The Underestimated - Issue 11
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
📖 A New Year
🌱 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 continue to raise capital for the Diversity X Opportunity Fund. This is 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.
VC Lab Update - as we previously shared, Marquis and I were accepted and have been part of Cohort 9 of the VC Lab. This program helps emerging managers build VC firms - something that we at Diversity X are working on. We were put onto an “Epic Sprint” with the the aim of market testing our thesis and securing commitments for 1% of the planned fund. No easy feat when we were told on 29th December. Let’s Go! If you are an LP that wants to take part in giving feedback on our thesis - reach out to Kevin or Marquis.
To find out more, email us at investor@diversityx.vc
A New Year
Happy New Year! We wish you and your families a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2023.
So here we are. Our first newsletter of 2023. It is all ahead of us. This is going to be a BIG year for Diversity X. Last year went beyond expectation, but this year we are going to do more.
So what can you expect from us in 2023? This is our year of ACTION.
Well we are hellbent on raising and deploying the Opportunity Fund (angels, family offices, HNWI, sophisticated investors - you can all play a role here).
The Diversity X Founders’ University - WILL LAUNCH. Marquis has made great progress on taking forward this initiative. ASK Here - if you know anyone interested in supporting this initiative - mentors, corporates, champions etc, then get in touch.
Building our network of partners, friends, and co-investors.
Delivering even more content and support to our community of underestimated founders®.
Run more events and specifically, regular pitch days. So if you want to see more startups with founders from diverse backgrounds, get in touch so we can add you to our events mailing list.
Reaching 1000 community members.
Support at least 5% of the founders in the community to get funded - whether that be equity, grants, loans, or even new customers that support their bootstrapping endevours.
We are a small team, with big ambitions to support underestimated founders®. While the gif pokes fun at new years resolutions, these are the goals that will drive us towards making change towards our vision of a world where the term underestimated founders is redundant. But we can’t do it alone and need your help. Please get in touch and let’s talk about how we can achieve these goals together.
Community Update
OK, the bad news. We didn’t make the 500 underestimated founders onto our Heartbeat community platform. We ended the year with a respectable 322. But we want more underestimated founders to join. Putting it out there, we would love to get to 1000 by June. Can you help us? Of course you can.
If you are or know any founders that are any of:
Female ✅
Person of colour ✅
Disabled ✅
LGBTQ+ ✅
Neuro-diverse ✅
Older ✅
then point them to the Diversity X Founders’ Community. It is free, and here to support their entrepreneurial journey. They can join from here - https://welcome.diversityx.community/invitation?code=G34DC9
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 December, we had 309 founders on our Heartbeat platform. We have welcomed home another 13 underestimated founders and now stand at 322.
💥 447 views of issue 10 (down 354 from issue 9) and 337 subscribers (to date, up 11 from issue 9).
💥 We actually took a break over the holiday season. As did many of our founders which is great to then come back feeling recharged.
💥 Progress on the Diversity X Founders University - still work in progress but we believe we have found the right to partner to further build and power the program (to be announced in February).
💥 Thank you to everyone who has supported the journey so far.
Meet the Underestimated
Joyeeta Das and Alexander Facey - Samudra Oceans
The Co-Founders:
Joyeeta Das is CEO and cofounder of Samudra Oceans, with an engineering background. Joy is a serial entreprenuer in deep tech with multiple exits, as well as having been on the on the investor side. She is also a long-term friend and supporter of Diversity X who entrusted us with the care and development of SuperPitch in 2022.
Alexander Facey is CTO and cofounder of Samudra Oceans. He is a design engineer by background who is experienced in creating cutting edge designs and focuses on marine engineering.
The Startup:
Samudra Oceans. Samudra means "Oceans" in Sanskrit. The co-founders believe the ocean holds the keys to solving a lot of our climate crisis. They focus on robotics and AI for growing seaweed as seaweed can take 20x to 50x more carbon out of the atmosphere than even tropical forests. Samudra Oceans hope that in next ten years they can take 20 megatonnes of carbon out of the air by scaling seaweed farming.
What can you do to support Samudra Oceans? They are raising capital. Reach out to the founders for more info.
Lucy Killerby - Talent Spaces
The Founders:
Lucy is the Founder & CEO of Talent Spaces. She was inspired to create the company after working in HR and Early Careers roles for 8 years at Bain & Company and WPP, where she gained first hand experience of the challenges faced by internal talent teams aiming to attract high quality and diverse talent at scale. In 2019, she won a place on Bethnal Green Ventures’ flagship Tech For Good Programme, and in 2021 won the Fair Education Alliance Innovation Award.
The Startup:
TalentSpaces is a B2B SaaS HR Tech startup. They work with global employers like Pfizer, Dyson and Meta to make their recruitment process more inclusive and human. Talent Spaces empowers leading employers with access to diverse talent pools and a suite of candidate engagement tools to supercharge their recruitment process and create a stand-out candidate experience.
What can you do to support TalentSpaces? They are currently raising their seed round, with the first tranche closing on January 18th. If you might be interested in learning more about Talent Spaces from an investment or employer perspective, please reach out on lucy@talentspaces.co
******DISCLAIMER! - This newsletter showcases founders from within the Diversity X Founders’ Community. We do not endorse or promote any investment into any of the featured startups.******
Upcoming Events
Every Friday - A Week in Review call
8 March 2023 - IWD Event - details to be arranged.
April - Kevin will speak at Illuminate Dublin
And that’s a wrap for this month and year….
Reach out with any questions to investor@diversityx.vc
INVESTORS - let’s chat - contact Kevin (kevin@diversityx.vc). CAPITAL AT RISK
Underestimated founders® - join a community that is a welcoming and safe space. Here is your link (note - this is only for founders - others will be removed).