Entrepreneurs take center stage at Black Founders Network’s third annual Demo Day – The Varsity

Participants present startups and win prizes worth $50,000

September 27 was the third annual Demo Day hosted by the Black Founders’ Network (BFN) for 2024 Program members BFN Accelerate Cohort. BFN Demo Day offers more than 10 startups founded by Black-identifying entrepreneurs at U of T access to educational and development opportunities over a four-month period, culminating in three-minute pitches presented to a panel of judges and a live audience during Demo Day. This year’s prizes, worth a total of $50,000 awarded to five competitors, allowed entrepreneurs to raise capital without giving up ownership of their companies.

While the audience voted for one People’s Choice winner, the judges — who held positions at Rally Assets Realize Fund, BDC Capital and Magnusmode, a Black-founded technology company — determined the recipients of four additional awards.

Discussing the impressions from the day on the pitch

University spoke to some founders at Demo Day about their startups and future goals. Jonathon Bloomfield is the founder of Edventive, a platform designed to streamline all teacher tasks – such as data entry, marketing and organization – by integrating them into a unified platform. As a high school teacher, Bloomfield cited the stress of juggling an unsustainable workload as one of his reasons for starting his business.

After four months of coding and collaboration, Edventive launched in September and is currently working with a small group of teachers and the team is working on monetization. Bloomfield’s biggest piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is: try everything.

“(Entrepreneurship) is just about taking a shot, figuring out what you need to learn” and “finding a community,” Bloomfield said.

Merveille Mukoko, founder of the language learning app Yekola, shares a similar sentiment about the inspiration behind his startup. Mukoko was trying to learn his native language, Lingala, when a frustrating lack of resources in existing language apps highlighted a wider gap in the market. According to Mukoko, languages ​​like Lingala are often unavailable or incorrectly translated in most current Western apps. Yekola focuses on audio-based, community-led learning and aims to teach and preserve African, indigenous and other endangered languages.

Apparel and fashion brand Afijjio, founded by Doyin Amao, is focused on uplifting and preserving the African voice in the beauty and lifestyle markets. Although Amao initially had difficulty scaling Afijio outside Nigeria, moving to Canada provided her with the opportunity. Afijjio’s goal is to reduce the logistics fees associated with purchasing products shipped from Africa to North America. Products featured on Afijjio include handmade and produced by brand owners identifying with Africa on the African continent.

Echoing Bloomfield and Merveille, Amao advised aspiring entrepreneurs to take action and work to solve the problems they face.

Each founder had three minutes to present their venture to the audience and a panel of judges. During each presentation, the audience also had the opportunity to vote on the quality, execution and innovation of each presentation as part of the People’s Choice award voting.

Money management rewards and solutions

Afijjio was one of two startups to receive the Top Venture Award with $5,000 in funding. The second winner was the Flip and Floss mobile application designed to educate children and students about money managementin the hope that it will help them “save, invest and break generational cycles.”

The BFN People’s Choice Award went to pharmaceutical company Kare Chemical Technologies, which focused on research and development of chemically synthesized cannabinoids: a chemical found in marijuana.

Yekola was the winner of the BFN Innovation Prize, which includes a Precision 5690 Mobile Workstation laptop provided by Dell and NVIDIA.

We celebrate Black excellence in entrepreneurship

As the event celebrated BFN’s third anniversary, founder Efosa Obano and program coordinator Faizah Balogun took the opportunity to share the success of the network since its launch.

BFN’s phased programs and resources have raised over four million dollars in funds to support Black entrepreneurs and generated over $15 million in financial value for BFN companies.

Applications for the next Accelerate cohort will open on February 24 to Black-identifying members of the U of T community. The network also offers other entrepreneurship programssuch as ECHO, a training program for cardiovascular health entrepreneurs. Starting this month, BNF will be organizing information sessions for entrepreneurs throughout the following months.