A sequel on the piece of Black founders profitable without Venture capital. Not all startups reach the promised land of VC funding. Not all startups require VC funding to be successful. With the odds stacked against Black and Brown entrepreneurs, they typically need to find other ways to innovate and grow. Money isn’t always easy to come by. Bootstrapping means launching and growing your startup using your personal financial resources. See how these Black women founders left behind the “scale no matter what” mentality. Instead, they built their startups into successful, profitable
Nigerian automotive tech company Autochek has secured a $13.1 million seed round almost a year after raising $3.4 million pre-seed in November 2020. Pan-African VC firms TLcom Capital and 4DX Ventures led the recent fundraising. These are the same investors that led the startup’s pre-seed round. Other existing investors include Golden Palm Investments, Enza Capital, and Lateral Capital, invested as well. First-time investors included ASK Capital and Mobility 54 Investment SAS, the venture capital arm of Toyota Tsusho and CFAO Group. In total, Autochek has raised $16.5 million in two financing rounds. What service does
Yellow Card, an African Bitcoin exchange that recently announced a $15 million Series A funding, is one of the continent’s leading trailblazers in cryptocurrency. Its most recent round was led by Valar Ventures, Third Prime, and Castle Island Ventures. Square, Coinbase Ventures, and Blockchain.com Ventures. Now Yellow Card plans to use its funding to grow its team, launch new products, and expand to more African countries across the continent. According to Forbes, the announcement makes it the most considerable funding by a B2C crypto exchange in Africa. The firm was first launched in 2018 in Nigeria
Rheaply, a startup that specializes in recycling and sourcing unused items, has just announced that it received an undisclosed amount of funding from the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance Game Changer Fund. The firm also combines a resource-sharing network with a user-friendly resource management platform. The investment is meant to help the Black-owned venture build an online exchange for building products and other resources. The exchange, which is set to launch in late 2022, will enable businesses in the greater Bay Area to access surplus and salvaged resources at cost-effective rates.
Citi has announced its next round of investments through the Citi Impact Fund, a $200 million fund launched last year to invest in companies that are addressing some of the biggest societal challenges. Daylight, Flume, and Stackshare are among the list of companies included in the round. This brings the Impact Fund’s total number of investments to 23 companies – more than half of which are founded by women and/or minorities. Ed Skyler, Head of Global Public Affairs at Citi, said: “The portfolio of the Citi Impact Fund keeps growing as we continue to
Google for Startups has announced the next 50 recipients of its Black Founders Fund, unveiling the next slate of trailblazers who will be receiving $100,000 in non-dilutive funding. This is the second batch the giant tech firm has supported. All 126 of them hail from all over the United States, including Georgia, Texas, New York, Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida, Hawaii, and Missouri. Last year, Google for Startups gave 76 Black-led startups up to $100,000 in non-dilutive funding – meaning founders did not give up any ownership in their company in exchange for
Rappers Pusha-T and Nas have jumped the bandwagon and followed the likes of Jason Derulo by investing in a new streaming platform, Audius, which is looking to rival Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal. The free-to-use streaming platform built on blockchain technology launched in 2018 and also supports NFTs or non-fungible tokens. Last week the venture also announced a $5 million round of strategic funding. “I believe [blockchains] might be the most important technology to ever hit the music industry,” Nas said in a statement. “Everyone who uploads to Audius can be an owner. You can’t say that about any
NBA Star Klay Thompson Takes On The Tech World With New Investment In Fantasy Sports Startup Sleeper
Basketball superstar Klay Thompson has just invested in fantasy sports startup Sleeper, reportedly contributing to the quadrupling of its value to more than $400 million. Sleeper is a compilation of football and basketball games that people can play online with friends. Its initial focus was on the National Football League (NFL) and the National Basketball Association (NBA), but the pandemic’s impact pushed the firm to get into esports as well. The company has gone from strength to strength despite pushback from coronavirus, with an average user reportedly spending between 20 to 35 minutes on
Former ESPN data scientist Tiffany Kelly has just raised $2.1million in a seed round of funding for her adtech startup Curastory. The company, first launched in 2019, is a creator tool helping student-athletes by “connecting brands in need of video content with athletes, influencers, and actors who create video content and are willing to create directly for brands,” according to Sport Techie. Lightspeed, Techstars, and Mindspring Capital led the funding round to help Curastory’s staff expansion, market growth, and sales and engineering footprint. The milestone seed comes after the firm secured a deal with
African genomics startup 54gene has been at the forefront of bridging the divide in the global genomics market, where less than 3% of genetic material used in research is from the continent. This figure is quite shocking since Africans and people of African descent are more genetically diverse than any other population. But 54gene, which was first launched in 2018, is on a mission to radically change this picture, and the $25 million it secured in Series B funding will bolster its efforts. The milestone round came after founder Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong raised
