Transmuting Failure: The #Blackpreneurs

In the past when I've pitched my business in a competition I wrote about it afterwards. Today I am pitching in the incubator I wished someone would create to help my business succeed at the level I know it's capable to do. Aaron Walker founded that incubator. For the last 4 months I've been in Camelback Vanture's pilot cohort of their new work called The Good Jobs Initiative. Tonight my fellow cohort members and I will showcase our businesses. But also the growth we've had by going through this high growth curriculum.
In 2016 I learned about the research Kathryn Finney had done on venture capital invested in companies founded by black women called #projectdiane. It has been updated for 2018. But the results become dimmer as more data is actually collected and analyzed to show empirically what we know every day is happening to black women in business. This blog is my own empirical data of that same research. It's across industry. As the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs and small business owners, it is a loss to our country how under-resourced black women are sustaining businesses.
But today I am a winner. All of this cohort has already won. Finally an incubator that isn't trying to dump off it's fellows for the next group of fellows, or give  just enough resources to get fellows to the pitch day. The Good Jobs Initiative is more about empowering black and women entrpreneurs with resources like coaching. The richest people in the world became that way in part to their network, including mentors. Even more Camelback, as I think every fellows associated would express the same sentiment, creates and curates a family of fellows.
Getting to success is through failure. That was the first lesson I learned in building my company. Some smart entrepreneurs have even created a business selling how to deal with failure to other entrepreneurs. Today I am celebrating that failure did not stop me from creating my passion- a business that uses my African creativity and artisan skill to help communities access safe water. Safe water is still away and every opportunity I think it will bring me closer to making the access I've struggled to bring to Kumasi the last 12 years but tonight, I win because I'm still here to work and hope for it.
Today is a good day.