Episode 64 - Bronze Valley Accelerator - Building An Ecosystem for Minority Fndrs in Birmingham Alabama

Guerrillapreneur: The Art of Waging Small Business Podcast

In this episode, I (@guerrilapreneur) talk with the Program Director of the Bronze Valley Accelerator, Dr. Haley Medved Kendrick and the members of the Summer 2021 cohort. Bronze Valley is a non-profit, early stage venture investment platform that supports high growth, innovation and technology-enabled companies created by diverse, underrepresented and underestimated founders. The organization is also certified as a Community Development Financial Institution (“CDFI”). The mission of Bronze Valley is to create an education-to opportunity-to outcome pipeline for communities that are underrepresented in technology careers and in fields where innovators will create the future.
The members of the Summer 2021 cohort included the following founders and their companies:
•Benjamin Vickers, Cofounder & CEO of NewAve. NewAve is a black founded startup that allows users to build relationships and create a social community in real time at their current location. Users will never miss out on meeting new people because they will know someone before they approach them (https://connectwithavenue.com/)
•Jhana Porter, Founder & CEO of frakktal. frakktal develops thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) from end-of-life tires (ELT), post-consumer/post-industrial plastics and local biomass streams geared toward manufacturing (https://mytaask.com/).
•Thkisha Sanogo, Founder & CEO of MyTAASK. MyTaask decentralizes planning for the next generation of superheroes. MyTAASK bridges the gap between social media and task management to automate repetitive tasks. MyTAASK builds a community of experts to share curated experiences and time saving life hacks (https://mytaask.com/).
•Georgiana Wright, Founder & CEO of PaperAI. PaperAI generates customizable and affordable fan fiction for fan communities without an author or publisher, removing the hassle and costs of commissioning fan fiction. PaperAI uses natural language processing models to generate over 140,000 different story combinations to allow anyone to be represented in their favorite stories (https://paperai.io/).
•Mark Anthony Peterson, Founder & CEO of Ziscuit. Ziscuit is a grocery search engine that provides instant savings to its shoppers and high-value traffic for its retail grocery partners (https://www.ziscuit.shop).
Like what you hear on the Guerrillapreneur Podcast? You may also like some of my other podcasts, include Career Coaching Xs and Os Podcast (Career Advice for Executives Seeing the Corner Office) and Gigging: Everything and the Sharing Economy Podcast (News and Predictions about the Sharing Economy). You can find Career Coaching Xs and Os on Spreaker at https://www.spreaker.com/show/careercoaching-xs-and-os. You can find Gigging on Spreaker at https://www.spreaker.com/show/gigging-everything-sharing-economy.
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