SEAN SEBASTIAN, KELAUNI JASMYN AND DAVID MOTLEY ARE THE FORCES BEHIND BLACK TECH NATION VENTURES. (PHOTOS BY ROB TAYLOR JR.)
Congresswoman Lee, others to tech industry: ‘Don’t leave Blacks behind’
In 2022, one percent—that’s right, just one percent of all venture capital funds in the U.S. were allotted to Black tech founders, according to a study by the information-based company Crunchbase.
But at least in Pittsburgh, there is a venture capital firm that specializes in helping to fund Black and diverse tech startups—Black Tech Nation Ventures, spearheaded by Kelauni Jasmyn, David Motley and Sean Sebastian. The for-profit VC firm had about $50 million of which to invest, thanks to companies like Bank of America, Mark Cuban, Alphabet and First National Bank. And so far, the New Pittsburgh Courier has learned, some 11 startups have received funding from Black Tech Nation Ventures across the country, including its first startup it funded, BlendEd, based in Cleveland. BlendEd was founded by David Boone and Jeff McLellan, and BlendEd’s mission is to allow community colleges to have the same level of access to digitizing syllabi prep, course planning and course content as the larger universities have.
Daniela Osio, founder of Kloopify, is the only Pittsburgh-based diverse startup to receive funding from Black Tech Nation Ventures, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report in March. Funding has also been provided to startups in other cities like Hive Wealth, BrightUp, Emtech, and Goodfynd.
CONGRESSWOMAN SUMMER LEE, KELAUNI JASMYN
Black Tech Nation is a separate entity from Black Tech Nation Ventures. Black Tech Nation is the non-profit organization Jasmyn founded in 2018 that brings together African Americans interested and/or involved in the technology industry. On Feb. 22, Black Tech Nation presented an economic empowerment forum at Emerald City, inside The Pitt Building, Downtown. About 75 people came out to hear people like Jasmyn, Emerald City co-founder Khamil Bailey, The Forbes Funds President and CEO Fred Brown and BEAM Collaborative co-founder and CEO Joel Burnstein talk all things entrepreneurship, tech and the constant fight for Blacks to achieve progress in those spaces.
Congresswoman Summer Lee, who is not a “techie” but is in full support of Blacks progressing in the tech space, was a panelist as well during the event. She told the Courier the main question for her as an elected official is,
“How do we ensure that Pittsburgh, as it turns a new economic corner, doesn’t miss an opportunity to invest in the people that are here? We have a room full of people who are ready to go, but also are ready to multiply, to go out and bring new people, but we also have to make sure that the opportunities that exist are ready for them.”
PANELISTS SHARED THEIR THOUGHTS ON BLACK ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT…
With the fact that so few Black tech startups get venture capital funding, Jasmyn makes it a point to tell local entrepreneurs not to let the figures deter them from their dreams. “We do these events, we gather community, creating networks,” she told the Courier, “and also there’s conversations where a lot of us don’t have the education around how we can build our companies—what things we need, what access we need to build our companies and get into the tech space.”
Jasmyn wants to see more Black tech companies become “Black tech unicorns,” which means their companies eventually will be valued at millions of dollars. Black Tech Nation Ventures invests anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million into tech startups, and hopefully that can propel that startup to a point where it could get even larger funding from larger venture capital firms.
Black Tech Nation Ventures is one of only a “handful” of Black-led venture capital firms. A survey by the National Venture Capital Association and Deloitte found that just three percent of U.S. venture capital partners were Black in 2016. Other Black-led VC firms that are interested in funding Black tech startups include Harlem Capital Partners (New York), Base Ventures (Berkeley, Calif.), Fearless Fund (Atlanta) and MaC Venture Capital (Los Angeles).
KHAMIL BAILEY, SALOAM BEY, MOHINDER DICK
“The work that Kelauni has been doing for the last eight years, to come in here, to see a gap and to start to fill it is incredible,” Congresswoman Lee said about Jasmyn, who grew up in Chicago. “It was Kelauni, just one Black woman who had an idea to connect with other folks who are techies who are doing coding and things of that nature, and now she has grown to this where she’s now able to be a blessing to other people who are trying to get into it.”
Pittsburgh was ranked 13th in the world in 2022 in terms of emerging startup economies by the organization Startup Genome. Pittsburgh is seen as a place where one can grow its tech company without having to compete with the mighty San Franciscos and Bostons of the world.
“We need to innovate into the future,” Jasmyn told the Courier exclusively, “and it can’t look the same as it has in the past. So when we talk about economic empowerment, entrepreneurship, AI (artificial intelligence), all the future things that are happening, we (African Americans) are being left behind.”
Jasmyn said African Americans must take their creativity “and make it into something viable that can be an actual resource in the future. That’s innovation. Every community does that. We do it, but we don’t know how to actually package it and monetize on it and use each other for innovation so that we’re building together and keeping our dollars.”
Congresswoman Lee, who is a member of the House’s Committee on Science, Space and Technology, added: “We need to be very intentional about the representation gap, about opportunities for Black folks who are breaking into science and technology, as we see AI and all of these industries, robotics, etc., that are coming right here to Pittsburgh, making sure that these industries aren’t leaving Black folks behind as so many have.”
About Post Author
