This year’s Startupfest taught us that representation compounds over time, when we are intentional
Thinking of my first one years ago, to where we are today, it’s beautiful to see what can happen when we provide access & build capacity. This time we had the largest number of Black and African founders at Canada’s startup festival, and saw the highest number of us finish as finalists for major prizes (100k best of the fest, 100k women in tech, and audience choice). The judges also saw very strong participation in the 100k Black entrepreneurship prize
BIG congrats to the finalists & winners! Nanette, Thierry, Tanika, Kareem, Abdel, Karine, Jonah, Brenda, Etienne, Collins. Your camaraderie and collaboration while competing, showed everyone that we are truly stronger together. And it echoed the spirit of the orgs working collaboratively to support you. Huge gratitude as well to Sevrine, Anne-Marie and BDC, for stepping up to match the 100k Black entrepreneurship prize for Nanette! (who also won the audience choice award). Building as a Black founder is hard, and building as a Black woman is even harder. This makes her wins more special - and it’s important for us to do more in addressing this reality as an ecosystem
And finally, huge gratitude to the Startupfest team (Philippe, Keon, Pamela, Katherine), our incredible partners (Phil G., Alfred, Louis-Edgar, Lise, Shane, Tamara, Craig, Wils), and our founders from Black Founders Network & African Impact Initiative - for making last week special. There's still a lot of work to do.. but I'm super grateful to God for His guidance so far, and I'm trusting Him to help us keep improving