Teaching diverse founders how to create investable pitch material through a scalable online platform and making it easy for investors to discover them through data-driven curation.
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Hi Allison ,
It's been tumultuous for the tech ecosystem. More than 35,000 tech workers across 72 companies have been laid off this month. Large companies like Amazon, Meta, Stripe, Netflix, Salesforce, Microsoft, and of course, Twitter all made unexpected, rapid, sweeping cuts to their workforces. People from
marginalized backgrounds and immigrants comprise a significant portion those laid off. For the women, Black, LatinX, and other diverse staff who remain employed, companies like Twitter that eliminated all employee resource groups (ERGs) signaled they no longer support an inclusive or safe environment.
Business ethics, or rather lack thereof, are finally in the harsh public light. Self-proclaimed men geniuses and the general partners who fund them are being revealed through morally corrupt actions and the world is noticing: Neumann (if you've been a subscriber you know I'm outspoken on his recent funding and a16z), Brett Goldstein and Michael Houck of Launch House (also funded by a16z), Dan Price of Gravity Payments, of and of course, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX. The list goes on.
Between the layoffs and the news cycle, workers are increasingly concerned about employer ethics and are making more conscious decisions about where they dedicate their time and talents. Many of the recently laid off workers did well for themselves over the past few years and can afford to try their hand at entrepreneurship where they dictate the ethical culture. As Wired put it, "imagine hundreds of newly laid-off engineers, product managers, and designers...discussing how to launch new companies based on ideas they’ve been secretly hatching for months..."
These are exactly the conditions that will catalyze a new cycle of innovation, and this time around the innovators are diverse and they care about more than just making money.
The incoming wave of entrepreneurs will need help understanding how investors think so they can pitch their opportunities in a compelling way. Pitching isn't intuitive, particularly for those who have historically been blocked from accessing investor networks. This is what Scroobious is here for. Help us help them and all the founders already forging their paths.
Finally, as revealed in this Built In Boston article, we stealthily raised an angel round and we're planning our pre-seed now amidst clear product validation, team expansion, and momentum. Reply to this email if you want to chat! Thank you for reading this. Thank you for helping us. I appreciate you. |
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Allison Byers, Founder & CEO |
Click on an update to learn more and access content. |
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| Virtual workshop: Market Sizing , 11/21 12-1:30 pm ET Market sizing is SO important to a company’s viability for equity investment. Join our workshop to learn why investors care about market sizing and how to build one bottom-up.
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In person event: Own Your Raise 11/29, 1-3 pm ET Calling all Boston-based female-founders & women-led startups! Want to network with other founders & investors who actively invest in women? Join Scroobious and The Capital Network for an ice cream social to hear from angels, VCs, & accelerators! |
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| Article: Built in Boston Each quarter they feature 5 tech startups, nonprofits, or entrepreneurs in 8 major U.S. tech hubs who "just might be working on the next big thing." What we're building is definitely a big thing! |
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Replay: Startup Boston Week If you're fundraising or thinking about it, check out the replay of my talk, FUNdraising: How to Nail your Fundraising Strategy Before it Nails You. I cover a TON of content in the hour! |
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In person event: Black Founders Demo Day 12/1 Hosted by the Detroit-based networking platform Plain Sight, it will be a featured event at this year's Art Basel fair in Miami. Scroobious is an in-kind sponsor providing pitch workshops and you can cheer on community member Kimberly Evans of Just Her Rideshare! |
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Virtual workshop: 12/8 12-1:30 PM ET How to Drive Growth Hacking Success with a North Star Metric. I've been in Anuj's workshop before. Trust me, register for this one. |
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| Application: Visible Hands opened applications to their BK-XL Accelerator for early-stage BIPOC founders based in Brooklyn. |
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Application: All Raise is expanding our innovative Black and Latinx Media Mastery Program nationwide! The first cohort secured features in Glamour, CNN, The New York Times, Forbes, and more. |
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Each newsletter features the perspective of one of our members. I encourage you to reach out to offer networking, investment interest, or expertise. |
This month's featured founder is Carl Palme, Founder & CEO of Boundless Robotics. They are building technology capable of enabling anyone, anywhere to grow anything, at any time of the year. Carl , a 2nd time LatinX founder, is using his background in robotics and AI to optimize for consumer use and the variety of hyper-local ecosystems, water compositions, and crops. Their go to market strategy is strong, starting with cannabis due to a huge market size and unmet consumer need.
Boundless Robotics was a MassChallenge finalist, winner of BU/GLP Cannabis Startup Competition, and recently presented at TechCrunch Disrupt as a finalist! They've got traction too with oversubscribed pre-sale signups at 500+ units, $755K+ capital previously raised from Angels and VC, and a patent pending. You (yes, you!) can participate in their active crowdfund campaign today, which is super exciting. Check it out! |
"I started Boundless Robotics because I wanted to grow more of my own food inside of my apartment (I live in Boston, so there is limited space and the outdoor growing season is short). Given the lack of space, lack of time, and the fact that I have the opposite of a green thumb (I kill all my plants), I wanted to use my experience in Robotics and AI to build a fully automated system that would grow plants effortlessly. Our Robotanist (TM) technology takes care of all the details while the user just adds water. And now, we are on a mission to help people grow 5% of their food at home by 2030 and the crop that's going to help us get there is cannabis."
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Do you want to be more Scroobious? Let's chat!
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