🥚We're not walking on eggshells, we're breaking bias
🥚We're not walking on eggshells, we're breaking bias
Issue #1
Dear Reader,
Hello! I'm Stephanie von Behr, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Founderland. I’ve been working with startups for over a decade, building community as a mentor, operator, consultant, and 3x founder. My work is rooted in challenging the status quo and disrupting power systems.
Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you all to our first community-wide newsletter.
With less than 0.5% of venture capital going to women of colour founders annually, we have a lot of work to do. And yet, we also know that remarkable change happens in communion with others: we take steps together to build a better, more inclusive and fairer world, not only for us today but for those who will come after us.
Thank you for being on this journey to a new land, Founderland.
What’s in this newsletter
You’ll be reading about
Founderland wins
Discrimination and red flags from investors
How to disrupt venture capital
Events that you don’t want to miss
Funding opportunities
Community spotlight
🙏🏽TECHSTARS FOUNDATION x FOUNDERLAND
We're honoured to announce that we've been selected as a participant in the Accelerate Equity program of the Techstars Foundation for 2022!
What does this mean?
If you make a gift of any amount, the Techstars Foundation will match 20% of what you and many others give. You are key to supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs!Please share widely and help us to raise more funding to support our community today!
👀 READING LIST
From discrimination to meeting no-shows and ghosting, startup founders tell Sifted about their worst investor experiences.
What investors could do to make the fundraising process better for founders:
Managing bias better
More investors from underrepresented communities
Clearer processes (transparency)
Better communication
Better prepared for meetings
Make founders feel more welcome
Ruchika Tulshyan’s new book Inclusion on Purpose looks at the workplace experience of women of colour. So let's learn how to use our privilege for good by identifying and exposing bias.
Her “Bridge” framework to develop an inclusion mindset:
Be uncomfortable
Reflect (on what you don’t know)
Invite Feedback
Defensiveness doesn’t help
Grow from your mistakes
Expect that change takes time
Check out this Fast Company POV on investing in overlooked segments of the VC market. Shout out to Leslie Feinzaig for making it your job to “take women in business from underrepresented to unstoppable” at Graham & Walker.
A great disruption is coming for venture capital: as mainstream funds focus their time and dollars on the most profitable customers, they’re ignoring the huge untapped potential.
✨ HAPPENINGS
Events in our ecosystem
May 20, 2022: Town Hall with FDL’s Co-Founders
June 1, 2022: Female Founders — Lead Today, Shape Tomorrow
Get your tickets here
🙌🏾 BUILDING BRIDGES
Connections and careers
FDL Pitchbook edition #1: Founders seeking Co-Founders
Careers Corner
Head of Growth at bina
Head of Engineering at Sagefund
Social Media Director at Amaka
📣 AMPLIFY
Founderland members in the spotlight: Raiha Buchanan, Melissa Wijngaarden, and Esther O’Callaghan.
Techstars Berlin Accelerator 2022
They have officially announced the startups for the April cohort. The founders of these 11 companies were chosen from over 900 applications, and (drum roll please) one of them is Project Cece, a B2B2C Search Engine for Sustainable Fashion, Co-founded by 💫 Melissa Wijngaarden.
Gigapay is 1 of 15 hottest payments startups in Sweden
They have signed on some of the biggest Creator networks in the Nordics as customers - Society Icon, Adrecord, Boksi. 💫 Raiha Buchanan is the CEO and Co-founder of Gigapay.
Hundo’s Future of Work SXSW Panel Discussion
On March 12, hundo Co-founder 💫 Esther O’Callaghan, TikTok creator DJ Krystal Lake, and Imagen Insights co-founder Jay Richards arrived Stateside to give a talk on Gen Z, the metaverse, and the future of work. Here are the biggest takeaways.
💰 GOLDMINE
Shiny opportunities for founders
Make Good
R/GA is committed to providing Black, Indigenous, Latine and Asian businesses and non-profit organisations pro-bono digital experience, brand identity and campaign services.
The Seed Stage
The Seed Stage is a demo day without the accelerator.
The a16z START program
The a16z START program fuels founders at the earliest stages of company-building.
👋🏽 LAST BUT NOT LEAST
To all of the amazing allies and investors who signed up on our website to support our community, we see you and appreciate you. Thank you for your patience! We are very close to launching an automated tool to make this process scalable and to offer the greatest impact.
If you’re not signed up yet, please apply here as an investor and here as an ally.
If you’ve got questions, we’ve got answers — check out our FAQ here.