🗳 Voting, Latina Equal Pay Day, the SEC, investors, VC, and lots of money
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 5,232 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.
🗳 VOTE
Last week, Josh, my mom, and I sat to watch the presidential debate and my mom shared a story (below) that really stopped me in my tracks and reminded me why it’s important to vote. Many of our parents came to this country to give our families a better life. That better life is contingent on who we hire to the leadership of this country. We have the power to vote for who leads through our vote. So, please, on November 3rd, go out and vote. Our future depends on it.
PS I’m bullish on Kamala Harris pushing and executing to make the US a more equitable country.
🤔 LATINA EQUAL PAY DAY
Did you know that Thursday was Latina Equal Pay Day? Wondering why it’s a thing? Latina women are, on average, paid 55 cents for every dollar their white-male counterparts make. We need Latina Equal Pay.
If you believe in equal pay for equal work, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, support the Paycheck Fairness Act and, in general, equity-based legislation.
💰 SEC AND CREATING WEALTH
On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to share ideas on how to enable wealth creation for underestimated communities with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Chairman Jay Clayton at the "Impact the Wealth Gap: a roundtable reimagined."
Below are two ideas that I proposed to the SEC to help enable wealth creation for underestimated communities.
Loosen up the accredited investor’s definition to allow more underestimated people to invest in both startups and venture capital funds, especially those led by emerging fund managers (there’s a large portion of us, emerging fund managers, who are people of color and women). It makes no sense that anyone can gamble on the LOTTO but not everyone is able to invest in startups and funds to make money.
Remove the limit of the number of limited partners that funds can take on to allow fund managers to take smaller checks that would come from people of color and women. Currently, fund managers have to consider their LP limit and take bigger checks.
Time will tell if the SEC takes these ideas to heart and executes. 🤞🏽✨
If you’re curious to read other ideas on how the SEC can enable underestimated communities to create generational wealth, check out the thread. 🧵
✨ Lolita Taub
link.tree | twitter
ICYMI: Crunchbase + WSJ + Forbes featured The Community Fund and me. I was a judge at the Harlem Capital x Forbes More Equity Pitch Competition. Flik quoted me in their Female Founders Report. Submit your co for investment consideration here. Congrats!
Aaron Holiday and Nnamdi Okike and the 645 Venture team for raising a $160M fund. Kesha Cash for raising $55M for the Impact America Fund. Deon Nicholas for raising $17M for Forethought. Yawa Aning for raising $2.7M for Malomo. Tiffany Dufu for raising $2M for The Cru. Calvin Williams for raising $1.5M for Freeman Capital. Erika Hairston and Arnelle Ansong at Edlyft for raising $1.4M in their seed round. Jasmine Jones for raising $1.2M for Cherry Blossom Intimates. Bea Acevedo for raising $1M for Suma Wealth (portfolio company). Kara Nortman for becoming Co-Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures. Sydney for becoming Principal at Precursor VC. Kiera Smalls for making Philly Mags 6 Most Influential Philadelphians Right Now list. Melissa Z. Moore on her new role leading Series A+ founder programming at All Raise. Cheryl Campos and Janine Yorio, for the launch of Republic VC podcast. Sydney Davis for winning Harlem Capital X Forbes pitch competition.
Funders
Women in VC | Report: The Untapped Potential of Women-Led Funds
Forbes | How (And Why) To Make Venture Funding More Equitable
Women 2.0 | Venture Diversity is Burdened by the Unnecessary Need for Wealth
Cowboy Ventures | Breaking Into & Thriving in VC
Rarebreed Ventures | Why we ultimately decided not to do a rolling fund
Startup-Investor Matching Tool | Investors join to receive customized deal flow
Plexo Capital | Apply for their investor in residence opening
SPONSOR
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Backstage Capital now syndicates some of our best deals (including follow-on for current portfolio companies) with new and established investors. Visit BackstageCrowd.com to join more than 2,000 accredited and nonaccredited investors who have signed up to see our deal flow since June 2020.
🎉🎉🎉 It’s About Damn Time, the new book by Arlan Hamilton, founder of Backstage Capital, is sponsoring annual newsletter subscriptions for 3 underestimated founders. Let me know if you want one by 11/6 here. Founders
Flik | Report: Female Founders 2020
Crunchbase | See the top Black and Latinx founder-friendly micro-VC funds
Ed Zimmerman | Founder startup guide on legal issues thread
Jessica Lin | How to best prepare an an enterprise sales pipeline review
AfroTech | The largest Black tech community conference takes place 11/9-14
Vamos Ventures | The "Fundraising—What Works" panel is happening 11/12
The Fund | Apply to an 8-week program for new early-stage founders by 11/20
Target | Apply to the Takeoff Beauty Accelerator by 11/30
Looking for more founder knowledge? Check out my courses.
Money
Stitch Fix | BIPOC fashion founders apply for a $25k grant by 10/31
Founder Institute | +700 accelerators, investors and more for black founders
Founder Grants | +80 grants for founders
Equity Crowdfunding | Raise up to $1 million on Republic
The Upswing Fund | Grants for founders focused on POC/LGBTQ+ teens
Non-dilutive capital | Create a profile to find non-dilutive capital on INTRO
Startup-Investor Matching Tool | Submit your co for investment consideration
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✨ 🙂 How can I help you? Find out in this ➡️ Notion page!
Thank you so much for continuing to push for the expanded definition of Accredited Investors! Well, and of course for everything else you do.