Announcing the Friends & Family 2024 Cohort

After re-launching Friends & Family last year, we’re excited to finally announce our new 2024 Friends & Family cohort.

Approximately 40% of startups rely on initial funding from a friend or family member, with an average investment of $23,000. In response to the steady decrease in venture funding for diverse founders, Slauson & Co. launched the Friends & Family accelerator. This initiative furthers our mission of fostering economic inclusion by providing catalytic capital to a wider variety of entrepreneurs, access to institutional knowledge of industry experts, and an engaged values-aligned community, to become the friends and family many entrepreneurs need to succeed.

The 20 selected companies will each receive a $150,000 investment from our core fund. Participating founders will join a 12-week virtual program to receive hands-on operational support to advance their business and learn from amazing coaches and speakers. Past programs featured renowned figures such as Jeff Wilke, Jonathan Mildenhall, will.i.am, and Stacy Brown-Philpot.

We received 850 applications from across 44 states for this year’s program, with the most-represented industries including Enterprise SAAS, Consumer Tech, Healthcare, and SMB Tech. Among the 20 companies, 95% have a founder who identifies as a person of color, 60% have a founder who identifies as a woman, and 20% of companies have a founder who identifies as LGBTQIA. Here’s a little insight into who they are.

Meet the 2024 Friends & Family Cohort:

• Bizi: Founded by Kate Fulginiti and Jack Gibson, Bizi is an automated token economy used by schools to motivate students and improve financial literacy.
• BOLLYGOOD: Founded by Maxine Henderson, Bollygood is a certified woman-owned and minority-owned company that spreads happiness and culture through our Indian-inspired sparkling beverages.
• CareSMS: Founded by Arjun Srivastava, CareSMS is an intelligent care coordination product suite that fosters cost-efficiency, scalability, streamlined workflows, and top-tier care delivery for the In-Home Healthcare and Telehealth practices that cater to diverse and aging patient populations.
• Clara for Creators: Founded by Christen Nino De Guzman, Clara for Creators is the ‘Glassdoor for Creators’.
• Everi AI: Founded by Olamide Anyanwu, Everi AI is a data curation platform that enables companies to develop diverse, personalized AI models and AI consumer products at scale.
• Imanyco: Founded by Saïda Florexil and Aakriti Gupta, Imanyco seeks to revolutionize communication accessibility in travel & live events.
• Freedom: Founded by Aaron Mitchom, Freedom is the first cash advance app built to help users cover their loved one’s bail fees!
• KINNECT: Founded by Omar Alvarez, KINNECT is an AI-driven platform designed to deepen family bonds by making it easy to capture, share, and preserve life’s most meaningful stories and memories across generations.
• Maguey Exchange: Founded by Robert Weir and Anthony Ruizcalderon, Maguey Exchange is a supply chain technology platform reshaping the face of production and consumption in artisanal spirits.
• Motivo Scar Care: Founded by Jadis Montijo, Motivo Scar Care focuses on creating unique scar care products that offer a better fit to your lifestyle and have targeted purposeful effects.
• MOODEAUX: Founded by Brianna Arps, MOODEAUX® turns accessorizing your mood into mindful self-care with its audacious, multi-award-winning fragrances powered by scent science.
• Oben Health: Founded by Peter Njongwe, Oben Health delivers health care in places of trust starting with barbershops and salons.
• Pawtrip: Founded by Nicole Caba, Pawtrip empowers pet parents to explore pet-friendly places while providing a platform for pet brands to reach their audience.
• TAINR: Founded by Camilo Giraldo and Kathy Silva, TAINR is a packageless technology streamlining grocery and CPG operations through a waste-free refill platform.
• RxPost: Founded by Amantha Bagdon, RxPost is an online marketplace connecting independent pharmacies with each other to buy and sell surplus medications to reduce medication waste through inventory optimization.
• Tandem Community: Founded by Sheila Pande, Tandem Community is the only culturally competent postpartum and maternal digital mental health tool to optimize mental and emotional well-being solutions for women of color and culture.
• Thurgood: Founded by Brandon Burns, Thurgood offers legal resources for victims of discrimination.
• WellCapped: Founded by Shante L. Frazier and Lauren Mitchell, WellCapped is the first rental platform for wigs and hair extensions.
• Underwriter: Founded by Rafael Balbi, Underwriter makes the stock market easy to understand so that anyone can be a great stock investor.
• Werkflow: Founded by Jessica Ma and David Osorno, Werkflow is an online platform empowering the dance industry.

We want to give a special thanks to Grid110 for piloting Friends & Family with us, and to Ron Conway of SV Angel, the Annenberg Foundation, the Schultz Family Foundation, and Jim Goetz of Sequoia for their generous contributions to support in helping us get this program off the ground.

If you’re interested in connecting, investing, or supporting any of these companies you can contact us at meetus@slauson.co. We hope to hear from you soon.