Black entrepreneurs lead the way in the creation of new businesses, but they often cannot get the necessary funding to get their business off the ground. The Fearless Fund is on a mission to change that, and help Black business owners get venture capital. The fund also offers a unique grant program meant to help entrepreneurs with growth, peer coaching, and more, including grants between $10,000 and $20,000.  Arian Simone, Co-Founder and General Partner of Fearless Fund, joins Closing Bell to discuss the Fund's mission, how it helps Black entrepreneurs, and more. 

Closing Bell

Fearless Fund Helps WOC-Led Businesses Bridge the Funding Gap

so black women entrepreneurs often are not presented with the necessary exposure or opportunity to gain funding from venture capitalists. We'll, our next guest is working to change that joining us now is Arian Simone co founder and general partner of Fearless Fund. Now, Arian tell us about Fearless Fund and what exactly you do. I am the general partner and co founder at the Fearless Fun and the Fearless Fund is the first venture capital fund that is built by women of color for women of color. And we are bridging the funding gap for that demographic. We understood we got in this space, there was a lack of funds going to minority women. Black women in particular around .0006 women of color are under a percent as a whole and that is what we are here to do. Our mission is to bridge this funding gap. So what's the process from start to finish when it comes to helping them gain funding? Oh my gosh, it looks similar to shark tank, that's the best example that I can give. But people do come, they pitch their business to us, they meet with our investment analysts, are associates are general partners, etcetera. If it's something that we're like, hey, this is venture backed kable, we'll go forward with this. Um then there's a process of a diligence period where we're checking everything out on the back end, making sure everything is in order and then we of course wire the money and after that we do provide a lot of strategic partnerships and support for our entrepreneurs. Okay, when it comes to your portfolio, what kind of businesses do you have in there? What are some names and who do you typically work with? We invest in CPG and text. So that is our thesis at the fund we invest for fun one at what we call early stage. So pre seed seed series A so there's from CPG is so broad, so we have from hair products too, food and beverage to so many things under that category and technology, there's, you know, regular tech, fintech etcetera. So as we mentioned that these black women entrepreneurs don't often get funding to get off the ground. Why is that? That's a very loaded question for many reasons, um, of how the ecosystem is definitely set up. Typically I would say prior to now, um, a lot of people when they're in the startup world, they would go out to Silicon Valley, they would pitch to major VCS and they would say, oh my gosh, you need to have your friends and family round and they're looking like, well I don't have a friends and family network that can cut $50,000 100,000 dollar checks before I come talk to you. So there's that level in that, um, the industry, as far as investors are concerned, it's 80% white male. So our mission of course also is to diversify what the investor landscape looks like because if we have more black and brown check cutters, we can diversify where the investments are going as well too. Is there any investments in education in letting the black female entrepreneurs understand their options when it comes to getting funding for their business? Most definitely we knew in this space, it wasn't just a lack of access to capital, it was a lack of access to the educational resources, the network and the ecosystem as a whole. So we started our own program called Get Venture Ready and we've educated over 1000 women of color founders thus far through our program to let them know what does this look like to make sure that your business is venture ready and venture back Herbal. So they learn about product market, fit their corporate governance, how to pitch, how to put together their deck, all these different elements to get them investor ready. And at the end we have a big pitch competition and let me ask you, you also offer a unique grant program for small business owners. Can you tell me a little bit what that's about and how it works? Yes. So in addition to us being a venture capital business, which is our investment vehicle, we also have a five oh one C three which is our nonprofit entity and through that, we educate founders as well as have grant programs and our grant programs go out to women of color small businesses as a whole. So it's not sector specific like on the investment side of CPG and tech, it's any kind of industry, any kind of business that can pitch for a grant. And it's been brought up more I guess you'd say recently because of all the disparities that took place with covid 19. So we have been very aggressively deploying a lot of grants To make sure that people don't go out of business. Over 50% of black businesses unfortunately had to close their doors due to the pandemic. So we've just been trying to provide as much support as possible. What kind of reaction have you gotten from some of these female business owners who realized that there is a way to get funding for their dreams. They are thrilled. Um, but the biggest intangible thing that they're thrilled about is being able to pitch to somebody that looks like them. That's what they're most thrilled about. Very important. Arian Simone, co founder and general partner of Fearless Fund. Aryan, I love what you're doing. Thank you so much for being on the show with us