Month: August 2020

Black entrepreneurial duo Candice Matthews Brackeen and Brian Brackeen want to prove that capitalism is for everyone. This summer their venture capital firm Lightship Capital, along with the agency SecondMuse, created a $50 million fund — the first of its kind.

The fund focuses on underrepresented founders in the Midwest, which includes racial minorities as well as LGBTQ and disabled communities, Nick Fouriezos reported in OZY. He added that the fund plans to initially invest in around 35 businesses across AI, e-commerce, sustainability, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods. Comedian Hannibal Buress signed on as an early investor.

This is not a social impact fund, Candice Matthews Brackeen clarified to OZY. “We’re capitalists at heart. We’re here to respect the money and get a market rate return,” she said. “When people see our teams win, then you’ll see a model that works.”

For our ongoing curation of the innovation and tech news our team is reading, the Plug In South LA Beat, we can see why this pioneering fund attracts so much attention:

A Power Couple with a $50M Venture Fund for the Overlooked

Joseph Heller, founder and CEO of the on-demand manufacturing platform The/Studio, experienced scores of rejections while speaking to venture capitalists for his company’s Series A. The Black tech entrepreneur recently described how he raised $11 million anyway.

“Instead of the usual startup route — creating a PowerPoint deck, getting a few meetings on Sand Hill Road, and raising a few million dollars — I had to prove that I was worthy of attracting VC money before I even got that opportunity to pitch,” Heller wrote in Fast Company.

His win rate with white VCs was 0%, and around 17% with non-white VCs.

Heller said he put years of his life, soul, and own capital into the company. That included taking more than 150 meetings over 18 months just to get a seat at the table. The hoop-jumping was “a soul-draining necessity,” he says. But it ultimately resulted in a successful strategic Series A round led by Ignition Partners in late 2018. Today The/Studio has offices in four countries and more than 100,000 customers.

In this Plug In South LA Beat, our ongoing curation of must-read innovation and tech news, we’re taking a closer look at Heller’s relentlessness, and the silver lining he uncovered:

I’m a Black Startup Founder. Here’s How I Raised $11 Million After 150 Rejections

When it comes to high-level tech deal making in Silicon Valley, court decisions have watered down the legal protections that emerged from the civil rights movement, the Washington Post found.

One of them was a Supreme Court decision earlier this year. “Byron Allen, an African American and the founder of Entertainment Studios, sued cable TV companies Comcast and Charter after the providers refused to carry Allen’s channels,” Reed Albergotti wrote.

The Supreme Court sided with Comcast in March, agreeing that Allen needed to prove Entertainment Studios would have earned the contract were it not for race, according to the news outlet. In June, however, Comcast reached a cable TV network carriage deal with Allen’s company, Los Angeles Business Journal reported recently. Litigation with Charter is ongoing, the journal noted.

For today’s Plug In South LA Beat, our regular curation of must-read innovation and tech news, we’re diving into the legal hurdles that Black startup founders face — and getting an inside look at where Allen sees opportunities for growth:

Black Start-up Founders Say Venture Capitalists Are Racist, But the Law Protects Them

Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Is Hungry for More Acquisitions

Most city government communications are stuck in the past, but three Latino entrepreneurs came up with a tech-savvy way forward. And their startup raised a $1.2 million seed round.

Alberto Gomez, Beto Altamirano, and Eduardo Bravo co-founded Irys to help cities and other groups improve community engagement, Igor Bosilkovski reported recently in Forbes.

“The problem here is that governments are reactive, they are not proactive. They react to the challenges when they are presented to them,” co-founder and CEO Beto Altamirano told Bosilkovski. “What we are trying to do is bridge the gap in communication.”

Irys is a customizable software as a service platform that allows users to flag issues like potholes and broken lights through a mobile app. Geolocated info goes to a smart government dashboard. Good Growth Capital led the company’s recent funding round, according to Forbes.

For today’s Plug In South LA Beat, our regular curation of must-read innovation and tech news, we’re learning how the San Antonio-based co-founders expanded their community-building platform to 15 cities:

Meet the Latino Entrepreneurs Whose App for Urban Services Just Raised $1.2 Million

Photo: (Left to right) Irys co-founders Alberto Gomez, Beto Altamirano, and Eduardo Bravo. Credit: Josh Huskin

Investor Bill Ellison, chairman of Cadiz Capital Holding, and securities lawyer Joe Cecala plan to launch the country’s first majority Black-owned stock exchange.

Ellison and Cecala told Built In Chicago’s Nona Tepper that they plan to take their new stock exchange, called the Dream Exchange, public as a listing site later next year. To date, executives from around 6,000 Black-owned businesses have expressed interest in being listed, the outlet reported.

“The Dream Exchange plans to act as a platform for listing companies whose valuation falls below the $40 million minimum listing threshold required by the New York Stock Exchange,” Tepper wrote.

For the Plug In South LA Beat, our regular curation of the innovation and tech news that our team is reading, we take a closer look at how this new stock exchange could break down the institutionalized barriers that Black founders face in accessing capital:

The First Black-Owned Stock Exchange Will Soon Open in Chicago

Meaningful Gigs has a goal of creating 100,000 jobs over the next decade for Black talent. The startup co-founded by Ronnie Kwesi Coleman launched early last year, and is building a network of Africa’s best digital designers for hire.

“We started off getting talent from Africa because I’m from Ghana, and I knew there were so many incredibly talented Africans that needed job opportunities,” Coleman told Technical.ly’s Michelai Graham. “So we’ve been connecting African tech talent to remote jobs ever since.”

The way Meaningful Gigs works: Designers go through a vetting process before being selected to be featured on the platform. Clients, including entrepreneurs and startups, talk to a design concierge, and within days the company connects them with a new designer for a trial period.

In today’s curation of must-read innovation and tech news, the Plug In South LA Beat, we’re learning about this unique startup, including how the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement are affecting their growth:

Meaningful Gigs Is Connecting Black Designers to Jobs Through its Platform