Black Girl Ventures Expands
With help of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Google Cloud for Startups, HubSpot for Startups, and Ed2Go Black Girl Ventures will move beyond pitch competitions to creating local Venture Boards, an Access to Capital Toolkit and a real pipeline of opportunities for Black/Brown women entrepreneurs. In order to maximize momentum and effectiveness in existing cities while accelerating growth in new cities we will package our efforts and place it into the hands of communities across the nation. Our target cities to include: Birmingham, Durham, Houston, Miami, and Philadelphia.
The chapters aka Venture Boards will be made up of five people (found through a selection process) who become a small board in their city. We will connect them to corporate partners, university partners and their city Government. Their main function will be to increase visibility of Black/Brown women founders by creating a public local database, to increase access to capital by hosting an annual BGV-style pitch competition and to create community by having gatherings once a quarter. All 25 chapter leads will receive training on fundraising, how to create access to capital in their community and be amplified to make decisions that support viable women-owned businesses locally. Black Girl Ventures will also put resources behind the chapter leads themselves by providing them with ecosystem partners, coaching, workspace, and help to grow their own companies during this process.
We are taking an "Each One, Fund One" approach. We are packaging everything we've learned, planting it as seeds in different markets and helping the communities water them to grow a major movement of support for Black/Brown women founders across the nation.