McKeever Conwell
In 2016, I was having breakfast with my good friend Calvin Young when I had a random thought. We should work together to create a pre-seed fund to invest in Black-led startups in Maryland. I don’t know what made me think of it at that moment, but I just knew before that Calvin would be all for it. At the time, I was working for the investment arm of the State of Maryland, and we were trying to figure out how to increase the number of Black-led startups getting seed funding. One thing we kept hearing from the Black-led startups that we talked to was how many of them lacked the earliest forms of capital:, friends and family capital. It is the friends and family capital that many companies use to get the first version of a product built, to validate their business model, and to prove to the world that they belong.
In March 2017 I launched that pre-seed fund to invest earlier than anyone else in Black-led startups in Maryland. A $40,000 check to be that “friends and family” round. After the first year and nine investments, we raised the investment amount to $50,000, added some wrap-around services, and increased the designation from black-led to women and all minority-led startups. The following year, we made another nine investments. In 2019, after a lot of hard work, including speaking to legislators, the State of Maryland added $1,000,000 to the annual budget to make it a long-term fund. It was at the time the first and only state-backed pre-seed fund specifically for women and minority-led startups. It is the crowning accomplishment of my career to date. A career that includes getting a top-secret clearance at age 19, being a part of operations and building tools that have affected world events, becoming a senior software engineer at age 24, founding two companies, and selling one.
During those four years working for the State of Maryland to invest exclusively in Maryland-based underrepresented founders and their companies, I noticed a few things:
