If you don’t like the way something is working, you create your own!
Hadiyah Mujhid is doing that as the CEO and Founder of HBCUvc, the nonprofit creating the next generation of venture capitalists.
“My goal is to see more Black-founded venture firms or Black GPs, which are controlling where the capital goes,” she told host Will Lucas on the latest episode of AfroTech’s Black Tech Green Money podcast.
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Mujhid’s program is increasing access to capital for communities that are historically overlooked. She herself brings an intersection of experience as a Black woman, technical founder, and software engineer.
During the Black Tech Green Money episode, she speaks on Black people’s ability to break down the barriers permitting us from being institutional investors along with the unique value HBCU students and graduates bring to tech startups as VCs — a group that she continues to uplift through her nonprofit.
“This is not the company that I wanted to start but it kept being an issue that I saw rising no matter where I was in my career journey,” Mujhid said. “This concept of lack of access to capital, but also this concept of tech companies that are growing and creating wealth but not for communities that look like where I’m from.”
She shares the barriers that came with the VC industry are rooted in wealth.
“The way that it was originally formed was a little bit different in terms of what money could enter into VC,” said Mujhid. “A lot of it was rooted in wealth.”
Early investors were investing from their own pockets during the time the VC industry first became a thing and Mujhid reiterates the U.S. is plagued with a history of wealth and equity in this country that is not accessible for people who look like us.
“The short history of the VC industry is anchored in wealth and relationships,” Mujhid said. “We weren’t a part of that history.”
Today, now that the industry is changing and more people have the opportunity to manage funds, she shares that there’s “an opportunity for us who have previously been left out to be apart of it and help grow and shape it.”
Lucas and Mujhid also discuss the ideas and concepts Black people are uniquely positioned to solve, but don’t receive the funding necessary to do it because of the lack of Black VCs looking over the deals.
“People with darker skin are the global majority,” said Mujhid. “How can you build a global company without people who make up the global majority sitting at the decision-making table?”
For more on how Mujhid is planning to grow the next set of investors who will continue to go back and invest in their communities, listen to Hadiyah Mujhid’s full Black Tech Green Money episode here:
