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Both Things Can Be True: Bias and Bad Fundraising Advice

This is going to be BIG.

I’m a female founder. I don’t have a technical co-founder. These are all of the things I heard from a founder that I recently backed. She was pitching for a pre-seed round of $400k. So what about all of the above statements—things that founders widely hold to be true barriers to fundraising? This isn’t surprising.

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Why I Backed a 24-Year-Old Trying to Assess Human Potential

Both Sides of the Table

We led a $4 million investment along with Thrive Capital, GLG and Sound Ventures. As entrepreneurs many people are driven to solve their personal issues right in front of them, which leads a disproportionate number of founders to focus on: music, bars, restaurants, photos, etc. But really it’s something I look for.

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Equal access to capital and entrepreneurship is the final civil rights movement

TechCrunch

But despite my privilege, I’m also confident that my Black heritage made it more difficult for me to raise venture capital. Today — and the data proves this — if you are a white male, you have an unfair advantage when looking to raise venture capital. At the time, I didn’t even know that raising venture capital was a possibility.

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Affirm and Klarna ramp up competing efforts to attract US consumers

TechCrunch

Affirm — which was founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin — has built technology that can underwrite individual transactions, and once determining a customer is eligible, it can offer them the option to pay on a biweekly or monthly basis. For its part, Stripe is able to offer prospective, and current, customers more payment flexibility.

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DriveNets connects with $262M as demand booms for its cloud-based alternative to network routers

TechCrunch

and United Emirates; and existing backers Bessemer Venture Partners, Pitango, D1 Capital, Atreides Management, and Harel Insurance Investments & Financial Services are also participating. The funding, we should point out, is a also a measure of the faith investors have in repeat, successful founders.

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YC W22 batch nets 24 African startups, including 18 from Nigeria

TechCrunch

Founders : Before beU delivery, Hao Zheng, who leads the team as chief executive, was the founder and CEO of Yooul, a social networking app in China. Founders : Ahmed Ismail, a second-time founder who has worked for Goldman Sachs and Barclays, is the CEO. Website : [link]. Robert Nyangate is the company’s CTO.

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Extra Crunch roundup: Edtech VC survey, 5 founder mistakes, fintech liquidity, more

TechCrunch

Edtech needs to reach beyond underfunded public school systems to become more sustainable, which is why more investors and founders are focusing on lifelong learning. John Danner , managing partner, Dunce Capital (an edtech and future of work fund with portfolio companies Lambda School and Outschool).

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