Venita Cooper’s passion for sneaker culture has led her to become an entrepreneur -turned-tech-founder. In 2019, Cooper opened Silhouette Sneakers & Art in Tulsa, OK, after working as a K-12 educator in the Mississippi Delta through Teach for America. She was brought to Oklahoma because her parents decided to retire, Cooper told AFROTECH™ in an interview. With no entrepreneurial background, the thought of launching her own business never crossed her mind until 2018, when the idea of opening a sneaker store was presented to her. “At first I thought it was crazy ’cause I was like, ‘I’m not an entrepreneur. I’ve never done anything like that before,'” Cooper said. “One of the things that I’ve learned is that to start a business and to run a business, to me, the No. 1 skill is the ability to make good decisions consistently and quickly. I always ask investors and other founders who have successful companies, what is the characteristic that they can identify as that No. 1 characteristic...

Toy company Healthy Roots Dolls established itself as a brand creating representation for all children with their line of products. Now it’s raised a $1 million seed round to expand on its offerings and continue to spread the beauty of diversity. The seed funding round was led by Backstage Capital, and accompanied by other investment groups such as Lightship Capital, Broadway Angels, Alpha Bridge, The Community Fund, Sequoia Scout as well as a group of individuals, including Sahil Lavingia. To date, Healthy Roots Dolls has raised a total of $1.5 million, which includes funds from grants, pitch competitions, accelerator programs and crowdfunding, according to founder Yelitsa Jean-Charles. During an interview with Crunchbase News, Brittany Davis — a principal at Backstage Capital — shared that she initially met Jean-Charles during her firm’s Backstage Accelerator program and was one of Healthy Roots Dolls’ first investors. “We’ve seen her since Day One be heads down and focused on the...

Alpaca VC just revealed the six emerging GPs (General Partners) selected for their $2.5 million diversity commitment! Back in July, the company vowed to write three to five checks ranging from $500,000 to $1,000,000 each, according to a blog post . However, they ultimately ended up writing six thanks to their initiative to commit $2.5 million of independent GP capital to Black and Latino/Latina investing partners. “We are thrilled to partner with these managers to create an impact in the ecosystem while driving impact to our fund,” the company wrote in an article on Medium . “Our chosen, diverse GPs can provide us access to underserved founder networks far better than we can ourselves today. In turn, we can help these select GPs beyond just providing them money. We can follow on to their investments; we can introduce them to LPs and other funding sources, and we can help them institutionalize their fund and processes. A truly synergistic relationship.” The process wasn’t easy, with...

Cincinnati-based venture capital firm, Lightship Capital, is on a mission to raise $50 million to invest in underrepresented founders from the Midwest area. The Black-owned firm is headed by investing power couple, Candice Matthews Brackeen and Brian Brackeen, who both have one goal in mind — to invest in the next wave of innovative entrepreneurs that have been overlooked by other investors. The lack of startup funding for women and people of color has been highlighted in recent years via studies like digitalundivided’s ProjectDiane , which reports Black women-led startups raised only 0.0006 percent of the $424.7 billion in tech venture funding raised since 2009. In light of the known disproportional funding opportunities, Lightship’s General Partner, Candice, believes founders of color are worth investing in. “I’m a capitalist at heart. There’s market failure. You can really take advantage of it,” she said, according to The Wall Street Journal . In the midst of the Black Lives...