Emerge: An inside look at the SoftBank Investment Advisers accelerator for underrepresented founders

Yaprak DeCarmine (Co-Founder & CEO, Game Jolt), Ugwem Eneyo (Co-Founder and CEO, SHYFT Power), and James Lott (Founder and CEO, Script Health) reflect on what led them to join Emerge’s first cohort, explain what surprised them about the experience, and share their hopes for the future of their companies—and for diversity in tech.

First, tell us about your backgrounds and companies.

James: Script Health’s mission is to make essential tests and treatments more accessible—in part by enabling pharmacists to write some prescriptions themselves. I was a pharmacist before I started this company, and every day I had to turn customers away because they didn’t have insurance or their prescription had expired. It broke my heart. Script aims to bridge that gap.

Yaprak: Game Jolt is the platform for millions of gamers to discover, play and share fan content around their favorite games. I’m a gamer myself—video games were part of how I learned English after my family moved to the US from Turkey when I was young. Millions of people around the world are creating their own games as well as fan-based artwork, music, and game playthroughs for others to discover and interact with; Game Jolt helps them find an audience.

Ugwem: SHYFT Power builds smart hardware and integrated software to help manage clean energy resources in emerging markets. My background is in civil engineering, and my co-founder and I got the idea for the company while we were at Stanford, doing research on the energy transition. SHYFT’s first market is Nigeria, where my family’s from. Nigeria is on track to become the third-most populous country in the world, but its electricity grid is so unreliable that millions of homes and businesses rely on costly—and polluting—backup generators. SHYFT aims to make technologies like solar a more efficient, scalable alternative.

Why did you apply for Emerge?

Ugwem: I was pretty reluctant at first, actually. We’d been through several accelerators, and I didn’t think I had the bandwidth for another—we felt ready to focus on execution. But one of my mentors, Stephen Ozoigbo, was involved in Emerge as an advisor, and he convinced me that there was real value in the program.

Yaprak: I read about Emerge in the WeWork Labs newsletter. I was excited, because growing a network has been my biggest challenge—I used to think if I just built something great, people would start knocking on the door to use it. So I applied, but even though I knew I qualified, deep down I wasn’t sure they would pick me. To my surprise, I got in!

Tell us about the relationships you built within your cohort.

Ugwem: SBIA’s Dami and WeWork’s Elizabeth Scallon were purposeful about making Emerge a safe space where we could trust each other and really share. There was a lot going on at the time; we were in the middle of the program when George Floyd was killed. In a traditional accelerator, you might not feel like you could talk freely about that, or about a call with an investor where you think bias may have been a factor. Or sometimes, even and especially in programs for underrepresented founders, it feels like you’re set up to compete with one another, which makes it hard to be vulnerable. But I think a lot of the success of Emerge came from the character of the founders SBIA chose. We all genuinely wanted to help each other.

Personally, the other founders helped me learn not to try to compensate for the stereotypes someone might have about me. I used to be overly deferential because I didn’t want to be seen as angry or aggressive. But in Emerge, I could get in a chat with everyone when I was figuring out how to respond to an email, and they encouraged me to be confident.

James: Confidence is contagious!

There’s something powerful about being with other underrepresented founders, getting to see that they’ve been through a lot of the same things you have, and getting to learn from their wealth of knowledge.

I’m much more aware now of the leverage of my own expertise.

Yaprak: I think the vulnerability was key. They had us go around, and every single one of us talked about some of the biggest challenges we were facing. And then the cohort would help us come up with solutions. That was really cool; it made me feel like I could reach out not just to anyone at SBIA, but any of the other founders.

What do you hope to see as the tech industry pursues more diversity?

Yaprak: I think every one of us has had those experiences where someone tells you they’re putting together a fund for underrepresented founders or they want to be more inclusive, and then you realize it’s just a marketing gimmick.

So I hope we see more people putting their money where their mouth is. And I will say I’m optimistic, in part because of this program.

James: Yeah, SBIA was really one of the first to do something like this, and it felt good to be part of that. When George Floyd was killed, other places were scrambling to put programs in place. Emerge had been in the works for more than a year.

As far as what I hope to see, early-stage founders are so often told to start with a “family and friends” round, and people don’t realize that if you’re from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, like me, your friends probably don’t have $10,000 to spare. I’d love to see VCs and other groups come in and start to fill that gap.

Ugwem: Agreed. Bootstrapping has been romanticized, frankly, but that approach shouldn’t have to be the norm—especially because it might be 10 times harder for a founder from an underrepresented group compared to a white guy who went to Stanford. One of our peers in Nigeria, Paystack, was just acquired by Stripe, and of course we all celebrated that. But there are countless other companies, in Nigeria and all over the world, that we never see because they don’t get funding.

Emerge is definitely a step in the right direction, particularly because our advisors included people from underrepresented groups and well-represented groups alike.

It’s helpful to talk with people who look like me, but it’s also important to talk with people who don’t.

I can learn from them, too—and they can learn from me what it’s like to be a Black female founder. All that said, really making progress on diversity in tech requires disrupting entire systems. That’s going to take more cohorts; it’s going to take working with founders at later stages. It will require continued efforts from SBIA and many other organizations.

How are you using what you learned at Emerge?

Ugwem: When we raise our next rounds, we’re pitching to funds like SBIA, so the conversations we had during Emerge are definitely helping us prepare. It’s so easy as a founder to spend your days putting out fires; it was good to be pushed to think about the future. We’re also aiming to triple in size next year, so the lessons about culture, hiring, and due diligence are all coming into play. Plus, we’re still very connected with our fellow founders and SBIA.

James: We’re also relying on our mentors on a regular basis. And Script Health is getting ready to launch our product in a couple of months, so the investment SBIA made in some of the companies on demo day has been tremendously helpful on that front.

Yaprak: I definitely learned a lot about pitching! My deck-building game is strong. And overall, I think the biggest benefit for me was confidence. Now I can go in front of investors that have backed some of the biggest companies in the world and feel like I belong.

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