💥 Beyonce, Chadwick, underestimated investors, community, free annual subscriptions, and more
A bi-weekly newsletter of curated resources for early-stage founders, funders, and friends.
Welcome to Lolita’s Newsletter! We share up-to-date and nugget-sized practical resources and advice for early-stage founders, funders, and friends. We are at 4,515 members. To access exclusive content, office hours, join our Slack community, and get your pitch deck reviewed become an annual subscriber or gift a subscription.
Did you know? Beyonce and I celebrated our birthdays Friday (unfortunately, not together). Also, as you get older, it turns out your knees start to hurt. There are liabilities to owning parody accounts. The latest SEC’s “accredited investor” definition could have made it easier for more to invest and create generational wealth. And Chadwick Boseman (RIP) struck a chord when he said this:
Last issue, I shared my definition of underestimated founders. Today, I want to talk about underestimated investors.
When I think of underestimated investors I think of investors that have been inaccurately thought to be less capable because they don’t fit Silicon Valley archetypes (think VC starter- kit peeps) but are indeed able to identify unicorns, invest and generate outsized returns for their funds and their LPs.
We know that we’ll make huge returns by leveraging the last arbitrage opportunity: investing in the best (underestimated) founders. And, in order to access these founders, investment firms must recruit investors from underestimated communities.
To bring in representation across communities at The Community Fund, Jesse and I are being intentional about how and who we recruit to fill the 9 investment partner roles. For example, instead of recruiting a team behind closed doors, we chose to do a soft-launch of the fund so that we could bring in the community and open up a public application for anyone to apply. And, instead of just asking questions to assess the investor's potential, we are also asking about things like ethnicity, gender identity, and differentiated deal-flow/networks — paying close attention to community reach outside of the VC industry’s current status quo.
So, we’re excited to share we’ve received +240 applications this week from pretty impressive candidates. However, we can still improve our reach across communities. Currently, our applicant breakdown includes:
✨ White 31%, Black 20%, Multiracial 16%, South Asian 10%, Latinx 9%, East Asian 4%, Middle Eastern 2%, Pacific Islander 1%, (7% did not share)
🙂 Man 61%, Woman 36%, Agender 1%, (2% did not share)
🌈 LGBTQ+ 6%, non-LGBTQ 87%, (7% did not share)
I feel strongly that The Community Fund’s team make-up will be heavily influenced by the community’s support. If you’d like to help us get to better community representation in our applicant pool, apply or share our application link with investors, founders, and operators who fit the criteria below by 9/15. And thank you in advance! 💥
✨ Lolita Taub
link.tree | twitter
ICYMI: Submit your co for investment consideration. Startup-Investor Matching Tool intros have led to 8 checks written to founders. Had a fun Q&A with Protocol + 🌟 Biz! Bostinno gave me a shout-out for mentoring underestimated founders. I joined All Raise's Visionary Voices speaker initiative to end manels. Congrats!
Jesse Middleton and me for soft-launching The Community Fund to invest in community-driven companies. Arlan Hamilton, Christie Pitts, and Brittany David for Backstage Capital’s 5 year anniversary. Sherrell Dorsey for taking on her first investor. Jesse Draper for joining Trust & Will’s board. Brittany Rhodes, Carolyn Pitt, Brantly Fulton, Marcus Blackwell, James Lott, and Reamonn Soto for being awardees of HBCUvc’s Summer Lab Fund. Maria Salamance, Monique Woodard, Maren Bannon, Elizabeth Yin, Monique Villa, Sydney Thomas, and more for joining All Raise’s Visionary Voices initiative.
Funders
Bloomberg | Black Venture Capitalists Confront Silicon Valley’s Quiet Racism
Axios | Venture capital firms to include "diversity riders" in term sheets
Forbes | How Emerging VC Fund Managers Should Think About Their LP Fundraising Strategies
Operators Collective | Your Legal Checklist for Angel Investing
The Community Fund | Apply to become an Investment Partner
VC Jobs | Find a VC job using this search engine
Pam Kostka | A new type of VC has a arrived
Andy Ayim | Three ways investors can add value
SPONSOR
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Corigin Ventures is sponsoring annual newsletter subscriptions for 3 underestimated founders. Founders will get the bi-weekly newsletter, access to exclusive content, office hours, a Slack community, and pitch deck feedback.
✨✨✨ If you want a free annual subscription, reply to the hyperlinked tweet below by 9/7. Awardees will be announced 9/8.
Founders
Forbes | The Importance of Founder-Market Fit
Investment Consideration | Submit your co to the Startup-Investor Mvatching Tool
Guide | First-Time Founders Resource Guide
Legal | Founder legal guidance from lawyer and friend Ed Zimmerman
Y Combinator | YC Startup Library
Gumroad | Build a Winning Pitch Deck
AllRaise | Apply to their free Preparing for Seed program by 9/23
Janine Sickmeyer | How to build an app as a non-technical founders
Elizabeth Yin | Should you do an accelerator
Lenny Rachitsky | How to increase retention
Friends
Jewel Burks Solomon | Why some of us will always hold multiple jobs
Mac Reddin | How software is eating the world, and community is eating software
Money
Founder Grants | +80 grants for founders
Investors | Founders of Color friendly investors
Equity Crowdfunding | Raise up to $1 million on Republic
Non-dilutive capital | Create a profile to find non-dilutive capital on INTRO
Hello Alice | Apply for grants <$50K by 9/15
BetaBoom | Female founders apply to pitch for $5K by 9/13
✨ 🙂 How can I help you? Find out in this ➡️ Notion page!