Irish, British Fintechs Aim to Empower Black Women Entrepreneurs in Atlanta

A pair of British and Irish fintech firms are coming together in Atlanta to help Black women entrepreneurs overcome some of their biggest impediments to their growth: access to capital and business guidance.

Sage, the British small-business software company with a North American headquarters in Atlanta, is working with Swoop, an Irish fintech firm that more recently arrived in the city, to provide training and mentorship to 150 Black women in Atlanta through the new Pathways to Success program. Participants will also receive a membership to The BOSS Network, a platform and peer network that connects women of color, offering coaching and resources via an online community and in-person events.

Representatives from Sage and Swoop convened at the Metro Atlanta Chamber to launch the program in the presence of Peter Burke, Ireland’s minister of state for EU affairs and defense. The latest of many Irish cabinet-level officials to visit Atlanta in recent years, Mr. Burke was in town for St. Patrick’s Day festivities.

Announced first in January, Pathways to Success is designed to ameliorate concerns voiced in a report the three partners released in September about challenges faced by Black female founders in Atlanta.

In addition to well-known disparities in access to capital and equity investments, some invariably due to discrimination, many firms simply lack the financial reporting data they need to improve their creditworthiness in the eyes of lending sources.

“Traditionally, the path is banks, and we have all learned very quickly, that’s not a path to success,” said Chip Mahan, global head of fintech for Sage based in Atlanta, with apologies to any former bankers in the room. “Traditionally, it’s the first stop to ‘No.’”

That’s why Sage has incorporated Swoop as an embedded finance solution that Sage offers to users on its platform.

Swoop analyzes a company’s finances and matches it with potential underutilized sources of funding, including Small Business Administration grants and loans, venture capital, equipment financing, working capital loans, and even programs like the $5,000 grants issued through Metro Export Challenge run by the Atlanta chamber.

“What we’re doing is bringing together the entire funding market and curating it exactly to their financial profile, what their project needs are, what are they looking to finance,” said Andrea Reynolds, CEO and founder of Swoop.

The problem of access is real and multifaceted, said CherRaye Glenn-Flowers, founder of Brownce, an app that connects Black and brown women with nearby beauty professionals, from hair stylists to nail shops that cater to their specific needs.

While she’s bootstrapping her company, Ms. Glenn-Flowers has seen peers turned down by banks approach investors too early, only to see them diluted to the point they no longer maintain a controlling interest in their own venture. What Black women need, she suggested, are true partners, not platitudes.

“It’s hard to hear that we’re resilient, but we’re literally crying for help,” she said. “And oftentimes you hear people say, ‘Well, you can’t get help if you ask for help.’ And then when we ask for help, we’re left with silence … or a sense of dismissal.”

The report showed that many Black founders are turning to friends and family for finance, which may plug short term holes but is not sustainable long-term, said Yvette Gavin, a leadership developer trainer who attended the event.

“What we see in this community is that there is a huge problem with maintaining cash flow,” Ms. Gavin said, noting that many small companies are offering their much larger clients 30-day payment terms for work already completed.

Sage has an existing relationship with The BOSS Network through the Sage Foundation, which provides $10,000 grants each to 25 Black women-owned companies through its Invest in Success program. Ms. Glenn-Flowers was a member of the second cohort, for which Sage hosted a recent graduation at its Atlanta offices.

Swoop’s goal is to help firms go from “startup to scale-up,” providing role models that other up-and-coming entrepreneurs can emulate.

“The ambition here is to not just help these businesses survive, but it’s to grow, export and become large businesses, and other startup owners can then look up to them and say, ‘They’ve done it and I can do too’ — it becomes a virtuous cycle,” Ms. Reynolds said.

Urged by the parties present that government should be part of the solution by introducing incentives for underserved founders, Mr. Burke, the Irish minister of state, said Ireland would continue to contribute its expertise to exchanges of ideas on the topic, including its experience with regulation aimed at keeping founders from giving up controlling interest in their companies.

Ireland, he added, is becoming more diverse, with one of every six workers in the country now born abroad.

“That’s a testament to our diversity, how much we have changed and modernized country and obviously any expertise that we can bring from our government through our state agencies working with our diaspora right across the globe, we’d be absolutely happy to do so,” Mr. Burke said.

Swoop itself is a beneficiary of Ireland’s schemes to help founders, as it’s backed by Enterprise Ireland, a government agency that bills itself the most active venture capital fund in Europe — by deal frequency if not capital deployed. Active in Atlanta via its New York office, Enterprise Ireland helps Irish companies go global.

Ms. Reynolds said this is inevitable if you’re a tech firm in a market of 5 million people.

“We’re five years old, started in Ireland and the first question you get asked in Ireland when you started businesses, what are you going to charge in day one, basically,” she said.

Welcoming the group in a green shirt and tie, John Woodward, vice president of global commerce for the Metro Atlanta Chamber, said the meeting showed Atlanta’s unique strengths.

“To have this these two incredible — I would say relatively unique — strengths of Atlanta, fintech and Black entrepreneurship, collaborate like this is really something that you’re going to find here and probably nowhere else,” Mr. Woodward said.

Representing the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, or RICE, in the meeting, innovation director Shakiri Murrain seconded that idea.

“I think this is what makes Atlanta special, just the ability for all of us to come, to network to provide resources and to immediately move into action.”

Find the Sage Voices of Strength report below:

voices-of-strength-report