Event was delayed part of NBA's All Star weekend
Pitch competition Gen-Y presenters are seated together before making presentations (L-R) Zipporah Sowell, Malcolm Lee, Daa'iyah Fogle, Daryl "DJ" Riley, Kenia Best, Peter Iwuh, and Kennedy Dumas.
Nearly one hundred people attended the 2022 Black Girl Ventures Pitch Competition last month at the One Metropolitan Cleveland Center. Originally scheduled to take place during the National Basketball Association’s All-Star weekend in Cleveland back in February, the event featured seven black Gen-Y entrepreneurs looking to make their marks in the tech, education, art, and wellness arenas.
The pitch winners were determined by audience vote at the conclusion of the slide presentations, which were projected on giant digital screens. The $10,000 first place prize went to Day’s Design, a small business digital marketing agency founded last September by Daa’iyah Fogle, a graduating senior at Claflin University of Orangeburg, SC.
Day said she started her company to help small businesses “uncover their message” in unique digitally-based text and graphic formats. The Greenville, SC native said Day’s Design’s ability to conduct marketing strategies and campaigns is shown through the execution of media kits, social media content, and print materials.”
The winner of the $6,000 second place prize was Peter Iwuh, a May, 2022 graduate of Morgan State University who as a teenager back in 2018 launched a full-scale marketing company known as “TyKoon MP”. Iwuh explained that his team’s top goal is always to upgrade their clients’ marketing strategy efforts as well as provide them with guidance and support. “When we kick off client strategies…we take the time to dig deep to understand data that is specific to our clients to yield fruitful campaigns,” Iwuh explained.
Finishing third and receiving a $2,000 prize for her herbal product line known as “Rooted Vybz, LLC” was Zipporah Sowell, a senior at Tuskegee University and a licensed naturopathic herbalist. Rooted Vybz launched in September, 2021as a holistic health venture featuring a 3-product line of herbal glycerites (liquid vegetable extract) taken orally in droplets. The products are named “Keep that Same Energy’ for energy and alertness, ‘Motiv8’ for memory function, and ‘Unbothered’ for immunity support.
“All of our products are made with organic herbs and non-GMO sustainable sourced vegetable glycerine,” said Sowell.
The four other presenters each deserve honorable mention:
• Gabb Global creator Malcolm Lee of Washington, DC. The 2022 graduate of Virginia Union University developed software that uses virtual reality to render real time English-to-Spanish or English-to-German conversions of classroom lessons for K-12 learners.
Lee said his software makes it “possible for ESL students, and eventually the world, to practice at their pace and without pressure. We enable peer-to-peer practice and faster learning.” Gabb Global’s expansion plans include more languages.
• Darryl “DJ” Riley, who received his bachelor’s degree from Hampton University in 2022 and a master’s from North Carolina A&T in 2022, has set January, 2024 as his launch month for “Tendaji”, a wearable technology clothing and accessories venture. The company’s flagship product will be a smart jacket, which is typically made with technology that can track bits of user activity data such as exercise intensity and body temperature readings. Riley says that unlike the competition, his future product won’t need an external charging source.
• Kenia Best, a senior at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland, is the future founder of “Your Very Own” organic and vegan skin care products. She plans to launch the brand this summer and will feature allowing customers to select their own butters, oils, scents, and colors within their skin care options. Best explained, “We can personalize our products for our individual consumers. We are socially and environmentally responsible, and we only use high-quality ingredients.”
• Kennedy Dumas graduated in May, 2022 from Edward Waters University and will enroll at Morehouse School of Medicine in August. She also launched “Stationary Black” which offers illustrative and custom notebooks with positive African American images on the covers. “We wanted to offer custom notebooks as well as illustrative (because) it allows our customers to include any photo, picture, or logo into the notebook,” she said.
Cavs coach Bernie Bickerstaff, Cathy's Cookies founder Catherine Cross, L & Company founder/CEO Luke Lawal, Jr.m and Pearl's Kitchen founder/CEO Tiwanna Scott-Williams quizzed the contestants after each pitch.
Each presenter’s pitch was followed by a battery of questions from a panel of business professionals representing Black Girl Ventures and the NBA. Because each presentation included an appeal for either start-up capital or operations funding, the young entrepreneurs needed to support and defend their concepts adequately before the panel.
[L-R] Tiwanna Scott-Williams, Catheryn Cross, and Shelly Omilade Bell share stories of entrepreneurship
A panel discussion on the principles of business success preceded the pitch competition. Entrepreneurs Tiwanna Scott-Williams of Pearl’s Kitchen, Catheryn Cross of Cathy’s Cookies, and Shelly Omilade Bell of Black Girl Ventures mixed in personal testimonies of struggle, discovery, and incremental success along with their lessons.
Information on all participants’ brands can be found on various social media platforms including Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
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