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15 Unsung Black Founders In Tech

15 Unsung Black Founders In Tech

There are dozens, if not hundreds of unsung black heroes across British history. They include Alice Kinloch, the South African activist who came to Britain, founded the African Association and created the first Pan-African conference in London in 1900. Or modern-day educator, rapper, entrepreneur and activist, Akala — the renowned author of The Sunday Times bestseller book, “Natives“, which deconstructs race, class and modern British myths.

Today, I wanted to highlight 15 unsung black founders — 15 British emerging leaders in business who you may not have come across but who deserve some light shone upon them for the incredible advancements they are making with technology.

1. Marshmallow

Twin brothers Oliver and Alexander Kent-Braham and David Goate are co-founders of the U.K.-based car insurance startup for foreign drivers — Marshmallow. The FCA regulated insurer has a 24 hours claim line and uniquely accepts foreign drivers no-claims earned in other countries. The team has ambitions to grow and insure other assets beyond cars for more fairly priced insurance cover to non-U.K. nationals.

2. Verto FX

unsung Black founders
You may not have heard of them, but we’re shining the spotlight on 15 unsung black founders in tech from Britain for the advancements they are making. Y Combinator graduates Anthony Oduwole and Ola Oyetayo co-founded Verto FX. Source: Andy Ayim

Verto FX graduated from Y Combinator earlier this year but was founded in 2017 by Anthony Oduwole and Ola Oyetayo. The startup offers a B2B currency exchange marketplace for international businesses and claims to be up to nine times cheaper than the banks. The businesses they serve are from emerging markets such as in Africa where access to quick, secure and transparent low-fee FX is a problem for many businesses.

3. Symbiotica

Co-founders, Christian Wayi-Wayi and Anastasia Bugaenko created Symbiotica — intraday liquidity analytics for financial services. This startup aims to solve the issue faced by Tier 1 banks, asset managers and hedge funds with accurately estimating their daily liquidity requirements.

4. Modularity Grid

London-based Modularity Grid is building a platform to transform how standalone electrical power systems are designed, assembled and operated for aerospace and terrestrial applications. The startup is founded by Elizabeth Nyeko, an MIT Innovator Under 35.

5. Global App Testing

Ronald Cummings-John and Owais Peer are co-founders of Global App Testing, an autonomous web and app-testing company with a difference. The difference is that they help companies like Facebook and Depop test in over 105 countries on thousands of real devices, OS versions and networks, leveraging their global network of QA testers and proprietary software.

6. Homeshift

Kenny Alegbe and Mooktakim Ahmed are the co-founders of Homeshift, a service that helps consumers set up and manage their energy, internet, council tax, and water bills all from one place. Homeshift also supplies energy and internet services, helping consumers save more on their bills.

7. CodeREG

Unsung Black Founders
Management team at CodeREG

Stacy-Ann Sinclair graduated from Entrepreneur First’s accelerator program in 2018 and became the founder and CEO of CodeREG, a startup that automatically monitors, verifies and enforces compliance for financial services firms through machine-executable regulation. The startup has aspirations to make regulatory updates as easy as software updates with its smart compliance software.

8. R-Grid

Dr. Amber Michelle Hill is the founder and CEO of a new startup called R.grid which streamlines medical research processes. Amber was a postdoctoral researcher at UCL, Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow, a global entrepreneur for the Department for International Trade and a part of the 12th cohort in Europe for Entrepreneur First.

9. Karisma Kidz

Erika Brodnock and Dr. Amanda Gummer are the co-founders of Karisma Kidz, a gamified emotional intelligence platform to teach children age 3 to 8 emotional literacy in a fun and easy way. The startup previously graduated from both the Wayra and Zinc accelerator programs.

10. Mobilus Labs

Mobilus is reinventing the way we experience voice communication with a wearable voice platform for teams of any size, at any range, and any environment. Jordan McRae is the founder and CEO, leading a multi-disciplinary team of specialists in electronics, firmware, software, product design and mechanical engineering.

11. Arthronica

Letizia Gionfrida sits on the board of the Imperial College London Venture Mentoring Service as well as being an entrepreneur-in-residence at Johnson & Johnson. Letizia is also the founder and CEO of Arthronica, a startup spun off from the bio-engineering lab of Imperial College. It’s a medtech, AI-powered patient monitoring and rehabilitation platform.

12. 9Fin

9Fin is a fintech startup providing an AI-powered data analytics platform that helps fixed income professionals save time and make smarter decisions. Created in 2016, its co-founders, Huss EL-Sheikh and Steven Hunter, have gone on to work with law firms, asset managers and have been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal.

13. OpenSensors

OpenSensors is building technology focused on lowering the cost and barriers to entry for the internet of things. The startup helps companies make smarter decisions about their real estate by analyzing things such as utilization and occupancy in real-time. Yodit Stanton is the founder and CEO.

14. Define

Nnamdi Emelifeonwu is a trained solicitor and co-founder of Define alongside Feargus MacDaeid. Define has a mission to make reading, understanding and drafting terms simple for legal professionals. The startup joined Fuse, the Allen & Overy accelerator program for legal tech earlier this year.

15. Neu Robotics

Unsung Black Founders
Cyril Lutterodt, founder of Neu Robotics

Cyril Lutterodt is the founder of Neu Robotics, an early-stage advanced robotics lab. They 3D-print carbon fiber drones and use GPU (supercomputers) to fly around and collect data for measuring the size of buildings, tracking foot traffic and vacancies. They more-or-less provide insights and analytics to infrastructure business via their platform.

As a Black British born business builder, I uniquely understand and empathize with the stories of the unsung Black founders above. The true benefit of supporting more founders from different backgrounds is that they deliver a diversity of thought to the market and therefore create more value for consumers like you and I. You can start by supporting unsung Black founders, following them on social media, supporting their products and spreading the word.

PS. You can check out my new book, Breaking into New Careers here.

This article was originally published on Medium. It is reposted here with the permission of the author, Andy Ayim. Read the original.

You can subscribe to Andy’s newsletter to learn more about the founders and investors across the globe from diverse backgrounds. You can check out Andy’s book, “Breaking into New Careers” here.