California Creates Pre/Seed Capital Exclusively for Black Founders
Tech startup Velourit announced a weekly schedule of Ask Me Anything sessions on Twitter Spaces on Saturdays during Black August. The 90-minute AMA Twitter space titled Untap’d Capital teaches descendants of those enslaved in America to be reparations ready Saturdays during Black August at 4:00 pm CST/2:00 pm PST starting August 6th.
“We didn’t hit the jackpot!” said Brooke Sinclair. Sweeping the nation, reparations for descendants of chattel slavery means Black American founders don’t have to beg for preseed or seed capital from racist venture capitalists anymore. When the California Reparations Taskforce published a 500-page report in June, Sinclair noticed a deafening silence from the tech community. The industry’s silence was especially strange after the entire sector disrespectfully removed the Black American traditions and flag from their Juneteenth celebrations and replaced the Black American story of heroism with African flag colors red, green, and black.
Reparations for descendants of chattel slaves could mean an end to the false narrative of “black and brown”. Teaching Black American tech founders how to access an untapped resource of undiluted capital means there will no longer be a need for billions of dollars to be raised on behalf of underserved and underrepresented founders. “Any person who alludes to reparations being anything other than cash payments for genocidal acts against descendants of chattel slavery is a bloodsucking slavery lover,” said Sinclair. Compensation for years of rape, being forced to give birth, and then forcibly separated from their children. Sound familiar? She was inspired to create weekly AMA sessions after a white-presenting Latino VC proudly announced he had diversity in his DNA but forgot to invest in Black founders in Fund I.
Serial entrepreneur, Sinclair understands the challenges of raising capital after struggling to raise for her failed tech startup Velour Imports. The startup won pitch competitions, and graduated from two preseed accelerators but lost several opportunities to build a digital supply chain that delivered handcrafted products to Latin America. A solution that could have come in handy during the pandemic. Post pandemic Sinclair is picking herself, and her team, up by their bootstraps and going back to their roots, agriculture. “Don’t the Jews and Japanese still receive reparations to this day? They were restored after surviving genocide what’s the big deal?” said Sinclair. Reparations are an amazing accomplishment after surviving ages of nonstop government-sanctioned terror.
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