Even Though Less Than 1% of Venture Capital Goes to Black Funders, Here's How I Raised $11 Million By Joseph Heller
As an African American entrepreneur, I can tell you that you’ll face tremendous obstacles in building your vision. But there is nothing more personally liberating than seeing your dream come true—and right now, as an African American entrepreneur, your platform for change is growing exponentially as VCs are slowly starting to understand that they need to be more inclusive and that there are vast opportunities outside of their small network. I encourage all African Americans to pursue their dreams of being an entrepreneur—and if your dream is to change the world, you should raise venture capital. There will always be difficulties— yes, unique to you. My goal in this piece is to encourage you to keep moving in spite of them. So here’s my story on how I raised an $11M Series A. It begins when my father came home one day and handed me a copy of Black Enterprise’s 1995 edition of the BE 100s. From that day forward, I decided that I would be an entrepreneur. I grew up in a mostly white neighborhood and went to a mostly white private school. On the weekends, I would work at my grandparents’ business in South Central Los Angeles, which was a historically black community in L.A. At a young age I was very aware that African Americans lived in relative poverty compared to most white people. That was compounded by overtly racist experiences I had throughout my childhood that made it clear that society viewed African Americans as inferior. But the individuals on the BE 100s my dad gave me told me there was hope. I had a burning desire from an early age to prove to the world that I could do something great despite society’s perception of me. I always had this
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feeling that I would not be treated fairly in a large corporation—and the BE 100s were the perfect catalyst for my imagination to envision a reality where I would be totally liberated to create my own rules and vision for the world. A few months after receiving that Black Enterprise magazine, I was inspired to start my own web design business in high school. In college, I raised angel investment to build a platform that would allow artisans to sell their products online. And after graduating from UC Berkeley, I went to China where I ended up starting an import/export business. Our customers were large companies that needed supply chain management consulting to
help them navigate the myriad process of working with Chinese factories. Around the same time, I realized that there was a growing trend of small businesses that were being empowered by tools like Shopify and Instagram, where literally anyone could start their own business and sell products. But the backend manufacturing—how products actually got made—was still extremely complicated for these small businesses. I wanted to create a technology company that see page 76
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