September 27 marked the third annual Demo Day hosted by the Black Founders’ Network (BFN) for members of the 2024 BFN Accelerate cohort. BFN Demo Day offers over 10 startup companies founded by Black-identifying entrepreneurs at U of T access to educational and growth opportunities over the course of four months — culminating in three-minute pitches presented to a panel of judges and live audience on Demo Day. This year’s prizes totalling $50,000 in funding awarded to five competitors allowed entrepreneurs to raise capital without giving up ownership of their companies.

While the audience voted for one People’s Choice winner, the judges — who hold positions at Rally Assets Realize Fund, BDC Capital, and Magnusmode, a Black-founded technology company — determined the recipients of four additional awards.

Spotlighting the pitch day experience

The Varsity spoke with some of the founders at Demo Day about their startups and future goals. Jonathon Bloomfield is the founder of Edventive, a platform designed to streamline all tasks for teachers — such as data entry, marketing, and organization — by integrating them into a unified platform. As a high school teacher, Bloomfield cited the stress of juggling an unsustainable workload as one of the reasons for founding the company. 

After four months of coding and collaboration, Edventive soft-launched in September and is currently operating with a small group of teachers as the team works on monetization. Bloomfield’s biggest piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to try everything.

 “[Entrepreneurship] comes from just shooting your shot, figuring out what you need to learn,” and “finding the community,” said Bloomfield.

Merveille Mukoko, founder of language-learning app Yekola, shared a similar sentiment with the inspiration behind his startup. Mukoko was attempting to learn his mother tongue, Lingala, when the frustrating lack of resources on existing language apps highlighted a broader gap in the market. According to Mukoko, languages like Lingala are often unavailable or incorrectly translated on most current Western-based applications. Yekola focuses on community-driven, audio-first learning, and aims to teach and preserve African, Indigenous and other endangered languages. 

Clothing and fashion brand Afijjio, founded by Doyin Amao, focuses on uplifting and preserving African voices in the beauty and lifestyle markets. While Amao initially struggled to scale Afijio outside of Nigeria, her move to Canada provided her the opportunity to do so. Afijjio aims to cut out the logistics fees associated with purchasing products shipped from Africa to North America. The products featured on Afijjio, are handmade and manufactured by African-identifying brand owners on the African continent. 

Echoing Bloomfield and Merveille, Amao’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs was to take action and work toward solving the problems they are facing.

Each founder had three minutes to pitch their venture to the audience and judge panel. Throughout each pitch, the audience also had the opportunity to vote on the quality, delivery, and innovation of each presentation as part of the People’s Choice award voting. 

Prizes and solutions for money management 

Afijjio was one of two startups to receive the Top Venture Award, with $5,000 in funding. The other winner was Flip and Floss, a mobile app designed to educate kids and students on money management, in the hope of helping them “save, invest, and break generational cycles.” 

The BFN People’s Choice Award went to pharmaceutical company Kare Chemical Technologies, which focused on the research and development of chemically synthesized cannabinoids: a chemical found in marijuana. 

Yekola was the recipient of the BFN Innovation Prize, which consists of a Precision 5690 Mobile Workstation laptop supplied by Dell and NVIDIA.

Celebrating Black excellence in entrepreneurship

As the event celebrated the third anniversary of BFN, founder Efosa Obano and program coordinator Faizah Balogun took the opportunity to share the network’s success since its launch. 

BFN’s stage-based structured programs and resources have led to the fundraising of over four million dollars in support of Black entrepreneurs and the creation of over $15 million in financial value by BFN companies.

Applications for the next Accelerate cohort will open on February 24 for Black-identifying members of the U of T community. The Network also offers other entrepreneurial programs, such as ECHO — a training program for entrepreneurs involved in cardiovascular health. Starting this month, BNF will be hosting information sessions for entrepreneurs throughout the coming months.