I don’t know if it surprised me as much as it made me sad– here’s why I had to keep doing this work, even whenever it’s hard. I had a founder who had a brand. And it wasn’t until after the murder of George Floyd that she even felt comfortable putting her picture on her website. And that’s because she had brands for eczema and psoriasis and these things, and she was concerned, and rightfully so, that if people saw a Black founder they would only think that that product was for Black people. And that is something that I hear and see time and time again.
And in our 2024 Economic Advancement report, we have shown that Black founders are creating companies and brands for the majority of consumers. But then when you’re experiencing it when you see the pain, because you know that you’ll be stereotyped. It’s surprising, it’s alarming. It’s sad. It’s not shocking because of the industry that we’re in and we see the numbers.
I think the other thing with Black founders that I distinctly know, as women is our ingenuity, our tenacity, and our ability to find a way to bootstrap. We’re all bootstrapping– the majority of us are bootstrapping founders. And so our ability to create a way out of no way, and our ability to navigate get to the end, has been encouraging to see. We are such a community; we pride ourselves on being in a community, helping each other, and sharing information.
