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According to the Associated Press, Atlanta, GA-based venture capital firm Fearless Fund “faced tough questions from conservative judges” on Wednesday, Jan. 31, as it fought for its grant program to further support Black-women-owned businesses. As AFROTECH previously told you, Fearless Fund was hit with a lawsuit by Edward Blum and his American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) group in August 2023 on the basis that the fund was carrying out “explicit racial exclusion” and violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
Feb 2, 2024
This Black woman entrepreneur has been awarded a $100,000 grand prize thanks to Aveeno.
Sep 15, 2022
digitalundivided has announced a new initiative to help Black and Latina women have access to funding.
Jul 20, 2022
Praxis Labs, a Black and Asian-woman-founded company utilizing the power of virtual reality (VR) for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) training, just raised $15.5 million in an oversubscribed Series A round. This is the second major funding round for the company, which raised $3.2 million in February 2021, AfroTech previously reported. According to their website, Elise Smith and Heather Shen, both Stanford graduates, launched Praxis Labs in late 2019 to leverage their unique experiences and perspectives to “build the most efficacious and impactful learning experiences.” In a press release, Praxis Labs indicated that the financing round was co-led by Norwest Venture Partners and Emerson Collective. Other investors in the round included Penny Jar Capital (anchored by Steph Curry), Precursor Ventures, Concrete Rose Capital, Ulu Ventures, SoftBank’s SB Opportunity Fund and Firework Ventures. “Our society is more segregated than ever, and the workplace is often the most...
Oct 22, 2021
This eight-year-old Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) entrepreneur is inspiring kids from all over the world to find their own genius. The creator of Team Genius Squad, eight-year-old Ava The S.T.E.M. Princess®, experienced academic challenges for several years. These challenges negatively impacted Ava in her day-to-day life with her educational instructors and peers; specifically, being singled out as a poor performer, teased for not understanding classroom material and excluded from friendships and cliques because she didn’t fit the mold. Not knowing what her inner genius was and the learning style that worked best for her caused Ava to experience bouts of discouragement and low self-esteem. These unfortunate events were the catalyst that catapulted Ava to learn and entertain herself and others in a different manner. But through the utilization of visual aids (videos), scripting skits and utilizing her creative gifts and talents (i.e. developing designs,...
Oct 19, 2021
Peanut, a women’s social network, has announced that it has launched a new microfund. According to TechCrunch, the StartHER microfund is designed to invest in pre-seed startups led by women. Officially, the outlet confirms that the microfund looks for pre-seed startups led by “historically excluded founders of all ages, life stages, ethnicities and sexual orientations.” The pre-seed funding round, typically called the “friends and family round” (so named because that’s who normally provides the funding for the startup), is often the most difficult to get funded in general. This pre-seed round becomes doubly difficult to fund when the founder is from a historically excluded group. And this, according to the Peanut CEO, is the gap that they’re looking to close. “Peanut’s StartHER fund opens the door to founders looking for that early funding. It’s our opportunity to finally level the playing field. We want to be the family these founders can turn to, opening the door to our...
Jul 1, 2021
There’s a new Houston-based academy focused on transportation and logistics, and there’s a Black woman behind it all. In fact, she’s is the first Black woman to own a Houston-based academy of this kind in history. Meet Tajuana Roberts, the founder of Roberts Transportation & Logistics Academy. The Houston-based academy is an offshoot of her company, Roberts Freight Dispatching Services. Roberts Freight Dispatching Services became a reality in 2017, in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey. Roberts, who was left homeless as a result of Harvey, once provided knowledge on an ad-hoc basis. However, she knew that she wanted to provide a solution for the masses. Her company helped many people in the Houston area with their displacement issues, and they especially helped women who had been incarcerated and/or came from low-income families by providing them education, training, employment, and financial empowerment services. And these additional services — “add ons,” if...
Jun 4, 2021
Following the racial justice movement last year, there was an uptick in venture capital deals for minority women founders, but has that support been sustained? This New Jersey-based nonprofit has the facts to show that it hasn’t. Founded in 2012, digitalundivided is a nonprofit organization that offers community and resources to Black and Latinx women entrepreneurs. The nonprofit recently released the first update on its ProjectDiane report, a demographic study that details Black and Latinx women founders and the startups they lead. The nonprofit began working on its biennial ProjectDiane report in 2016, with the most recent report publishing last year. The ProjectDiane 2021 Update assesses data from the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. Digitalundivided debuted the most recent findings at its undivided We Rise virtual summit last month. “Studies show that Covid-19 alone has sped up digital transformation by 5.3 years,” digitalundivided CEO Lauren Maillian said...
Jun 3, 2021
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health in the workplace has become of primary concern to both employers and employees. But while some statistics about mental health in the workplace are distressing — and indicate that we have a long way to go before we can be at “peak” levels — there are other statistics that indicate that we’ve come a long way. Let’s take a look at what we’ve found. Mental Health In The Workplace: The Facts & Figures The Mind the Workplace 2021 report, which was recently released, gives Americans a better insight into the state of the workplace after the COVID-19 pandemic. What the report unveiled was the following. Many Americans are experiencing signs of burnout. While there’s no shortage of Americans who have lost their job thanks to the pandemic — with Black and brown people suffering from unemployment more than white people — Americans that were lucky enough to keep their jobs, regardless of their race, were experiencing burnout at record rates....
