Woke Washing & Black Entrepreneur Funding 💰

However, despite 2021 gains, venture capital going to Black founders remains proportionally tiny. In the first half of 2021, startups overall raised a record-breaking $147 billion. Only 1.2% of it went to Black founders. In 2020, that figure was 0.6%.

Will the momentum continue? While the figures for Black founders and funds are moving in the right direction, they’re still a long way from being representative.  

In 2018, Nike launched a campaign featuring Serena Williams to promote equal pay for female athletes and demand entry into exclusively male leagues. All sounded very noble, until next year when Nike-sponsored runner Alysia Montaño condemned the company for not providing her paid maternity leave.

This is just one example of what is called ‘woke-washing’.

Woke-washing refers to activism buzzwords used as hollow marketing ploys by brands to appeal to socially conscious shoppers. And corporate woke-washing is a minefield of hypocrisy. 

While brands find creative ways to weave “woke” narratives such as feminism, anti-racism, mental health awareness and LGBTQ+ rights into their marketing campaigns, their corporate practices tell a very different story. 

Fake Woke Values

Fashion startup In The Style’s #BeKind charity t-shirts is a prime example. The company released a campaign to raise money for the Samaritans after the shocking death of Caroline Flack, which sparked a society-wide discussion about mental health awareness. But while the company received good PR and sales from its campaign, it continued to exploit garment factory workers with long work hours, low pay and poor working conditions to meet demand. Thus, negatively affecting their mental health. 

The Need To Say Something 

Social media has shaped a values-driven relationship between consumers and brands. On Instagram, conversations about social issues have become more immediate, giving shoppers the power to publicly call out brands on things they care about. Brands don't really have the option to say nothing anymore. They feel the need to put something out, whether that’s truly reflective of their business or not. 

Of course such advertising can go wrong when brands aren’t careful enough to hide their true behaviours. For instance, Boohoo was selling social distancing slogan t-shirts, while simultaneously being accused of breaking Covid-19 guidelines for photoshoots and having ties to suppliers forcing staff to work while sick with the virus.

The Flip Side
Could it be possible that these ad campaigns are actually helping bring issues to the foreground? Psychologists believe that despite what happens behind company curtains, such campaigns also have subtle impacts on people’s behaviours where they are now more embarrassed to keep silent over social issues. There is of course, no evidence that ad campaigns have significantly changed the world for the better.

But whether you think it’s “woke-washing”, or companies mainstreaming important issues, this is a phenomenon that is here to stay. 

A former busboy at Bareburger, Nabeel founded Lunchbox in 2019, an online ordering platform that helps restaurants reduce their dependence on third-party platforms like UberEats and GrubHub. Unlike most platforms that charge clients on a per-order basis, Lunchbox has a flat monthly fee per location for chain restaurants. 

Nabeel, who was featured on the Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ list, moved from Bangladesh to the US in 2005 as a 14-year old. Though he didn’t speak English, he managed to find a job as a busboy at Bareburger to support his family. It was here that Nabeel got firsthand experience with third-party delivery companies, observing their predatory practices and getting the feeling that customers were being exploited. 

In 2019, Lunchbox secured $2 million in seed capital, after being rejected by 72 investors. A year later, it raised $20 million, the food tech industry’s largest Series A in history. Starting with a team of 10 in 2019, Lunchbox has now expanded to a cohort of 160 employees and is on the lookout for more. 

Read more about this incredible startup, how it managed to increase its revenue by 700% during the pandemic and  its entrepreneurial plans for the next year. 

Look out for more such incredible stories on Startup Spotlight every week.

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