Melissa Bradley of Ureeka: African American women starting businesses 6X more than white male peers
b'Due to the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the protests that originally broke out in response to the killing of George Floyd captured on video, corporations have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to social justice causes, as well as to help struggling small businesses. Companies like Google, Facebook and Salesforce have committed grants and funds to increase entrepreneurial opportunities to people who traditionally have been shut out of billions of dollars represented by the top venture capital firms \\u2013 Women, Black and Latinx entrepreneurs. And the company that Facebook and Salesforce chose to facilitate their SMB grant programs was Ureeka, a startup founded by Melissa Bradley, David Jakubowski and Rob Gatto, that provides mentorship and guidance through their platform to help their community membership of entrepreneurs\\u2019 get answers to their most pressing questions.\\n\\nI recently had a LinkedIn Live conversation with Ureeka cofounder Melissa Bradley to learn more about Ureeka\\u2019s mission to help underrepresented entrepreneurs succeed, and her own recent experiences raising $8.6M in VC money. Below is an edited transcript from a portion of our conversation. Click on the embedded SoundCloud player to hear the full conversation.'