YSYS: 2019 A Year in Review
2019 has been a monumental year for YSYS, we’ve gone from building a community to managing a company and scaling our impact. From community members Andy, Harry, and Sarah becoming Angel Investors with Atomico — Emilia Co-Founder of The Good Hair smashing her crowdfunding goal — Check Warner rasing £27M for Ada Ventures — Amy Lewin spotlighting diverse communities in Sifted — Fahim, Co-Founder of Pukket graduating from APX Accelerator to myself being recognised as the Top 100 BAME Leaders in Technology by the FT … it’s been one awesome year, check out our year in review below:
January — March 2019
The start of the year was all about showcasing the impact YSYS had achieved and bringing our founding members and alumni together. On our two year anniversary, we released our 2017 and 2018 Impact Report, highlighting the amazing stories from our community and collaborative projects with AfroTechFest, Afrobytes, FFWD, Hatch Enterprise, Diversity VC and others. You can read a summary of our Impact Report in Forbes.
Through a simple Instagram DM, we managed to convince Cassandra Stavrou, Founder of Propercorn, to share how she went from mixing popcorn in a cement mixer to running a multi-million-pound business with our community at London and Partners. During the event, we also celebrated our very own food and consumer entrepreneurs Pukket, DimpleBoyCupcakes, and Agogos Food, who shared the importance of resilience and passion when launching a business.
On the topic of food, we teamed up with Out of The Box and Jonathan Jackson, Editor In Chief at Red Table Talk, on event series Breaking Bread, where we brought together members of YSYS to share their fundraising journey at Google for Startups newly launched innovation space. The community was both inspired and excited to hear from Darren Tenkorang, Founder of, TRIM-IT who raised 225k, Urenna Okonkwo, Founder, Cashmere App who raised 180k and Andy Davis, Venture Partner at Backstage Capital and angel investor with Atomico.
I used to work at Google for Startups so was even more excited to announce, during International Women’s Day, the latest addition to YSYS Advisory Board; Sarah Drinkwater, Director at Omidyar Network and Ex-Google, and Nafisa Bakkar, Co-founder and CEO of Amaliah. Two powerhouse women, who I love and respect as community leaders.
April — June
April was all about scaling! We welcomed Kwaku Dapaah-Danquah, social entrepreneur and podcaster to the team, to lead on FoundersDoor; our six-week pre-accelerator for diverse founders, supported by OneTech, and the Mayor’s Digital Talent Programme.
FoundersDoor is the first preaccelerator in London, specifically designed for women and BAME founders. FoundersDoor equips participants with the knowledge and experience to get their start-up ideas off the ground, through workshops, coaching, free office space, and exclusive networking events with successful founders, investors, and technical experts. You can learn more about the programme in the Evening Standard.
In the same month, we also teamed up with Forward Partners to host a community brunch on fundraising and investment. Thank you to Louise Rix and Carl Martin for welcoming us and creating pathways for diverse founders to access to capital.
May was all about access! We teamed up with Jolt, an ed-tech platform, to launch a 6-month scholarship for knowledge-hungry, entrepreneurial thinkers from diverse backgrounds, granting them free access to Jolt classes on business management, employability skills, and startup methodology. We selected five awesome YSYS members : Congratulations to Bami Kuteyi, Jaz Broughton Ibiere Banigo, Hanna Adan, and Muhammad Malik. You can learn more about our superstar scholars HERE.
We teamed up with Colorintech on our second scholarship programme, granting 4 YSYS members with an opportunity of a lifetime — an all-expenses-paid learning experience to LA (aka Silicon Beach). Maatin Adewunmi, Sam Gordon, Shabaz Ahmad and Serena Chana, were given the opportunity to travel to Silicon Beach and learn about how to build a career within the startup ecosystem from the likes of HeadSpace, Backstage Capital and Snapchat. Check out Serena Chana top takeaways from the scholarship HERE.
June was all about education! As a diversity and inclusion organisation we know it is equally important to not only support our community but support stakeholders looking to build diverse cultures. Throughout the month we worked with a number of organisations on diversity training, covering topics from intersectionality, privilege, and allyship. With the support of JPMorgan and Capital Enterprise we will be continuing to consult some of the leading accelerator programmes in London on how they can design inclusive programmes which support diverse founders. We look forward to publishing our findings in 2020.
July — September
At YSYS working with Partners who share the same mission as us is key. During the summer we teamed up with the FT to host two events: How to Get Hired in Tech and How to Hire Diverse Talent in Tech. We discussed everything from interview tips to transparent recruitment processes. Both events attracted over 250 talented individuals and hiring managers. You can read the highlights HERE. Thank you to Georgie, Christine, and Priscilla for supporting YSYS community develop and advance their careers.
Later in the quarter, we asked ourselves as a community, how can we further connect diverse founders to capital. This led to the launch of FoundersDoor+; a pilot three-day investment readiness programme in partnership with The University of Westminster. We selected three startups: Plint, Modularity Grid and MyOribit, and took them through a series of workshops covering term sheets, data rooms, due diligence and pitch decks taught by VC’s from Atomico, Salesforce Venture, ADV, Impact X, Ada Ventures and Backstage Capital.
The programme ended with an Investor Lounge where our cohort pitched in front of a room of angels and VCs seeking diverse dealflow. Since the programme, the cohort has gone on to raise c£250k.. In 2020 we will be hosting a series of Office Hours with VCs for our community. If you’re a VC seeking diverse deal flow, do get in touch.
Summer then ended with an exciting splash of content when we collaborated with Startup Van on a series of video interviews with our community. Check out our community interviews with: Pukket, Hannah Pratt Clothing, Blangauge, Vitae London, Bespoke Benny, MDM Flow, CGV and Backstage Capital,
October — December
In October we delivered an Insight Day for Linkedin who were looking to increase their pipeline of black talent. We curated an event that attracted over 300 applications — 120 were then invited to Linkedin HQ to learn more about their culture, values, recruitment process and job opportunities. Next year at YSYS we want to partner with a number of organisations on Insight Days who are :
- Committed to inclusion
- Looking to recruit diverse talent.
Throughout the year we collaborated with EIT Food and Impact Hub Kings Cross to design, develop and deliver The Change Makers Programme: a new, collaborative initiative that gives diverse talent the chance to become agrifood-tech innovators or entrepreneurs through a series of events, mentorship, and training. We hosted a series of inspiring community meetups and co-ran a startup weekend. We selected 50 individuals out of 150 and awarded £30,000 in grants to three winning teams: proTECT, Urban Growth Collective, and Preservation Culture. Check out our Instagram story highlight EIT to have a look at how it all went down!
We also celebrated the graduation of FoundersDoor second cohort, where five amazing teams pitched the startups they had been working through the course of six weeks. The night highlighted the hard work, ambition, and commitment our 20 budding entrepreneurs had shown week after week. We are super proud of them, and can’t wait to see what they do next.
For our last collaboration of the year, we teamed up with Google to host a roundtable bringing together community builders, entrepreneurs, talent managers and more to discuss what we can do as an ecosystem to foster a culture of inclusion and share best practices. We’ll be sharing more of our findings in the later months to come.
At YSYS it’s a tradition to support the homeless over Christmas. Last year we hosted a Christmas Book Sale for Crisis. The year the community came together to curate care bags for the homeless. We stocked bags full of women toiletries, warm clothes, food, and essentials. Thank you to everyone who donated. It’s times like these where we see the true strength of the community.
And to wrap the year up we joined Microsoft for Startups co-working space as their Community In Residence. Thank you to Amali, Yannis, and Ian for the warm welcome. We can’t wait to start planning 2020 in our new home!
Special thank you to our community, team, advisors, partners, and clients for making 2019 special. Happy New Year friends!
