Best Success Story

Our success is reflected by the people and companies that have come out of our community and how well they’re doing. We recently attended the launch event for Citizen Made, which was one of our companies co-founded by Rachel Brooks. Citizen Made is not only doing well and has raised a couple of rounds of funding, but they also won the L’Oreal Digital Prize at Women 2.0. And this was after they attended our event and training program.

Two of our four pitch finalists from FOCUS100 became finalists at Tech Stars; the first time black women had really ever become finalists at Tech Stars before. Thirty percent of the 40 or so companies that attended FOCUS100 received next step meetings with venture capitalists and angel investors, and out of that 30%, approximately seven received actual funding.

[hr]

My background is a research scientist, and I really believe in showing people numbers. The anecdotal evidence is really powerful when you’re telling a story, but when it comes down to it, it’s about the numbers. And our numbers don’t lie.

[hr]

We have more that are in the process of receiving funding, but those seven have closed rounds and closed funding from individuals and institutions. My background is a research scientist, and I really believe in showing people numbers. The anecdotal evidence is really powerful when you’re telling a story, but when it comes down to it, it’s about the numbers. And our numbers don’t lie. I think that’s the biggest success.

We have some of the highest engagement statistics in terms of social media, after our events. Our START ATL event only had about 100-130 attendees. We purposefully don’t launch huge events because it’s hard for people to connect with each other when you have a 5,000 attendee event. But outside of that, we had an engagement and a reach of approximately 1.3 million on Twitter, and that was as a result of this small conference. I think that’s another example of the power of what we do. Our people and the people who attend our conferences and what they’re doing after they come through us is a testament to our success.

Biggest Startup Challenge

The biggest challenge was the notion that black women (and black people) don’t do tech. That was the hardest challenge for us; that our communities aren’t engaged in technology.

I mean, every statistic totally dispels that, but I feel that there is still this belief. I think it has to do with the fact that tech is such an insular community. Whether people want to believe it or not, it is an insular community.

When you go into the upper echelons, particularly in the startup communities, you don’t see a lot of black folks. And if that’s the only community in which you’re interacting, of course you would think that black people aren’t interested in tech. But we really are.

When you get out and look at some of the statistics in terms of the black community’s engagement on Twitter, black women’s usage of web, their usage of social media, e-commerce etc. —I mean, the statistics overwhelmingly show how engaged we are in this particular industry.

So I think that was the hardest part for us. We had people tell me, frankly to my face, that there weren’t enough black women to have an event, and I thought that was really kind of funny. And a lot of the opinions came from small, insular communities; but we all know that is not true.

The way we overcame this challenge was by simply combating it with data. It’s very hard for people to argue with you when you have data and statistics from outside sources backing you up. We won people over by having the facts behind us.

#1 Tip for Entrepreneurs

Be original. I think people underestimate originality.

It’s pretty self-explanatory, but be yourself. I don’t run the day-to-day operations of The Budget Fashionista anymore, but I do sit in on some of our meetings and we hear pitches for “Pinterest for dogs” or “Pinterest for cats” or “Pinterest for car enthusiasts”. Why would anybody use that? Just use Pinterest!

We keep hearing of “me-tooism”, instead of really being creative. And some of the best companies are those that either expand on something that’s existing and make it better, find a better way to present it, or things that are just really innovative solutions to a problem.

I think there are a lot of “me-tooisms” happening in tech right now of people following whatever the hot trend is right now and making a company based on that.

Be original, even though it’s hard to not copy what’s already been done.

Stay connected with Kathryn on Twitter.

This interview has been edited and condensed.