Hundreds of Black women in Georgia will receive a guaranteed monthly income of $850 to improve their mental health and address the racial wealth gap. This money has no conditions attached, meaning they could use it towards their startup costs. The In Her Hands program will grant 650 Black women below the federal poverty line the cash with no conditions attached for two years. Launching early next year and distributing more than $13 million, it is poised to be one of the US’s largest guaranteed income pilot programs. The median Black family in the U.S.
Tyson Clark, a general partner at Alphabet Inc.’s venture arm GV and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent Black startup investors, has died at the age of 43. GV CEO David Krane just issued a statement about the team losing the father-of-three, writing, “With great sadness, we share the news that Tyson Clark, our friend, and GV general partner, passed away yesterday due to sudden complications from a health issue. We are stunned and shattered by this loss. “The GV team extends our deepest sympathies to Tyson’s family and loved ones.
CarpeDM — an online dating app exclusive to Black women — has partnered with KarmaCheck to incorporate full background checks for its members on the dating platform. Howard Law School alumni Naza Shelley and Sali Hama launched the app to ensure Black women could be equally as successful while exploring the world of dating. “We’re excited to partner with CarpeDM to help make the online dating experience safer and more trustworthy for singles. While quickly and accurately verifying user data, KarmaCheck goes to great lengths to ensure that user data is protected
Black people produce and share substantially more content than other groups on Facebook. While Facebook Stories has low usage in most of the U.S., it has “clusters of intense production” in places with a high concentration of African Americans, such as the arc in the Southeast known as the Black Belt, Facebook research found. But increasingly, the community seems to be turning away from the app. The number of Black monthly users on Facebook declined 2.7% in a single month to 17.3 million adults, according to a research report, “Industry Update on
Two-year-old startup uLesson has just announced that it closed a $15 million Series B round. The startup first launched by providing a product pack of SD cards and dongles with pre-recorded videos for K-12 students. They can either access lessons via streaming or use the SD cards to download and store the content. But uLesson has introduced new features for an all-encompassing edtech play for this demographic. It added quizzes and a homework help feature to connect students with tutors from universities. It also launched a one-to-many live class feature with polls and leaderboards
Bento, a digital payroll and human resource management platform, is expanding to Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda with plans to set up operations in six other markets in Africa over the next year. The startup, founded in 2019, is helping businesses automate the disbursement of salaries and other statutory remittances, including taxes and pensions. Bento said that its platform is leveraging data to extend credit solutions to third parties (employees) and other services like unemployment insurance, savings, and investments. Its proprietary credit engine, built in partnership with Israel’s Tarya, ensures the
Black Enterprise — one of the US’ leading Black digital media brands, with more than 8 million monthly unique visitors—will present its inaugural Sisters Inc. Summit on December 7. The event will feature some of the most influential and dynamic business owners. They will feature in a candid conversation with each other—and the corporations and investors who support them. Whether you consider yourself a founder, a CEO, a boss, or a side-hustler, SistersInc. is said to represent “a unique and valuable opportunity to connect to a powerful sisterhood of success to share resources,
Angela Muhwezi-Hall and Deborah Gladney’s dating app style platform matching job seekers with employers have raised $1.41 million. According to Project Diane, the pair, who launched the QuickHire app last fall, became the first Black women in Kansas to raise at least a million dollars in capital, which tracks minority women-led startups. Its users are encouraged to upload intro videos to demonstrate their soft skills. Muhwezi-Hall told Kansas news that almost 70 paying companies and 12,000 job-seekers already use the app. Users enter their ZIP code and are instantly shown
TradeDepot, a Nigeria- and U.S.-based company that connects consumer goods brands to thousands of retailers and helps with distribution, has raised $110 million in new equity and debt funding. TradeDepot operates a B2B marketplace that connects small shops, kiosks, and retailers with wholesalers of global consumer brands that have access to food, beverages, and personal care products. The company owns its warehouses and fleets of drivers to carry out the distribution. It now plans to bring in more retail stores and expand its buy, pay later service across the continent.
MarketForce, a Kenyan B2B retail and financial services distribution startup has expanded into five additional markets across Africa to grow RejaReja — its retailer ‘super app’ that allows informal merchants to order and pay for inventory digitally. The startup has partnered with Cellulant, a pan-African payments company that makes it possible for local and international merchants to accept “locally appropriate and alternative” payment methods from their customers to expand into these new markets. Cellulant has partnerships with 46 mobile-money operators in Africa, 120 banks and serves 35 African countries with a physical
