I didn’t know it then, but the startup world wasn’t created for someone like me. In fact, it wasn’t created for the 233-million-plus Americans — and the billions in the world — who aren’t white men. This was especially true for the early 2000s New York startup community. I was met with the harsh reality of pattern matching. This is why it’s easier for some groups (tech bros) to get the funding and support they need to grow their companies than it is for others (everyone else).

Startup founder and author Kathryn Finney shares small changes that helped foster her personal growth and strength as a leader.

How do you find “good” people? First, be a good leader.

In order to build and lead a great team, you have to be the kind of person that people want to build with.

Kathryn Finney has spent the majority of her career helping business owners of color and other underrepresented groups get started and find funding. As an investor, she has seen what it takes to make a business profitable and what will torpedo your success.

In her book Build the Damn Thing, Finney takes the lessons gleaned from her 20+ year career and shares a template for others who are already in business for themselves or looking to make the leap.

Masters of Scale — the award-winning business podcast, best-selling book, courses app and community created by WaitWhat in partnership with LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman — is bringing its community together for the first time at the Masters of Scale Summit, a 2-day live event for leaders of fast-scaling, future-facing companies. The Masters of Scale team is seeking a diverse set of entrepreneurs, founders and c-suite executives from around the world to apply to attend the event.

Kathryn Finney, recipient of the first-ever PayPal Maggie Lena Walker Achievement Award, talks about self-reliance, the importance of looking backwards, and the world-changing power of Black innovation.

In 2020, just 3% of the $147.6 billion invested in venture capital went to Black-founded companies, according to the U.S. Census [from Forbes]. Kathryn Finney, entrepreneur, investor and author chats with Nora and Scott about her latest project called Genius Guild, which combines an incubator, venture studio and fund that supports Black entrepreneurs.

Kathryn’s work has addressed these disparities at their core by connecting Black women entrepreneurs with the funding and resources needed to grow. Under her leadership, digitalundivided helped dozens of Black and Latinx women raise more than $50 million over the past decade, and #ProjectDiane research helped increase venture funding of Black women-owned businesses by 1000%.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) today announced the winners of its inaugural Maggie Lena Walker Award. Named in honor of the first Black woman to charter a bank and serve as its president in the U.S., the award seeks to celebrate the achievements of women from underrepresented groups in the U.S. who are economically empowering those in their community and creating a more inclusive world. The award was established and announced in March of this year.

How are we doing wooing techies?

“The new firm [Genius Guild] is the brainchild of tech entrepreneur and investor Kathryn Finney and takes a multifaceted approach to helping Black entrepreneurs – offering investment through its Greenhouse Fund to tech-enabled companies, while also offering a lab and studio to help Black Founders build a community and receive business help and advice.”

Real talk with Kathryn Finney about what it takes to be a black woman in front, self-care, preserving our mental health - and her mission to help more black women get the money they need to build out their businesses.

[LATEST] -“There’s a huge community there, and it’s also a community that has a lot of disposable income,” said Finney. That’s one of the reasons Finney invested in QuirkChat, an app meant to provide a safe space for people of color to embrace their passions, be it anime, comics, or horror films.”

“This year I found myself retracing the steps of my great grandparents and moving from the South (this time Atlanta) to the city of Chicago, relocating my venture studio, Genius Guild, and my $10 million investment fund, the Greenhouse Fund. As a successful tech entrepreneur who is married to a Black software engineer, many of my friends were befuddled by our choice to move back to the Midwest.”

“Finney, who is building an incubator and venture fund focused on Black innovation called the Genius Guild and throughout her career has tracked patterns of exclusion in the tech industry, sees parallels between the black experience then [in 1921] and now.”

“Entrepreneur Kathryn Finney’s great-grandparents lost their home and a thriving restaurant business in the 1921 race massacre. Finney launched Genius Guild to address ‘the ways in which capitalism and capitalist markets have been manipulated to limit, exclude, and defraud Black communities-to defraud people like my great grandparents”

“Genius Guild, a new platform created by tech investor and entrepreneur Kathryn Finney, will build and invest in Black-led companies serving Black communities with potential to scale globally.”

“Racism is prevalent, systemic and painful. And it's due time for Black people to benefit financially from its eradication, Kathryn Finney, founder of Genius Guild, told Protocol. Her goal is to invest in and support Black founders who are building solutions to end racism.”

“Genius Guild is addressing the $16 Trillion lost by the US economy due to anti-black racism by concentrating investment dollars and leadership support in Black companies. The firm takes a 3-pronged approach to investing in innovation.”

“Genius Guild is launching after nearly a year of racial reckoning and social justice movements in the U.S and beyond.”

“Finney believes the strategy of impact investing could be applied to resolve the social issues around supporting Black-owned companies”