The Underestimated - Issue 10
The Diversity X newsletter showcasing the underestimated founders making a positive impact in the world and keeping you up to date on the Diversity X journey.
What is coming up in this issue?
👏🏾 Diversity X Update
📖 Recap anyone?
🌱 Community Update
📰 Monthly update on what has been going on with Diversity X
🤝 🔦Spotlight on a Diversity X Founders’ Community member
📆Upcoming events and plans
💥💥DX Team and Fund Update 🚀🚀
We have a Chief of Staff! Yes. But waiting to be able to reveal who she is. Hold on a little longer, friends. But let me say both Marquis and I are learning a lot, and it is great to have her on board and she is already an integral part of the team.
Ilaria will focus on supporting founders with pitching. So if you need extra help getting your pitch into an investor-ready state - reach out to Ilaria, who does more than get you to “act” your pitch out.
Raising capital for the EIS fund (The Opportunity Fund) is progressing. In all honesty, it is tough work. For a small EIS fund, it is slow and hard work, but progress is being made with some soft commitments. The joys of being an emerging manager,
We’ll be ready with the IM and Application in the next week. Please message me for more info and see the previous issue of this newsletter. CAPITAL AT RISK.
Marquis and I are into week 2 of the VC Lab program. We continue to refine our thesis for a future fund and are already learning a lot about what we will need to do for that fund.
Recap anyone?
As this issue is the last for 2022, let’s recap.
As a community to support underestimated founders®, we’ve had a great year. We’ve grown in numbers. We acquired SuperPitch. We gave opportunities to founders to showcase themselves at London Tech Week. We ran a Pitch Dojo® cohort (more of that next year). Many founders felt the support of the community in their time of need. Transitioned off WhatsApp onto a grown-up community platform. The DX Team has grown. This is against the backdrop of 👇🏾.
The VC industry continues to overlook and underestimate founders who are female, people of colour, disabled, LGBTQIA+, neuro-diverse, or older.
Racism and misogyny remain prevalent in our networks. (Please call it out).
However……
We are raising capital for an EIS fund to back 8 to 10 founders from within our community who are solving real-world problems in climate, health, education, or the future of work. CAPITAL AT RISK
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more by clicking here.
To find out more, email us at investor@diversityx.vc
Community Update
Over the last month, there has been a success for our founders in different ways.
Candidate X was recognised by Sifted.
Karishma Gupta and Satatland were recognised and featured in Financial Times.
Corinna Bordoli and Lea Rozencwajg Henry of CocoRio on winning the Judges Choice Award 2022 at the Santander X Pitch Competition - read about it here.
Sandra Healy and inclusio are the winners of the Altice Start-up International INNOVATION Award for 2022. Read about it here.
Carrie Lomas of Brand Conscious won Sustainable Innovation Leader 2022.
Congrats to all of them - amazing work and dedication to receive the recognition.
If you would like to join this diverse group of startups and scale-ups led by brilliant, unique, underestimated founders®, then contact us at admin@diversityx.vc
News from the Diversity X journey
Highlights over the last month:
💥 We are still transitioning our Founders’ Community to a new home, hosted on the Heartbeat platform. When the last issue of the newsletter was released in November, we had 256 founders on our Heartbeat platform. We have welcomed home another 53 underestimated founders and now stand at 309. Are we crazy to want to get to 500 by New Year’s Day? If you know any underestimated founder that wants to join, point them our way.
💥 801 views of issue 9 (up 374 from issue 8) and 326 subscribers (to date, up 69 from issue 8).
💥 Attended the Growth Investor Awards as a guest of our lawyers, Mills & Reeves. It was a great evening, and so nice to meet our partners IRL. Also inspired to see where we can end up one day. Congrats to all the winners.
💥 Progress on the Diversity X Founders University - our accelerator program has stalled a little. We had hoped to open applications for cohort 1, but we are now reverting to the drawing board. Stay tuned, as this is a core piece of the Diversity X support we want to offer underestimated founders®.
💥 Thank you to everyone who has supported the journey so far.
Meet the Underestimated
Galia Kotova and Alexey Poznyakov - Coolbeez
The Co-Founders:
Galia Kotova has been educated in International Economy and Trade at Moscow State Institute for International Relations. She has held several positions in Operations and Finance in Investment Banking, including being a CFO of a hedge fund. Together with Alexey Poznyakov, she co-founded and managed Globus Wine in China.
Alexey Poznyakov has been educated in Applied Mathematics and Operations Research at Moscow State University and the University of Delaware. Alexey had a successful career as a fixed-income trader at an investment bank and later a hedge fund in Moscow, after which he travelled to China, where he started Globus Wine, a successful wine import and distribution company, which won several industry awards, including “Best wine shop in Shanghai by Travel+Leisure Magazine” and Bronze Medal as Best Importer of French Wine in China by Bettane+Desseauve wine guide. One of the projects implemented while in China was building Bottlez.com, a WeChat-based online marketplace for wine sellers in greater China. Alexey is now fully engaged in developing CoolBeez in Germany and Europe.
The Startup:
CoolBeez converts marketing spend of online businesses into revenue for non-profits delivering performance 10x the competition to online businesses and non-profits.
What can you do to support CoolBeez? They are raising capital. Reach out to the founders for more info.
Upcoming Events
Every Friday - A Week in Review call
We are planning our holiday event - but due to the transport strikes, we’ll look for a suitable time in January.
Check out episode 5 of Be & Think in the House of Trust, which drops on the 7th.
15th December - Kevin will attend the 2022 ZNotes Impact Report
7 & 8 March 2023 - Kevin will speak at Illuminate Dublin
And that’s a wrap for this month and year….
WISHING YOU ALL A HAPPY HOLIDAY PERIOD AND WONDERFUL NEW YEAR! Be well.
Reach out with any questions to investor@diversityx.vc
INVESTORS - let’s chat - contact Kevin (kevin@diversityx.vc). CAPITAL AT RISK
Underestimated founders® - come join a community that is a welcoming and safe space. Here is your link (note - this is only for founders - others will be removed)