HCP Newsletter: Road to 1,000 - September 2020 🚀
The Road to 1,000 newsletter is Harlem Capital’s monthly recap of updates on our portfolio companies, industry news, content, and events we suggest to check out and more!
Monthly Update 📅
Coming off a much-needed break, we are so excited to be back in the full swing of things and ready for the fall sprint! 🍁 We have a new look, new interns, and a refreshed mindset. But, most of all, we have renewed conviction that we can and will triumph and see better days ahead of us. 👍🏾
Now, buckle up! 🏎️ 💨 So much has happened this month so LIVE FROM NEW YORK, it’s Road to 1000 – September 2020 🎉🎉
Harlem Capital Related 🚀
🔥Register for the MORE EQUITY Pitch Competition on October 20! 🔥 The inaugural MORE EQUITY Pitch Competition in partnership with Forbes will bring together emerging startups, notable investors, and celebrities to celebrate diverse founders and discuss key issues about inequity in venture capital. Join us for our virtual pitch competition to celebrate some of the best minority and women founded startups that are shaping our future.
💅🏾 WE HAVE A NEW LOOK FAM 💅🏾It was hard to say goodbye, but we were ready for some fresh threads. Harlem Capital was built with the intention to honor and embody its namesake. Around the globe, the city of Harlem symbolizes Black excellence, the Harlem Renaissance, and, looking to the future, the next wave in venture capital and tech. Our rebrand is a visual reflection of the firm’s roots paired with the vision of continued evolution and growth.
Diversity + Rider = Diversity Rider 🤝🏽 Ten venture capital firms, including ours, announced that they are now including "diversity riders" in term sheets submitted to startups, requiring that best effort are made to bring underrepresented investors into the deals.
Why it matters: This is a tangible effort to diversify cap tables and, in so doing, expand access to investors who have historically been excluded.
Welcome the fresh faces of our ninth intern class! 🧑🏽🎓🎉We were fortunate to have our fall intern class start this month. We are able to have a diverse class because we approach our intern funnel exactly how we approach our deal funnel intentionally. We analyze a variety of criteria at every stage of the funnel to try to remove as many biases in the process as we can. Even diverse teams have biases so it will never be perfect, but tracking and using the data to drive decisions is a necessary step to improve diversity. Please join us in welcoming them. Our Winter 2021 application is due October 5th.
The Jarrid Tingle Speaking Tour 2020 🎤🎤 When he is not closing deals, our man with a plan – Jarrid Tingle – has been dropping gems all over 💎. You could have caught him at TechCrunch Disrupt where he spoke about creating a more diverse ecosystem. Later, he teamed up with portfolio company founder, Christie Horvath, on It Takes Two. More recently, he could be seen at Felicia Horowitz’s Virtual Dinner Party on Clubhouse (akin to a virtual Met Gala) and on a panel of NYC’s who’s who of investors discussing the future of tech in the city. What’s next Jarrid? A Netflix special? 📺
The podcast is on fire 🔥🔥 Dare we say Harlem Capital’s More Equity Podcast only gets better with age? We released an episode with Nick Caldwell – VP of Engineering at Twitter. You can check it out on Spotify and Apple but here are some key things Nick said:
Don't have "just happy to be here syndrome"
Take the risk, you deserve it
Imagine your career as a painting versus a ladder. It completely alters your mindset
We just released a new podcast with Dawn Dickson of PopCom.
Dropping Gems on Gems on Gems 💎💎💎 At Harlem Capital, we have been fortunate to meet billionaires, world-class investors, incredible founders, and others at the top of their fields. We have learned so much from others since we started this journey in late 2015, but our learning accelerated exponentially during our fundraising journey in 2018-2019. This post shares the 10 most valuable “gems” we have learned so far.
Top Diversity & Tech News 👀
Women keep winning! We love seeing things like this and want to take this opportunity to give shout outs to women everywhere and celebrate a few firsts! ☝️ In case you missed it, Citi named Jane Fraser as its first female CEO. According to our count, that makes her the first female chief executive of a major Wall Street Bank. Well done!! 👏🏿 ESPN's Doris Burke will become the first woman to serve as a game analyst for the NBA Finals on any platform. 🏀🏀 And, check this out… female-managed US funds outperformed all-male rivals … A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!! Great job-crushing on and off the court 💁
Does Lebron have a future in 2K? Ok no, but really. The first-ever HBCU Esports League kicked off in Atlanta this month. The league provides competitive opportunities for HBCU students to compete within an organized esports league and gain access to educational and scholarship support offered through partners like Twitch Student. This is really timely considering how much time students are spending at home! 🕹️
Wow Wow Wow: Alumni Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano make Princeton history with a major gift. Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano have made a major gift to Princeton University, a $20 million contribution that is the largest gift to date by Black and Latino donors, and will be the first buildings named after a Black or Latino. We absolutely love seeing our brothers and sister doing big things like this. 💰💰🏫
Helpful Resources 💯 & Other Suggested Content 💡
This is a game-changer: For pre and early product founders honing their startup idea, Discovery Assist by First Round Capital is set to be the fastest way to move forward with arguably the most critical part of starting a company – customer discovery. By tapping into First Round’s deep network of startup builders and Fortune 1000 operators, this program will work one-on-one with you and your co-founders to deliver curated discovery conversations over a number of weeks.
This is free?? It seems like everything costs an arm and a leg these days. 🏦 But not this ➡️➡️ In the High Output Founders’ Library, you will find nearly 300 of the most insightful and actionable pieces from across the internet about the various parts of a founder's journey, primarily focusing on seed stage through Series B. The team behind this scoured the web and asked founders and investors what they thought where the most salient resources were across categories. They even outlined longer articles so you can find links exactly to the passage you need to see! They are adding to it every day so it keeps on getting better! 📚🔎
Way better than Bumble 🐝 The Startup-Investor Matching Tool is exactly what it sounds like. Think Bumble, but instead of being matched to someone to go on a date with, you get matched on another kind of date.. with investors. We’re currently a beta firm as part of this project and are big fans of what it sets out to accomplish 🙌💯
Celebrating some wonderful history! It’s National Hispanic Heritage Month and we want to show some love for all of our LatinX brothers and sisters out there. We love everything you’re doing and the flavor you give our lives. Let’s all pay tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society.
Mark Your Calendars – Save These Dates! 📆
Last but not least by any measure 📏 we have some really important dates so everyone please get out your calendars ✏️ and mark these dates ⏰
10/5/2020 ➡️ Applications for the Harlem Capital Winter 2021 Internship Application are due. We are looking for interns for a 10-week period from January - March 2021. HCP will offer the intern a valuable experience where they will learn the strategy of a new investment firm, get direct exposure to start-up founders, make investments, and tap into HCP’s network. 🤩🤩
10/19/2020 ➡️ Here at Harlem Capital, we pride ourselves on being responsible citizens. After all, what we do today and the legacy we leave this world will remain long after we have come and gone. With that said, just two quick but important reminders‼️ The last day to register to vote is on 10/19/2020 and don’t forget to take the 2020 Census.
10/13-10/16 ➡️ LTX Fest 2020 This 4-day virtual experience curated for the largest gathering of Latinx professionals in technology is sure to be really really good!
Interested in working at one of the startups in our portfolio? 💻 Click here to see all the open positions!