On Friday, August 16th, the Opportunity Hub in Kansas City will be welcoming Keisha Knight Pulliam and Arian Simone (Fearless Fund), Brian Brackeen (Lightship Capital), and Candice Matthews Brackeen (NewMe and Hillman Accelerator) to Belger Crane Yard Studios at 6pm.
This event is part of a series of events that takes place on the 3rd Friday of every month in Kansas City. It focuses on bringing leading voices, investors, entrepreneurs, and authors to Kansas City from around the world.
These events act as an entry point to the OHUB which is intended to help welcome people who otherwise might not know how to get involved in the KC entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The vision and execution behind the OHUB program is Rodney Sampson, an Atlanta based serial entrepreneur. According to its website, “OHUB is the definitive future of work, opportunity, and wealth creating platform to ensure that everyone, everywhere is equitably included with scalable access to the tech, startup, and venture ecosystem, in demand technology education, training and careers, vetted entrepreneurial support programs and early stage capital, and investment opportunities as a path to multi-generational wealth with no reliance on pre-existing multi-generational wealth.”
OHUB is an accelerator that is focused on ways to make the entrepreneurial ecosystem more inclusive to all people. Founder Rodney Sampson stated, “OHUB is a network of like-minded entrepreneurs, like-minded startups, and like-minded innovators. Don’t you want to be part of a family that thinks on the cutting edge.” Thus, the OHUB does more than operate an accelerator. It provides an entire support system for an ecosystem – capital, skills training, access to resources, etc.
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As such, OHUB is providing a variety of entry points to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Specifically, today, August 13th, O-HUB is closing an application to join the CEO of MY LIFE workshop that takes place on Saturday, August 17th.
This application is an entry point into a variety of programs that OHUB has created for KC – including a startup bootcamp, a pre-accelerator (which includes 10 – $5,000 grants), and the accelerator (which includes 5-$50,000 grants). These programs are intended to dramatically increase the number of underrepresented founders in KC and to provide access to capital and resources for these founders.
The Friday program is open to anyone, but it will focus on ways to find venture capital. Keisha Knight Pulliam and Arian Simone are celebrities through their careers in entertainment. However, the two recently launched a venture fund focused on investing in high growth startups founded by women of color. According to Girlboss, women of color have received less than 1% of venture capital in the last decade – including the woeful .06% to African-American women. (https://www.girlboss.com/identity/venture-capital-woc-women-of-color)
Brian Brackeen recently exited from his AI startup, Kairos, and launched a new venture fund with his wife, Candice Matthews Brackeen. According to their website, the fund is focused on investing in XYZ. Ms. Brackeen also is responsible for creating NewMe and operates the Hillman Accelerator in Cincinnati.
For more information, check out the O-HUB website at www.opportunityhub.co.
