Episode 1: Fiftyfaces Focus - Diverse Founders and Venture Capital Investors - Series 1

The life of a founder of a business is riddled with hard work, hope, disappointment, failure and hearing the word "no".  When that founder comes from a less well represented group, the process of building a business and capital raising can be even more challenging.  Sometimes this is due to "distance travelled" to get to the starting line - less well represented founders may have less access to "friends and family" capital, to have less of a network and less social capital and may not have the "freedom to fail" which may affect their risk appetite. 

It was clear from our discussions with venture capital investors and founders of firms that the landscape for diverse founders had certain unique challenges that exacerbated the risks of entrepreneurship and altered the chances of success. Inspired by compelling articles on the area, such as “The Delusion around Inclusion” by Austin Clements (https://medium.com/@austinlac/the-delusion-around-inclusion-34bc30e89694) and a VCs Guide to investing in black founders by James Norman (https://hbr.org/2020/06/a-vcs-guide-to-investing-in-black-founders) we set out to develop a series focusing solely on this issue and incorporating a global perspective. Hear from: 

Yvonne Bajela, who is an investor in early-stage companies at Impact X Capital, which invests in start-ups across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  She was listed as a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30.

Ezechi Britton, who a Founding Member, Principal and CTO in residence at Impact X Capital. He previously was the co-founder of Neyber, a financial wellbeing provider where he was also Chief Technology Officer.   He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Code Untapped, a digital skills accelerator, which runs ideathons, innovation labs, coding workshops and other events to give underrepresented and diverse technologists the opportunity to showcase what they can do.

Austin Clements who is a partner at Slauson & Co. a Los Angeles based venture capital firm that provides pre-seed and seed funding to a range of founders. He is a Kaufman Fellow, and has a strong interest in economic empowerment.  He was previously Chair of PledgeLA, an alliance between LA’s venture capital community, Annenberg Foundation, and the Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti.

McKeever (Mac) Conwell, II, who is Managing Partner at RareBreed Ventures, a venture capital firm based in the Baltimore area.  RareBreed Ventures is a pre-seed fund that aims to invest in exceptional founders outside the large tech ecosystems earlier than everyone else.

Shalom Lloyd, who after a career of over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry has gone on to found two businesses - she is the founder of Naturally Tribal skincare, a beauty line based on traditional remedies including shea butter, which she developed initially to cure her son’s eczema. She is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of eMQT, described as “the Bridge between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Africa” which facilitates clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies in Africa. 

Mark Mwangi, who is the founder of Amitruck, a Kenya based company which connects transporters (whether a motor-bike, pick u, van or even a large articulated truck) directly to clients, and aims to ensure convenient pricing and cut out a large part of the costs of goods. 

James Norman, who is CEO at Pilotly, a market research platform for creative content.  He is a Partner at Transparent Collective, a group of founders dedicated to increasing exposure and access to Silicon Valley for African-American and Latino/Hispanic men and women.  He is a serial entrepreneur, who built his first company at the age of 16.

Shruti Van Dyke Gandhi, who is General Partner and Founding Engineer at Array Ventures which invests in enterprise deep tech early-stage companies. She spent her early career as a developer on mainframe security, collaboration tools, and data analytics. 

This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.