Discover how Black Girl Ventures is empowering women entrepreneurs by providing access to capital, capacity building programs, and community support.
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.
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 450 women of color, held over 50 BGV Pitch Programs across 15 cities and served over 10,000 founders. BGV pitch participants are collectively generating over $10M in revenue and supporting 3,000 jobs. BGV currently has three signature programs (BGV Pitch, BGV NextGen, BGV Emerging Leaders) and is now the largest ecosystem builder for Black/Brown women founders on the East Coast.
Currently, black women are starting businesses at 6 times the national average, but are not seeing the same receipts as other founders. There are 3 major areas where women are in need of support: access to capital, access to influential networks and the ability to hire employees. The lack of access to capital for women is becoming a more prevalent part of the entrepreneurial conversation however solutions to solve the issue are still evolving. Black Girl Ventures is specifically focused on creating access to capital for women. All programming is centered on addressing this issue head on.
Historically, African Americans have been finding creative ways to fund themselves for decades. The Black Girl Ventures Pitch Competition is patterned after the “Rent Party.” In the early 1920’s over 200, 000 Blacks migrated to Harlem for job opportunities. Due to discriminatory rental rates it became challenging to afford living expenses. Harlemnites would charge an admission fee, invite musicians to play and raise the money to pay the rent with basement parties. These parties were organized an attended by great Black artists such as Langston Hughes, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, etc.
