The Black New Venture Competition

Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business, some stemming from deep systemic discrimination. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to do something to make a difference for early-stage Black technology entrepreneurs seeking funding. In just four months, they created the inaugural Black New Venture Competition (BNVC), which attracted 300 applicants and became the largest student-led business plan competition for Black entrepreneurs in the United States. Over the course of creating the competition and its complementary educational program, the Black Tech Master Series (BTMS), Foster and Simpson identified some of the biases and barriers in the evaluation and funding of early-stage Black ventures. Although the event attempted to address these issues, and successfully raised some startup capital to direct towards the participating entrepreneurs, the organizers still had concerns, including what would happen when these Black founders faced traditional white VC investors in their next funding round. After the competition, Foster and Simpson needed to decide what to keep and what to change for future iterations of the BNVC. Were they, and their successors, even thinking big enough for BNVC 2.0?