Black Venture Capital Consortium (BVCC)

On Tuesday, October 29th, I was given the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion at Spelman College for their Spelpreneur Program, a co-curricular education initiative that fosters entrepreneurship and innovation at Spelman College. Huge thank you to Ms. Sonya C. Rush for inviting me to moderate this discussion with 3 amazing Black Women Founders: -Tracey Pickett, Founder of Hairbrella, a brand that provides rainhats and headwear to protect hair and face from the weather. - Riean Knight, Founder of Honey to Cocoa, an AI driven product that helps make up wearers identify their perfect shade and brand/product. - and Kayla Nimely, Founder of KayStylistLLC, a company that provides digital products to passionate hairstylists and everyday folks to teach high-demand skills and beauty best practices (Follow her on Instagram @kaystylissst) During our 45 minute conversation we discussed the AMAZING products these women are building, the problems they are solving and how they went about validating those problems through customer research. We also discussed the challenges these women face as entrepreneurs such as the difficulty of building complex technology, learning how and what to spend capital on, embracing your customers even if they are not your initial target audience, balancing entrepreneurship as a student, and so much more! Here are a few tips I took from our conversation: - Fall in LOVE with the problem you're seeking to solve, not the solution. - To begin, dedicate at least 30 minutes-1 hour a day to your venture to build discipline - Study the life-cycle of a company like yours to set realistic milestones for your own business - To break free from a scarcity mindset and build confidence -- build practices that change your mindset such as create a vision board, start a meditation practice, exercise and read more books about business and self-improvement. We also shared some great podcast and book recommendations to the students in the Spelpreneur program. Those of which include podcasts like: "How I Built This", "Limited Supply", and "ECommerce Masters" and books like "The Four Steps to the Epiphany", "Ready, Fire, Aim", and "The Millionaire Mind". I look forward to the next opportunity to engage with the Spelpreneur program!

I held a session last night with Black Venture Capital Consortium (BVCC) on Customer Personas. I took students on a straightforward path to developing ICPs and on a roundabout journey to developing User and Buyer Personas since the process should be iterative and research-driven. We had over 220 students across venture capital, product management, and entrepreneurship. My favorite feedback included: - Great presentation and talking points. I loved the examples you provided and how you formed questions to test our understanding. - Thank you! Diamonde you gave a very personable presentation, so much it seemed like a conversation rather than a session. Will be rewatching the video as well because you dropped a lot of nuggets. Fun Fact: BVCC kicked off both my journey in instruction and investing, so I hold this organization very close to my heart! Thank you Jahleesa Phelps and Malcolm Robinson!