This Black Woman Closed Her $4.2M Seed Investment Offer In The Space Of A Few Months
E-commerce platform Gander announced today the closing of a $4.2 million seed round co-led by Harlem Capital and Crossbeam Venture Partners.
Gander, which collects and embeds user-generated video content into retail sites so shoppers can see what a product looks like in real life, was launched in late 2021.
It also has a creator marketplace, which gives brands direct access to the video content.
This round adds the startup’s founder Kimiloluwa Fafowora, 26, to the growing list of Black women who have raised $1 million or more in VC funding.
The seed is a pretty big deal given no more than 250 Black women have secured $1 million in investment.
More impressively – Gander’s success is showcased by the fact that it took less than three months to close its $4.2 million seed.
In fact, Fafowora has said that fundraising wasn’t even her top priority early in the year. But the word of her company soon spread after she secured high-profile clients, and investors flooded her with offers.
Before launching her startup, Fafowora, an MBA graduate from Stanford University, led the San Francisco investment team as a managing partner.
This experience may have played a part in being able to navigate the investment sector for her own business.
In a previous interview with Dorm Room Fund, she said: “Pre-seed investing is all about the founder and the team because, at this point, you don’t have much data to rely on, and most of the time, you don’t have a product. When we’re evaluating an investment opportunity, we try to figure out whether it’s the right team to back.
“One of the strongest signals we look for is what have the founders done with the limited resources they have? For example, we’ve consistently been most impressed by founders who conduct hundreds of interviews with prospective customers.
“This effort costs absolutely nothing but helps to uncover nuanced insights that allow founders to build a better solution for their customers. Hustle is crucial and we need to see a clear intent to build a solution that customers actually want.”
Fafowora told TechCrunch she hopes to increase hiring on her sales and engineering teams with the fresh capital and focus on further scaling the company.
