In the course of a sentence, Omi Bell changed a life.
At the height of the pandemic, when businesses were struggling to stay open, she called over Kendra Woolridge, the founder of Janet and Jo, under the guise of simply talking to her and discovering more about her story.
Instead, Bell informed her that she received an anonymous donation of $100,000 through Bell’s Black Girl Ventures pitch competition. Bell recalled Woolridge bursting into tears; for her, the support came for her during a time of loss. Both her grandmother and her mother had passed away due to cancer, motivating Woolridge to begin a chemical-free nail polish brand that was both clean and safety-conscious for users. It was Bell who motivated her throughout the competition, where she pitched and won the $100,000 donation, allowing her to build up her cause.
“I have so much gratitude for the Creator, universe, ancestors working through me to get this work done, and I want to be a good steward over that,” said Bell in an interview with The Hub News. “There’s many times like those where it’s their first time pitching and now they’re thriving or people didn’t have the courage and they’re like ‘I did it because you encouraged me.’”
Woolridge is only one of the 18,000 people that Bell has impacted through her venture firm, Black Girl Venture. Created in 2016, Black Girl Venture, then called Black Girl Vision, came out of Bell’s own experiences in entrepreneurship.
Skilled in the arts and having graduated as a computer science major from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, she found that the U.S. wasn’t supportive enough for a single mom of two, working multiple jobs including as a K-12 educator for her family.
After being the victim of layoffs at two of her jobs, Bell decided that she would open up her own print shop and T-shirt line called MsPrint USA, using her tax returns for printing machines. Also a poet, Bell hosted poetry performances and led an arts organization known as Seven City Art Society; her endeavor eventually developed into Made By A Black Woman, a marketplace that offered products by BIPOC women.
Upon learning about the disparities that Black women entrepreneurs face, she combined her projects to create the basis of what would be Black Girl Ventures, choosing to address barriers forced upon Black women entrepreneurs. Drawing upon her former experience as a K-12 educator, she used history, specifically the Harlem rent parties, as a model for Black Girl Ventures.
During the Harlem Renaissance, as more Black people moved to the neighborhood, white landowners increased their rent; to cover the cost, Black residents hosted basement parties, charging partygoers, such as Fats Waller, Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington, for admission to the parties and using the capital to pay rent. Inspired by the Harlem Rent parties, Bell created a meetup group to host a crowdfunding pitch competition, inviting a branch of 30 people to her house and allowing four people to pitch their business.
Using marbles in coffee cups to cast their votes, the participants would vote anonymously for which business to support. Once the votes were cast, the winner would gain the capital in the “pitch pot” which was composed of $5 dollars from each participant’s $15 admission payment.
Seven years after its creation, Black Girl Ventures uses the same format, replacing marbles with dollars and support.
“It’s a historic concept and here we are,” said Bell. “It’s our ancestors’ wildest dreams. Being able to take this concept and help people fund their small businesses, fund their entrepreneurship and essentially create more generational wealth and legacy for their families.”
Over the course of seven years, Bell has led Black Girl Ventures throughout more than 300 programs, granting funds to over 450 women and helping more than 5,000 women with their ideas. Since its inception, Black Girl Ventures has helped generate $10 million in revenue through their support, expanding the enterprise with multiple chapters nationally across 15 cities. With offices in Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and more, Bell’s mission is being supported by multiple large organizations.
Along with partnerships with fashion chain Forever 21, Nike and Visa, popular video platform TikTok most recently showed support for Bell and Black Girl Ventures through a $1 million donation. Awarded as part of National Small Business Week, TikTok and Black Girl Ventures dedicated the money to helping inspire the next generation of Black and Brown women entrepreneurs.
With Bell and other leaders of Black-led venture capital firms leading the push, the increased partnerships are indicative of more support for businesses started by Black and Brown women.
Still, the latest data shows that there’s more work to be done.
Per the latest data by Crunchbase, historically, Black entrepreneurs struggle to receive support for their ideas.
While Black entrepreneurs overall receive less than 2% of support from venture capital firms, Black women receive even less aid, reeling in just 0.34% of total venture capital funds despite making up 42% of women-owned businesses. Following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, there was an increase in venture capital funds for Black-led companies overall, but the increase was short-lived.
As the overall funding by venture capital firms decreased by 36% last year, Black entrepreneurs were most affected as they made up 45% of those who received cuts, widening the 90% wealth gap Black women entrepreneurs are faced with.
With her work, Bell is focused on addressing these rates, offering a direct space for Black women who are looking for funds to start their businesses.
Creating virtual learning opportunities and offering a variety of other events to build a community amongst the women of Black Girl Ventures, Bell leads three key programs as part of her enterprise. Created in partnership with NBA, Bell’s BGV Next Gen program looks towards funding the latest generation, offering 25 HBCU students the chance to get an early start on their business plans.
Through the program, Bell is focused on helping students become part of a community, offering mentors and a lifetime membership to her BGV Connect incubator platform. Allowing the students to expose their businesses to funders, her Next Gen program teaches the students how to pitch their ideas for funds and gets them started with a $5,000 stipend.
With the BGV Jetpack for Entrepreneurs curriculum, Bell and Black Girl Ventures strengthen the skills of the next generation of Black and Brown women who want to grow their businesses.
“Your validation comes from your ability to leverage your marketing and branding assets, your expertise, your knowledge and what you have built to bring in revenue,” advises Bell. “Keep pushing and stay encouraged. Sometimes you’ve got to get hyper focused and tune out the noise.”
Similar to the model of the NextGen program, Bell’s Emerging Leaders Fellowship Program offers two cohorts the chance to take part in a three-month-long development program.
Focused on amplifying the talents of Black women leaders, the program has the students take part in the Jetpack for Leaders curriculum and has them host a competition, allowing 8 to 10 Black and Brown women the ability to receive the funds they need for their local businesses. As the program modeled after the Harlem Renaissance Rent Party, the BGV Pitch Program is one of Bell’s biggest creations. With each founder being given three minutes to pitch and three minutes to answer questions from the audience, the investors can use Raisify to vote using their money for the business they’d like to support.
“Black Girl Ventures is an entrepreneur support organization and an ecosystem builder,” said Bell. “We focus on creating assets of capital for access to capital capacity and community for Black and Brown women founders. Overall, our goal is to bring together all the different parts of the ecosystem- to work together to create, to strengthen families and strengthen communities.”
While also continuing their core programs and working towards their goal of helping 100,000 Black women entrepreneurs by 2030, Bell also has her sights set on what’s next for her mission and venture capital firm. Through Black Girl Ventures, her latest project is working on making pitches more accessible locally with “Pull Up and Pitch.”
Having already premiered it at the Something In The Water Festival and the Mighty Dream Forum as well as having done it virtually and in-person with Visa, the program has people pitch for 60 seconds to three judges who vote using their hands. While one thumbs up earns the entrepreneur $200, two thumbs up earns them $250 and three thumbs up earns them $500. Moving to the next round, they can earn from $10,000 to $20,000 in capital.
Overall, Bell wants to continue to inspire women, emphasizing that the key for success is to continue to build formulas for themselves – a technique that has helped her with building up her projects.
“You are the creator of what you are working on or what you’re doing. If you’re not innovating, you’re hesitating and then you have to ask yourself why,” said Bell. “I want everybody to see themselves as having their own versions of ‘originate, motivate and innovate’ and how they can move throughout their lives to create the reality that they want to see.”
