Challenges of Fundraising as a British African Entrepreneur | Samuel Brooksworth

[00:00:00] For a lot of Black entrepreneurs listening to this, they will understand the frustrations or reasons of a Black business owner. And it's sad because I'm a very chilled person. I'm not too fussed. If I was to have taken all the no's to heart and I've been involved in sales, some of the no's that I've received personally have been awful. Awful. And luckily I don't really take things to heart. So no matter how you try to crush my spirit through the wickedness you try to do to me, I'm never too fussed because at the end of the day, I'm not too fussed.

[00:00:31] As myself and my twin brother always say, it is what it is. No matter what you say to me, I'm never too fussed. And individuals have literally gone out of their way. If I tell you some of the things some VCs have done to us, like some VCs have taken us through the whole process, deliberately given term sheets to us, knowing they were never fully intending to invest, to pull away last minute. Some investors have just like given the most awful responses to us by emails.

[00:00:57] And one day, one day, God wouldn't, if I ever get to document the journey, the emails don't disappear. It's like some people have messaged me some of the most awful messages on LinkedIn. We've done like email outreach campaigns through my platform and through my LinkedIn story. And they've said things it's like, but why? And I'm sure other black entrepreneurs have been through the same things where they just had most crushing no's, but there's no need for that.

[00:01:20] So you're right. When you look at other entrepreneurs from other demographics or backgrounds, they don't have to go through the same hoops that we need to raise. And what's sad is that I wrote an article a few years ago in The Guardian talking about how there needs to be more black VCs to support black businesses. But then what's sad is that the black VCs are the ones you get some of the harshest no's from.

[00:01:41] And it's like, we're creating this ecosystem, but then black VCs are actually acting like their counterparts and trying to use the same measuring sticks as they would for other white-owned organisations. But you can't because we all know the hoops and hurdles that black organisations go through are so different to them. So you need to use different metrics. You need to use different measuring tools.

[00:02:04] So, yeah, I just hope and pray that a lot of the black founders who are going through the same journey that I've gone through and I'm going through, just keep pushing and keep that determination, that zeal, knowing that other people will see them where they are and what they're going for. And the truth is, like you mentioned, a lot of individuals who are looking to invest in you will invest in you, which they do for our organisation. You invest in the person. You can't invest in a pitch deck. If you invest in an idea, things change. No one saw COVID happening.

[00:02:33] So all the people invested in those pitch decks during that period, I'm sure many of them crumbled. But if you invest in a person, ideas can change. The person can pivot. The tenacity, the zeal, the will to succeed. That's one thing you can never take away from me. So irrespective of what happens in the environment, remotely will always succeed was myself, my team will never like to fail. And if you're investing in that, your investment will grow.

[00:02:59] If you're investing in my idea, an idea alone, I'm not too sure about that, big man. So it's important that individuals understand that and they just start to invest more in people. Because there are some great people on the continent. There are some great black entrepreneurs around the world who are getting overlooked because of their skin colour and an idea. Rather than them looking past and looking at their heart, they're interpreting the same measurements that they use for a lot of white entrepreneurs. They look at these individuals and they're like, oh, you're great. You're tenacious.

[00:03:28] You're amazing. We know you can take this to another level. Why don't you use that same metric for a lot of black entrepreneurs? And if we did and we saw more investment into black entrepreneurs, we'll see so many more black entrepreneurs rising and doing amazing things. So hopefully over the next few years, we'll see that. Hopefully we see change and we're no longer enemies of our progress.