The Friends and Family Round Paradigm 

The Black Founders Matter Fund is a venture-fund for high-growth scalable companies. We recognize that systemic political and economic conditions and generational wealth gaps have led to funding disparities at the very early stages of a Black-led company’s formation. Black founders traditionally don’t have networks to create a successful “Family and Friends Round”.

In order to combat this, the Black Founders Matter Venture Fund supports a number of initiatives. In addition to sponsoring and supporting other Black-focused accelerators, incubators, and non-dilutive funding options, we sell apparel that helps to create funding opportunities for companies who are too early for the venture fund. These companies are typically pre-revenue and pre-product. Funding at this stage helps founders build out a prototype and launch to start validating their product-market fit. 

100% of profits from the apparel sales goes towards the creation of scholarships and grant opportunities for pre-seed Black-led companies. That means that we don’t take a cut in the proceeds and that your support directly contributes to funding pre-seed Black-led ventures.