Founder and CEO Aisha “Pinky” Cole has raised $25m through a Series A funding round that values her four-year old brand at $100m. Cole intends to open 10 Slutty Vegan venues by the end of this year and another 10 in 2023. Her intention is to hire a Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer to help manage the company’s growth. She has long believed that Slutty Vegan will be a billion-dollar brand — “bigger than McDonald’s and Burger King and Chick-fil-A,” she says — and wants to make it a household
After winning $1.3 million in scholarships himself, Christopher Gray founded Scholly, an app that helps students easily find scholarships for college. Scholly was featured on ABC’s Shark Tank, landing a deal with Daymond John and Lori Greiner and sparking the biggest fight in Shark Tank history. Scholly has over 4 million users and has helped students raise over 100 million dollars. It was first launched in 2015 with the simple goal of matching students with available scholarships: Input your age, interests, and other demographic information and Scholly would find potential fits. The idea,
Oregon-based ‘A Kids Company About’ secured 93% of the funds from Black investors. He managed to raise a $1 million seed round, where the smallest check was $1,000. A fund headed by Barack Obama’s financial advisor led the Series A round. Backstage Capital and Emerson Collective, both of which invest in underrepresented founders, also participated in the round alongside several Black angels. Jelani Memory, who launched the business in 2019 when it was known as A Kids Book About, also accepted a range of investments as small as $5,000 from
Insurtech Etap is now on a mission to expand its services across the West African country following a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round led by Mobility 54; the venture capital arm of Toyota Tsusho and CFAO Group. Founder and CEO Ibraheem Babalola started building Etap last year when he found himself frustrated by the complexities and delays involved in purchasing insurance. “The idea itself is from being a frustrated customer; my insurance would expire and I wouldn’t get a notification to renew it…I always had to make a call to a guy
Despite growing conversations about gender equality in tech, the numbers show that women are still undervalued, underrepresented, and discriminated against. There’s no doubt that all women face challenges in the office – not just in tech or media but across the board in almost every field. Whether it’s sexual advances, belittling, lack of promotion, or microaggressions. But – there’s been a growing number of research studies being published that fail to highlight the additional barriers faced by minority women and the other factors that may come into play such as
Floyd Mayweather has announced the drop of a new NFT Project called Mayweverse. The project will consist of 5,000 NFTs and is set to launch on Wednesday. Fans on Twitter, however, are not pleased with the announcement and accused him of scams, taking people’s money, and abandoning projects. There will be five different NFT cards with a quantity of 1,000 available for each. In a tweet on the official Mayweverse account, it tweeted: “The mint price will be 0.3ETH bringing you maximum profit and value.” Floyd had previously launched a
Imalipay, which describes itself as a one-stop-shop financial services platform, has closed a $3 million seed in debt and equity round. The fintech raised an $800,000 pre-seed round in 2020. It was launched in late 2020 by Tatenda Furusa and Oluwasanmi Akinmusire after Furusa noticed the challenges ride-hailing drivers faced when accessing working capital or emergencies like running out of fuel in Nairobi. COO Akinmusire and Furusa met while working at Cellulant before starting ImaliPay. They received funding from Google Black Founders Fund last October before closing this seed round, which welcomed participation from Leonnis Investments.
There are 2,668 people on Forbes’ 36th-annual ranking of the planet’s richest people—87 fewer than a year ago. They’re worth a collective $12.7 trillion—$400 billion less than in 2021. And 236 newcomers have become billionaires over the past year—including the first ever from Barbados, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Uruguay. Only three Africans were in the Top 500 of the list. They include Aliko Dangote with his $14 billion in total earnings, making him the richest man in Africa according to the magazine. The next African on the list is Mike Adenuga with his $7.3 billion
Hive Wealth by Impart Media, a community-first mobile app that helps people grow their wealth and leave a legacy for future generations, officially announced it received $600K in funding from Black Tech Nation Ventures. Through Black Tech Nation Ventures, Hive Wealth is now able to address massive financial inequalities that millions of people of color in the USA experience. “We are thrilled to announce Black Tech Nation Ventures as our first institutional investor,” said Yvette Butler, founder of Hive Wealth. “BTN Ventures and Hive Wealth share a common mission of building generational wealth. We are excited
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
