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Black Women Breaking through the Gap

by Maya Johnson

Black Women Breaking through the Gap

Two women who wanted to open their own hair care company went through challenges for find an investor who would understand the importance of this business and the importance of black women and their hair.

PolicyMic.com wrote a story about Candace Mitchell and Chanel Martin, two women who co-founded their startup Techturized. Their first challenge in starting their own business, was getting the investors they talked with to understand the untapped black hair care market which was worth $684 million. However, according to Mitchell and Martin, they found out that most investors were middle-aged, white men who couldn’t understand the market the co-founders were trying to open up.

Mitchell said that the investors they talked with “look for a pattern of success for their business model.” The pattern they referred to was targeted typically to young, white men.

The co-founders used their savings to get their business off the ground while at the same time working full-time jobs and having meetings during lunch breaks and after-hours. Eventually, the two women got the funding, relying on investments from their own communities.

In 2012, they received $35,000 in funding, acquired a shared office space and feedback from successful entrepreneurs and mentors from Flashpoint, which was a startup accelerator program based at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Policy.com also reported that Techturized won the 2013 Blacks in Technology Pitch Competition at SXSW and the 2013 TAG Business Launch competition, which rewarded them about $50,000 in cash and more than $100,000 in donated services.

Techturized recently launched an app called Myavana, which will provide a social networking platform for users to share and gain insight on black hair care products.

To read more about Mitchell and Martin, follow this link.

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