May 22, 2021
As Black people, we deserve diversity when it comes to art materials too! Entrepreneurs Color Too is a best-selling Black-owned coloring book and supply company that was founded by Latoya Nicole to promote diversity within the art space and create adult coloring books that promote self-care, wellness, and most importantly, self-love. On the leg of its major milestone of selling 25,000 books, the company has launched its newest addition for adults: “Shades of Brown” colored pencils. “Thinking back to when I was a child I remember seeing very few books with Black women as the main character, let alone seeing a Black woman on the cover,” said Nicole in an interview with AfroTech. “My brand Entrepreneurs Color Too aims to be inspiring and relatable to young girls and women like me. ” The path to funding for Nicole has been all about bootstrapping her business through the money from her day job and now that the business has sold over 25,000 books on Amazon alone, the money is used as...
May 21, 2021
In AfroTech’s recent report about streaming, Two Average Streamers shined a spotlight on what it really means to be women in esports — especially women of color in esports. “As video game streaming has grown in popularity, so too has the frequency of online hate speech,” they wrote. “We’re now at a point where it’s a good stream if you don’t receive or encounter multiple variants of the N-word in your chat.” While, certainly, stories like these exist in the gaming world, there are plenty more stories where women in esports are becoming bosses in their own right. Take Letta J, an Afro-Latina woman who runs the Soho Gaming House in New York City. Recently, Letta was cited by Microsoft for her extraordinary work at the House during Women’s History Month. But as both a minority woman in esports and a Grammy-nominated singer, Letta said that making gaming more social — and safe — for women like her was tantamount to everything else. “By creating a space that creates solutions and...
May 16, 2021
The natural haircare beauty market will soon have a new go-to source for its next innovation. Black women-owned beauty brand You Go Natural (YGN) headwraps has announced the close of a $2 million seed funding round as it looks to expand its operations. According to a press release shared with AfroTech, the funding round was led by Brand Foundry Venture Partners as well as other investors such as Capital Factory, Willow Growth Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. YGN has shared that its next plan of action for the funds includes the round expanding its Dallas-based production facility from 1,500 to 7,500 square feet and growing its staff to reach over 100 employees. “As a Black female founder, I have unique market insight into the world of ethnic beauty,” founder Monique Little shared in a statement. “I know where the industry is way oversaturated, and I know where there are gaps in innovation and solutions that have yet to be introduced. The vision of YGN goes way beyond...
Apr 22, 2021
Every entrepreneur has their own unique origin story, and Kika Stretch Studios founder Hakika Wise is no different. When Wise came up with the idea to start her own stretch studio back in 2011, she was down to her last $500 to her name from a tax return, Earn Your Leisure reports. Despite facing financial hardships, the New jersey native took a leap of faith and decided to go into business for herself. During a 2019 interview with Rolling Out, Wise explained the reason why she chose her particular career path, stating “I wanted to do something that others weren’t doing, so I started the stretch studio industry.” At the time, Wise says she realized there were no other stretch studios in existence so she created and patented the heart of her business model, “The Kika Method” — described as “a form of passive stretching in which an external force exerts upon the limb to move it into the new position,” according to Black Enterprise. That allowed her to then expand her business with 12...
Apr 15, 2021
Billing itself as the leading online program training underrepresented founders on how to raise money to scale their tech startups, the Founder Gym (FG) has just announced that they’re ready to go forward with yet another cohort. This cohort, according to their Medium page, will be part of the inaugural fundraising cohort specifically designed for Black women who want to raise money to scale their startup. FG Fundraising Cohort 17 is for all Black women, including trans women. The best part about the Founder Gym is that they don’t take a portion of equity when they do get you funding for your startup. Rather, they’re a fee- and tuition-based program, and there are even payment plans available for those that can’t afford the tuition all upfront. For those that don’t identify as Black women, Founder Gym has you covered, too. Although non-Black women can’t apply for this next cohort, there is another cohort that’s available for all underrepresented founders (women, Black, Latinx,...
Apr 9, 2021
Serial entrepreneur, Kathryn Finney, is on a mission to establish a powerful business-creation platform in support of Black founders and Black-led companies. According to Crunchbase News, Finney and her Atlanta-based startup Genius Guild have just raised over $5 million total to build upon the company’s approach to create more opportunities for Black entrepreneurs. This includes providing investment through its Greenhouse Fund to tech-enabled companies, as well as a lab and studio that have tools to help Black founders improve the health of their communities. Funds for this new project come from a number of investment partners including Pivotal Ventures, The Impact Seat, First Close partners, and Lowenstein Sadler partner Ed Zimmerman as well as individual investors such as Andrew Bosworth (Facebook), a press release shares. Genius Guild aims to “build and invest in market-based innovations that end racism,” as stated on the company’s website. “Forward-thinking and full of purpose,...
Apr 5, 2021