Post by captaggie on Jul 21, 2014 17:39:53 GMT -5
The Black Entrepreneur Trying to End Startup Racism Is Almost Out of Cash
By Anita Li
Bill Cunningham is wearing the requisite hipster uniform of thick black-framed glasses, a spring-tone plaid shirt and blue jeans. He’s sitting in a conference room at the Wonder Bread Factory, a four-story, century-old brick building redeveloped into a workspace for entrepreneurs.
It’s your stereotypical startup environment, but Cunningham doesn’t fit in with his surroundings.
At 57, he’s at least 30 years older than the dozens of young, beanie-wearing 20-somethings running various media and tech companies around him. His clothes are a little too ironed. His enthusiasm, a little too studied. Like a professorial salesman, Cunningham is verbose and formal; his conversational style contrasts with the casual confidence his younger counterparts give off.
“Look, I’ve been doing this for a very long time,” he says. His eyes, magnified through thick lenses, look tired.
Cunningham’s entrepreneurial career spans four decades, and he’s experienced failure — perhaps more than most. One of his latest ventures, Blackcrowdfunding.net, is a rewards-based crowdfunding site targeted to African-Americans. It seeks to help people like him overcome roadblocks unique to their race. Cunningham’s ultimate goal for the site is to close the white-black entrepreneurship gap, and eventually the white-black wealth gap.
He and his team of two, Henry Burger and Howard Williams — also African-American — make up National Crowdfunding Services, an LLC with holdings that include Blackcrowdfunding.net and the Washington D.C. Crowdfunding Challenge. The former is one of several minority-focused crowdfunding sites that have popped up in the past year, including Blackstartup.com and Crowdismo.com, a platform catered to Latinos.
They all share one goal: to combat the discriminatory barriers to funding that minority businesses face, by offering alternative resources...
Entire Article
By Anita Li
Bill Cunningham is wearing the requisite hipster uniform of thick black-framed glasses, a spring-tone plaid shirt and blue jeans. He’s sitting in a conference room at the Wonder Bread Factory, a four-story, century-old brick building redeveloped into a workspace for entrepreneurs.
It’s your stereotypical startup environment, but Cunningham doesn’t fit in with his surroundings.
At 57, he’s at least 30 years older than the dozens of young, beanie-wearing 20-somethings running various media and tech companies around him. His clothes are a little too ironed. His enthusiasm, a little too studied. Like a professorial salesman, Cunningham is verbose and formal; his conversational style contrasts with the casual confidence his younger counterparts give off.
“Look, I’ve been doing this for a very long time,” he says. His eyes, magnified through thick lenses, look tired.
Cunningham’s entrepreneurial career spans four decades, and he’s experienced failure — perhaps more than most. One of his latest ventures, Blackcrowdfunding.net, is a rewards-based crowdfunding site targeted to African-Americans. It seeks to help people like him overcome roadblocks unique to their race. Cunningham’s ultimate goal for the site is to close the white-black entrepreneurship gap, and eventually the white-black wealth gap.
He and his team of two, Henry Burger and Howard Williams — also African-American — make up National Crowdfunding Services, an LLC with holdings that include Blackcrowdfunding.net and the Washington D.C. Crowdfunding Challenge. The former is one of several minority-focused crowdfunding sites that have popped up in the past year, including Blackstartup.com and Crowdismo.com, a platform catered to Latinos.
They all share one goal: to combat the discriminatory barriers to funding that minority businesses face, by offering alternative resources...
Entire Article
