😓 This week, EFH, rev-based fundraising, washers + dryers, active investors, and more
A practical bi-weekly newsletter for founders, funders, and operator friends.
Welcome new subscribers. It’s been a devastating and draining week.
Witnessing racial discrimination and injustice is heartwrenching. It’s scarier to be a person of color right now and it’s also harder to see the positive in anything. But, I’ll try. I’m grateful that Ethal’s Club is holding a healing & grieving session, that allies, like Aaron Levi and Joelle Emerson, are putting money into addressing racial injustice, that there are many ways to make a difference, and that the community is reaching out to support each other.
There are also now more than 40 million people unemployed and it’s starting a new wave of entrepreneurs. Americans are getting scrappy, turning WFH to EFH (h/t Nikhil), and generating a good chunk of change. People are generating $20K on online courses, $40K on books, $50K on newsletters, $100M on podcasts, and more, through their side-hustles. Will you pick up a side-hustle, and if so, will you use the cash generated to support the community, bootstrap your company, or something else?
I’m leaning into this labor market shift to make money to invest in more underestimated founders. So, if you find value in this newsletter or in the content I share on Twitter or Medium, become a paid subscriber to my newsletter, gift a subscription, or become a patron on Patreon.
In other news, Josh got us an Orbi (now we have a single WiFi network for our entire home). My tweet resulted in a $50K investment from Janine Sickmeyer to Chrissy Cowdrey and Stagger. Josh and I wrote a piece on enabling founder-access to capital through our startup-fund matching tool and the tool, to date, has led to 2-term sheets and 1 investment. Also, we made an investment in Julia Niiro and MilkRun!
💖Lolita Taub
lolitataub.co | twitter
ICYMI: Listen to my podcast interview w/Janine. Hear my thoughts on fundraising amid COVID at the Paperstreet Demo Day. Submit your co for investment consideration. Book a 1:1.Shoutouts
Congrats! Dawn Dickenson for raising over $1M for PopCom. Joy Valerie for launching her new business site. Katharine Jiang and Janine Sickmeyer for making their first angel investment. Megan Kelly for joining First Round as an investor. Denise Woodward for getting Target to sell Partake Foods in-house. Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Dixon for launching a partnership between Founders Gym and Microsoft. Arlan Hamilton, Lena Waithe, Monique Woodward, Andrea Barrica on making FastCo’s 50 Queer List. Chian Gong for making Partner at Reach VC. Itxaso del Palacio for making Partner at Notion Capital.
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Here is a list of 135 funds that are investing in underestimated founders, black female founder resources, and one on +500 accelerators. For active angels, check out the thread below.