committee member. Alongside SoftBank and select affiliates, Judge and others have agreed to acquire an ownership stake in the OOF. The
Tade Oyerinde is empowering students to complete their first two years of college without taking on any debt through his community college startup Campus. As per Forbes, Campus has secured $29 million in a Series A funding round led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Discord founder Jason Citron to expand the college. Other investors in the round include Figma founder Dylan Field; former head of Stripe Lachy Groom; Bloomberg Beta; Founders Fund; Rethink Education; Reach Capital and Precursor Ventures. Students and professors are struggling In 2018, Oyerinde conceived the
Two Black 22-year-old founders have raised $5 million to democratize event planning with POSH, the event management and ticketing platform that aims to take on the likes of Dice, Ticketmaster, and Eventbrite. Democratizing event planning POSH announced its public launch last week after being in beta since October 2020. Now, the platform has raised $5 million in a seed funding round co-led by Companyon Ventures and EPIC Ventures, with participation from Day One Ventures, Pareto Holdings, DoNotPay founder Joshua Browder and others. The brainchild of Avante Price and Eli Taylor-Lemire, POSH allows
Dr Rashae Barnes, the founder and CEO of Evals Equity Women’s Fund, has announced that September 30 will mark the first-ever National Black Funding Day. The national holiday was registered through National Day Archives. It aims to recognize and honor the accomplishments of Black entrepreneurs in the funding industry, while highlighting the disparities in venture capital grants, and educational resources for underserved communities. Funding for Black founders Black founders have long faced challenges in securing funding for their businesses, and the current economic climate hasn’t helped. Following George Floyd’s murder,
