👋🏽 Collaboration Over Competition

Can I be real for a minute? Starting from scratch is some scary a*s stuff.

This newsletter is for the founders who get it.

We start from zero because we see a vision for ourselves and our communities that just doesn’t fit into the mainstream ‘innovation’ vision. Silicon Valley has, for many years, made it easier to do things that weren’t that hard to begin with, pouring BILLIONS of dollars into the same demographic of founders solving the same problems for years.

Last year, Adam Neumann raised $350 million in funding for living spaces where people work, while the entire Black founder community raised just $705 million for the entire year from VC.

It’s a joke.

But as overlooked founders, we’ve continued to play the game; hoping to get the funding, visibility, and network to scale the businesses we know are needed. To all the folks doing the work to diversify VC, thank you.

In the meantime, founders, we have to find another way to scale. We built Aginci with this problem at the center of our focus. And we’re still working to figure out exactly what the solution looks like.

But I know one thing: it inevitably centers COMMUNITY and COLLABORATION over competition.

So, I’m pulling together founders to brainstorm and collaboratively problem solve on ways we can create our own scalability engines. We create the culture and together, I believe we can overcome the systems that favor funding over everything.

Want to join? Our first event is live! Know a founder who should join? Please forward the newsletter along or send them to justfounder.com to learn more!

Want to help in another way? Reach out!

We’re building our own sustainable, equitable and inclusive, rocket ship. Bring your sprocket wrench 🔧 (I don’t think that’s a real thing).

In Community First and Always,

Desiree