Building Black with Shopify and Founder Gym: A Deeper Look Into a New Collaboration to Help Black Entrepreneurs Succeed

Published in

FounderGym

5 min readOct 5, 2020

Photo is from the “Build Black: The Future Needs More Black Businesses” event hosted by Shopify at the 2019 Afrotech conference in Oakland, CA

A few weeks ago, we announced Founder Gym’s new collaboration with Shopify to ensure more Black entrepreneurs have both the blueprint and support structure to build successful businesses and create generational wealth. To kick things off, Shopify and Founder Gym hosted Build Black: The Future is Now, a virtual event featuring four leading Black entrepreneurs:

William Adoasi, the Founder of Vitae London
Gwen Jimmere, the Founder of Naturalicious
Kiyanna Stewart and Jannah C. Handy, the Co-Founders of Blk Mkt Vintage

During the event, I engaged in a candid conversation with these four business owners, covering their experiences launching and scaling businesses, their stance on the role allies can play in supporting Black entrepreneurship, as well as their best advice for current and aspiring business owners.

Over 16,000 people registered for the event, and in an era of Zoom overload, that’s a big signal that we are meeting an important demand: the Black community wants to win at entrepreneurship.

Shopify wants to help the Black community win.

Beyond the Build Black: The Future Is Now event that took place last week, Shopify also launched four new opportunities aimed to help Black business owners succeed.

Black Business Directory

There is now one central place you can go when looking to partner with, learn from, and/or buy from a Black Shopify merchant! The new Black Business Directory is the go-to place to discover and engage with Black-owned Shopify businesses. Submit your information to get featured in the directory.

Build Black Community

As a first time mother of a one-year old daughter, I can absolutely affirm the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” As a serial entrepreneur and CEO of the leading training center for underrepresented founders, I can also affirm, “It takes a village to raise a successful founder.” The truth is: business is a team sport, and if you want to win at this game, having a community of people who can support your growth is going to be essential. That’s why I’m so excited about Shopify’s new Build Black Community. Join the community to connect, learn from, and build with other Shopify merchants.

“The Future Needs More Black Businesses” Article

I believe that making entrepreneurship more accessible is a key strategy in closing the wealth gap. Shopify shares this belief and over the past year has been shining a light on Black merchants in their community. These Black entrepreneurs are blazing a path and keeping it real about what it’s going to take to ensure the Black community is equipped to utilize entrepreneurship as a means to achieving economic equality. Read the article to hear what Black Shopify merchants have to say.

Scholarships to Founder Gym’s Money Magnet Program

There are many pieces to the puzzle of succeeding as an entrepreneur, but one of the main ones is financial literacy. Your relationship with money — specifically your knowledge about how to make it, grow it, keep it, and spend it — is strongly linked to your ability to build a thriving business. This is why Shopify has teamed up with Founder Gym to grant scholarships to the Money Magnet Program, a transformative experience that can improve your financial literacy in business and train you on how to use business as a tool to generate wealth. Apply for a Money Magnet Program scholarship.

We All Go Up Together

Success does not happen overnight, nor does success happen alone. I would like to give a special shoutout to Natasha Singh, Senior Marketing Manager at Shopify, who has been championing the Build Black initiative for over a year, and whose leadership has been instrumental in making the Founder Gym and Shopify collaboration possible. When asked about what this partnership means to her, Natasha says:

At Shopify, we understand that not every business owner starts from the same place, with the same opportunities. That’s why we not only provide resources for our merchants to grow, but also a community to hold open, honest and inspiring conversations like the one at our ‘Build Black: The Future Is Now’ event. The ability to bring together founders with lived experiences from all over the world to discuss breaking through industry challenges, while sharing gems for aspiring business owners, will only pave the way to create more equitable entrepreneurship opportunities. Our mission is simple — level the playing field for underrepresented entrepreneurs. With collaborators like Founder Gym, we’ll be able to do this by building initiatives, resources and a community for Black business owners and with Black business owners.