City Startup Labs Puts Spotlight on Black Founders During GEW in Charlotte

Data from Global Entrepreneurship Week and National Entrepreneurship Month shows that Black innovators in the U.S. are facing both successes and setbacks. Even though funding increased significantly between Q3 2022 and Q1 2023, there is cause for concern because Q1 2023 saw a 75.2% decrease in funding for Black founders compared to the same period in 2022. This raises concerns about ongoing difficulties and potential roadblocks similar to those encountered by the Black woman-owned venture capital firm Fearless Fund.
Henry
Rock

This year, November was proclaimed, National Entrepreneurship Month by President Joe Biden – and this week is Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Innovate Charlotte and the City of Charlotte are hosting the Queen City’s GEW celebrations this year, with the theme of “Entrepreneurs Thrive Here.”

Back in 2015, I went to Curacao and spoke and conducted a workshop at their inaugural celebration of GEW, and I dug up this video of my answers to several questions I was asked during my trip -  Henry Rock rocks GEW Curacao 2015 - YouTube.

As President Biden states, "We honor the job creators, business owners, and daring innovators who remind us of the promise of the American Dream.” We want to also highlight the following:

Crunchbase data shows that in Q4 2022, Black startup founders in the United States raised around $264 million out of the total $33.6 billion in venture capital allocated. That’s an uptick from the $178 million — or 0.43% — the group raised in Q3.

In total, U.S. Black founders raised an estimated $2.254 billion out of the $215.9 billion in U.S. venture capital allocated last year. Which was about 1%, a slight drop from the 1.3% raised in 2021. Despite the record-breaking 2021, that amount of money equates to just 1.3% of all capital raised in the U.S. alone. It’s not all bad news, though: Although funding dipped in the early half of 2022, it steadily increased from $191 million in Q3 to $279 million in Q4, jumping again to $312 million in the first quarter of this year.

However, a recent dataset shows that in Q1 2023, Black founders raised an estimated 0.69%, or $312 million, out of the around $45 billion Crunchbase totaled for the quarter. Per Crunchbase numbers, Black founders saw a decrease in year-over-year funding from Q1 2022, when Black founders raised 1.5% — or $1.26 billion — out of the $81 billion allocated in private funding.

That’s a 75.2% drop in funding! What happened?

Yet, attempts at correcting these incessant challenges in funding are often thwarted by policies such as that faced by the Fearless Fund, a Black woman-owned venture capital firm.

Nevertheless, throughout the year, City Startup Labs has shed light on alternatives to venture capital with our Fundable Workshop Series. We’re wrapping up National Entrepreneurship Month with the final installment on Crowdfunding. Join us virtually on November 29th at 6 pm. This series has been sponsored by the NC Idea Foundation.