Northwestern Mutual, a financial services organization, has announced this year’s fall cohort of five Black-owned tech startups to its Black Founder Accelerator program for the third year.
Now in its third year, the accelerator is one of the core components of Northwestern Mutual’s Sustained Action for Racial Equity (SARE) initiative.
SARE was created to advance bold, sustainable change that accelerates the company’s commitment to fight racism, prejudice, and social injustice, focusing on the Black and African American community.
The Black Founder Accelerator
The accelerator invests in up to 10 companies per year – two cohorts of five – led by Black founders.
In addition to a $100,000 investment, each startup participating in the 12-week accelerator program will have access to experienced mentors, technologists, industry experts, angel investors, and venture capitalists.
Additionally, there is the opportunity for deals and perks from vendors such as Amazon, PayPal, and Microsft and weekly cohort programming.
The accelerator, headed by senior director Precious Drews, is run in partnership with gener8tor, which brings together startup founders, investors, corporations, job seekers, and universities.
With Black founders receiving less than 1% of venture capital funding annually, the collaboration is committed to investing in and supporting Black entreprenuers to help close the funding gap and advance companies and communities.
“This program’s success is an honest reflection of our company’s unwavering support to create a more diverse industry by helping Black founders propel their businesses forward,” said Craig Schedler, managing director of Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, in a press release.
“We are confident that this next cohort of bright entrepreneurs will use the resources provided in this program to become leaders in their respective sectors.”
Meet the newest participants:
CashEx – Kingsley Ezeani
CashEx is a digital bank for immigrants, taking away the financial stress during their migration journey by offering guidance and advice with building credit and establishing a US bank account.
Shur – Kahlil Byrd
Shur promotes economic freedom and generational wealth for student loan borrowers by helping them eliminate early mistakes, have financial plans, and understand credit.
ModernTax – Matthew Parker
ModernTax simplifies underwriting by providing companies with on-demand tax and financial information on their customers for a better understanding of a company’s financial health.
Athlytic – Ashton Keys
Athylytic bridges the gap between brands and student-athletes by providing a connection for name, image, and likeness campaigns to pair brands with suitable athletes for ROI-driven endorsement campaigns.
Foresight – Jannae Gammage
Foresight leverages natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to assess credit risk, fraud, and bias.
Featured image: Jannae Gammage (Credit: Foresight)
