You are one of the first 100 Black women who have raised over $1M in investment for your first company. Can you talk about what closed those deals for you, and what you have seen as the major obstacles Black women have had in securing capital to launch or scaling their companies?

I think it’s interesting because when we raised the money for my first company, I had a different perception of what that was going to be like.  I learned a lot about how our deal was structured, and the loss of power that we had in terms of our board controls. But we also had a great product. We were truly one of the first agencies to manage bloggers as talent. So we saw it, we proved it, we were still ahead of the market. And many of our early founders are now seven and eight-figure household names, because of what we were able to accomplish. 

It also led me to want to start BrainTrust Founders Studio and then ultimately  BrainTrust Fund, I wanted to be the investor that I didn’t have, I wanted to have more access to capital from people who look like me. If you can identify the right investors who understand what you’re doing, have your numbers in place, be operationally sound, and show growth in your business, those are some of the obstacles that I think we can overcome. 

And that’s why I’m constantly so proud of our limited partners in BrainTrust Fund. 72 percent of our investors are women, and the majority are women of color. And so the more we can create access to spaces so we can have diverse investors sitting at the table making these decisions, I think that will also help us with the obstacles that we face.