By Brittany Bailer
FounderTribes, a tech start-up that connects entrepreneurs to investors and mentors that they might otherwise find it difficult to access, will host an HBCU Homecoming Bootcamp event at Howard University School of Law’s Moot Court Room on June 16-17, 2022. Danielle Holley-Walker, dean of Howard University School of Law, will be a featured speaker.
FounderTribes was founded by Gary Stewart, a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where he has recently been a visiting lecturer of entrepreneurship. The start-up focuses on opening closed professional networks, especially for minority entrepreneurs. Start-up founders pitch their business ideas to a community of entrepreneurs and investors that identify potential problem areas. Once a company is deemed fundable, FounderTribes’ algorithms match each entrepreneur to investors that are statistically more likely to fund their business.
“It’s an honor to collaborate with Howard Law, which has a singular importance in the history of the African American community. Howard exists precisely because while talent is distributed equally, opportunity is not,” said Stewart. “Events like the HBCU Bootcamp are just one step in trying to correct this historic disadvantage in the field of entrepreneurship, given that black and Latino founders get less than 3% of venture capital funding, despite making up more than 32% of the population. Our hope is that founders and the funders willing to give everyone a fair shot will continue to build an inclusive and supportive community on the FounderTribes platform, which anyone can download on the app stores.”
The two-day event will feature VIP venture capitalists representing more than $18 billion of assets under management, entrepreneurs and ecosystem players all focused on supporting overlooked company founders. Guest speakers include prominent Howard alumni, including Marcus Glover (class of ‘91), general and managing partner at Lockstep Ventures, and Abraham J. Williamson (class of ‘14), who after Howard pursued a law degree at Harvard Law School and is now a law firm entrepreneur. Other speakers include Jen Wong, COO of Reddit; Matt Turck, managing partner of FirstMark Capital, a $2 billion fund that backed such household names as Airbnb, Shopify and Pinterest; Bhaskar Ghosh, a partner and CTO at 8VC, a $1.9bn fund launched by the co-founder of Palantir; Alice Vilma, a managing director at Morgan Stanley and one of the leaders of its Multicultural Innovation Lab; and Felecia Hatcher, the CEO of Black Ambition, a non-profit co-founded by musical superstar Pharrell Williams that is currently offering a $1 million prize to Black and Latinx founders.
