VISIBLE NEWS
Visible Hands is the most trusted platformfor early-stage, overlooked founders building high-growth startups.
Happy Friday, VH community,
We hope this past week brought lots of love and self-care your way and that you had time to celebrate yourself and all that you do!
This week at VH, we celebrated our ACES founders (aka Alumni from our different accelerator and fellowship programs) in NYC with an ACES founder dinner. A huge thank you goes out to the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) for partnering with us to support the ACES community! We enjoyed catching up with one another over delicious food and connecting with ACES from all three cohorts: Visionaries Cohort 1, Visionaries Cohort 2, and VHLX. We also enjoyed hear from Rochelle Stewart, who leads the New & Strategic Channels team within SVB, and Erica Minnihan, General Partner of Reign Ventures.
Rochelle and her team are uniquely focused on working with mission-aligned partners like us at VH to help close the access and opportunity gap for underrepresented founders. Their team regularly hosts programming for partners and clients and provides advice and connections across the SVB platform, including introductions to investors and connectivity to the broader SVB network.This week, we also proudly finalized the first cohort for our new VHNYC Fellowship program, in partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC)! A more official announcement will be on its way in the next month to reveal the 20 selected founders for our inaugural VHNYC cohort - stay tuned so you don't miss it!
Read on for this week's roundup of more VH news, founder resources, events, and more.
Be well,
The VH Team
VH ACES (alumni) founders with the VH and SVB team at our first ACES dinner in NYC.
This week, we held our first ACES dinner in NYC for local cohort alumni from our different programs, in partnership with SVB. We had a wonderful time catching up with our founders and are excited for the next dinner happening in San Francisco next week!
ICYMI: Last week, our GPs held the first VH fireside chat for ACES founders to give their advice on all things VC, investing, entrepreneurship and more. We'll be sharing highlights from that chat across our socials - see our first highlight with VH Co-Founder & GP Justin Kang's advice on how to best approach networking here.
Congratulations to VH Associate Darrel Frater who was chosen as the Title Belt Champ for this past week's PrimeTime VC debate!
'21 Visionary Team theBOM at their Take Space partnership event with Lululemon.
Founder Updates, Asks, and Wins:
'22 Visionary Nicodemus Madehdou of JumpButton Studio is organizing the upcoming PHL Gaming event in Philly on February 25th! Click here to learn more and register!
'22 Visionary Sarah Spear of Empowered Together was recently featured here on Founder10X to talk about her startup!
Congratulations to '21 Visionary Devin Dixon of Bingewave for being chosen as one of the members of the 18th cohort for Startup Runway!
Congratulations to '21 Visionary Michelle Dalzon of theBOM on her successful collaboration this past week with lululemon for the Take Space Wellness festival!
Congratulations to '21 Visionary Rebecca Kersch of TANGapp for her recent features in Manila Standard and on CNN this past week!
Congratulations to '21 Visionary Marcus Collins of NestedFunds for being selected for Techstars Miami!
Congratulations to '22 Visionary Anj Fayemi of Rivet who recently got the opportunity to interview Grammy-award winning rapper Lupe Fiasco in-person!
➕ Founder funding, community resources, and events:
Braze is excited to give more Black-founded businesses the opportunity to grow, with a goal of accepting 15 new qualified businesses to its Braze Tech for Black Founders program. Learn more and apply here by February 19th.
Pear VC is looking for women founders with a background in STEM or engineering working on a startup idea for their Spring 2023 cohort launching in March. Learn more and apply here by February 20th to join this intimate founder circle of female engineers, guided by successful female founders and leaders!
The FedEx Small Business Grant Contest is a grant program started by FedEx in 2012 to award U.S. based small businesses with grants to enhance their businesses. Learn more and apply here by February 21st.
The BOSS Network is providing grants for Black women entrepreneurs and access to a 1-year mentorship program to assist in their business growth. Learn more and apply here by February 24th.
The MBDA is seeking applications for its new $93.5 million program grant competition to assist minority and other underserved entrepreneurs launch and grow their businesses. Check here for more details and to apply by February 28th.
Showcase your business at F3 Ventures' inaugural American F3ST in Atlanta on March 31 2023 - April 2 2023! Pitch at F3ST will feature 9 female founders, 3 of whom will receive their share of $30K in funding. Learn more and apply here by February 28th.
UVFC Founder's Lab is hosting a virtual office hour event connecting female and minority founders with venture investors. Apply to attend and learn more here by March 15th.
Camelback Ventures is looking for BIPOC, women, & non-binary entrepreneurs making a positive impact in their communities through education and/or technology. The Camelback Fellowship provides $40k in funding, a dedicated venture coach, a tight-knit community, and an entrepreneurial curriculum. Apply here by March 20th.
Applications are open now for The Workers Lab: Innovation Fund, which funds early-stage ideas centered around making the ways our country serves workers more modern and inclusive. Learn more and apply here by March 27th.
🌎 Ecosystem Spotlights:
Applications are open and rolling for the Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab! It is an in-house startup accelerator promoting financial inclusion and providing underrepresented entrepreneurs of tech and tech-enabled startups with much-needed access to capital - along with the tools, resources and connections they need to grow and thrive. Learn more and apply here.
Our friends at Republic are launching a newsletter to share their founder resources, events, and more - sign up to subscribe here!
Our friends at AWS are opening applications soon for the AWS Impact Accelerator: Latino Founders program! Click here to learn more about the accelerator and how you can apply starting on March 8th.
SPARK Accel, the nation’s first virtual accelerator and network for Taiwanese American entrepreneurs and leaders, is gearing up for its second program in April 2023! Applications are now LIVE for our spring cohort founders! Learn more and apply here by March 13th!
Graham & Walker is thrilled to bring their most impactful program for women founders to Seattle! Founder Day is a half day of high-impact high-substance programming designed to help early-stage founders meaningfully move their businesses forward. Up next is Seattle on March 15th. Learn more and register here.
Raise Forum is now accepting applications from post-revenue startups based in the Southeast seeking funding between $500,000 and $5 million. Learn more and apply here by March 20th.
MIT Solve’s Global Challenges seek social entrepreneurs who are using technology to solve today’s most pressing problems. Those selected as a Solver team join a nine-month support program, receive access to over $1 million in funding, grants, and investments, join a powerful network of impact-minded leaders, receive coaching and strategic advice from experts, and gain exposure in the media, among many other benefits. Learn more and apply here by May 9th.
💼 Featured Jobs:
VHLX Team CZero is currently hiring a customer success lead, and and mid-level backend software engineer! Learn more about the roles and apply here.
Forum is hiring! They're looking for a Managing Director to join their team of best-in-class team of investors, innovators and operators. Learn more and apply here.
'22 Visionary Team Rivet is searching for a marketing hire! Learn more about the open Head of Marketing job here.
🧑🏽💻 What we are watching, reading, or listening to:
Watching: Perfect Match, Netflix
Listening: Work Party, podcast on Spotify
If you'd like your founder resource or event/conference to be featured in our weekly newsletter, shoot us a message at kerry@visiblehands.vc
"High-growth entrepreneurship should not be reserved for the privileged few."
Follow us on our social media channels!
