June 12, 2025
SPARC helps to shut the funding hole for Black founders in search of much-needed capital.
Accumulating much-needed capital to flourish stays an enormous impediment for Black founders.
Simply 0.4% of start-up funding in 2024 went to Black-led companies, per this report. As such, solely $730 million out of that funding, totaling $314 billion final yr, reached Black enterprise house owners.
The excellent news is that entrepreneurs can now pursue $1 million to scale their enterprise and get it market-ready. The seven-figure grand prize contains mentorships and direct entry to media, tech, and leisure networks.
The help is accessible by means of the SPARC (Startup Pitch Accelerator Regional Competitors). The startup competitors is designed to help Black entrepreneurs nationwide. The funding is important as Black founders usually face systemic boundaries in elevating capital. That may hinder their means to create progressive services, compete with rivals, and construct sustaining prosperity.
Two famend Black enterprise house owners, music govt Ted Lucas and Silicon Valley tech investor Hilmon Sorey, are main the regional competitors in Miami. Lucas is transitioning into tech. He’s additionally the founding father of Miami-based Slip N Slide Data, which is dwelling to the rappers Rick Ross and Trina. Sorey’s resume consists of investing in additional than 100 corporations.
Lucas and Sorey are co-founders of The Supply Teams, which created SPARC and introduced it to Miami for the primary time this yr. That agency calls itself Florida’s first tech hub for Black founders. Its choices embrace free tech cohorts, Tech Tuesdays with trade leaders, and reportedly job pipelines to companies like Microsoft and Kaseya.
Some 40 candidates might be initially chosen. The deadline for making use of is July 1, and people can do this and achieve extra particulars right here. SPARC is tied to the Startup World Cup financing the prize. A winner from South Florida will advance and pitch to enterprise capitalists on the cup’s world finals in San Francisco in October.
Sorey tells BLACK ENTERPRISE through e mail the the highest 40 candidates will be part of the accelerator. He says it contains product technique, gross sales, authorized, and pitch growth. “Entry to profitable entrepreneurs and specialists in every of those classes is tough for particular person founders to realize.”
He added the highest 40 could have an opportunity to develop relationships with angel traders, VCs, neighborhood companions, and accelerators centered on South Florida. “This is a chance that doesn’t exist by means of some other occasion or group.”
Lucas shared through e mail the mission of the Supply Teams is to create entry to sources and funding that many Black founders merely wouldn’t know existed. “We’re right here to shut that hole and ensure our neighborhood doesn’t simply survive in enterprise however thrives.”
Within the Black neighborhood, Lucas says entry to capital is among the greatest boundaries to development. “Many people don’t have the posh of “family and friends rounds” not as a result of we lack expertise or imaginative and prescient, however as a result of generational wealth simply hasn’t been there. That’s why the possibility to win $1 million, paired with the precise steering and technique, could be a sport changer.”
Sorey hopes the accelerator may help make Black founders extra viable gamers within the nation’s multi-trillion-dollar tech trade.
“The Supply is constructed to do greater than stage the enjoying area—we’re right here to create a bonus for progressive entrepreneurs. By way of entry to capital, strategic income partnerships, mentorship, and hands-on founder growth, we assist flip promising concepts into scalable ventures.”
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