Our mission is to provide Black/Brown woman-identifying founders with access to community, capital, and capacity building in order to meet business milestones that lead to economic advancement through entrepreneurship. They fund tech-anabled revenue generating businesses under $1 million founded by people who identify as black/brown and woman.
Founded in 2016 by Serial Entrepreneur and Computer Scientist Shelly Bell, The Black Girl Ventures Foundation (BGV) addresses the unique challenges Black/Brown women face in accessing social and financial capital to grow their businesses. The BGV Style pitch competition is the largest pitch competition globally for Black/Brown women founders. It uniquely combines the premise of Shark Tank and Kickstarter by activating community participation in donating to support women-owned businesses directly. We have funded 264 women of color, held over 30 BGV Pitch Programs across 12 cities and served over 2,000 participants. BGV pitch participants are collectively generating over $10M in revenue and supporting 3,000 jobs. BGV is now the largest ecosystem builder for Black/Brown women founders on the East Coast.
The BGV Pitch Program flips the traditional pitch experience on its head: we coach entrepreneurs, host a live crowdfunded pitch competition, then connect them to community and professionals to support them on their journey. We democratize funding by allowing the audience to vote with their dollars using the Raisify platform for the founders whose pitch they favor. Each founder has 3 minutes to pitch and a 3 minute Q&A from the audience. The person with the most votes wins (not the most money raised). The live-crowdfunding event is a high-energy, fun, focused, and supportive environment that includes community in being a part of the entrepreneurial journey.