Angela Benton is the founder of the groundbreaking tech company Streamlytics. Yesterday I watched with my own two eyes as her team raised over 200K from the time of their announcement that they were going public until the close of the fundraiser in the evening.
It was beyond epic!
Streamlytics is a company focused on transferring the value of your data back to the hands of the people who own it.
For example, if you love creating playlists on Spotify based on TikTok trends or 90’s music, that behavior is not only trackable it is also monetizable. Spotify makes money from your actions and you get just another playlist! Instead, Streamlytics takes the data you create and pays you for its use!
For added context read their description below via their StartEngine page:
Every day we create an incredible amount of highly valuable data. From the shows, we watch, to our add to carts, to our search queries, and even just walking from Point A to Point B.
Each little action we take is being tracked and monetized, yet companies use it without compensating us.
At Streamlytics, we empower users to get access to and truly understand the value of their own data and participate in the resulting profit.
We do this by allowing you to upload or connect your data from the sites you use every day. We then strip any personally identifiable information and properly compensate you for its use.
Since launch, we’ve focused on many streaming platforms like Netflix & Spotify. We collected 5M data points in our first week of operation, but our vision is much larger than our go-to-market of streaming companies.
Now that you know what Streamlytics is about, let’s talk about the power of the black dollar for just one second. Yesterday this tech company proved that it is so important that we never second guess what we can do as a community motivated to impact real change.
We cannot take for granted the power of activism behind the scenes. Investing in black tech, black media, black-owned real estate initiatives, and education are all part of how we ensure that we create generational wealth for our communities.
Entrepreneur Dawn Dickson who is the founder of the company PopCom (another badass tech company) was asked by Rolling Out yesterday about the importance of crowdfunding, and why more African American companies do it.
I loved her answer because it spoke to how important it is for us to rally around our smart founders and startups.
This is what she shared:
I raised $1 million from venture capital investors and angel investors in 2017 and 2018. I was one of the first 25 Black women in the country to raise $1 million in that way, but why is it that only 25 to 50 were able to accomplish this? There are trillions of dollars circulating in our communities. Why aren’t we really tapping in?
The reason is that many of us, despite being highly sophisticated, educated, knowledgeable, and having access to disposable income, we’re not accredited. Just because you don’t make $200,000 a year doesn’t mean that you don’t have money or knowledge to invest.
That is why President Obama under his administration in 2012 passed this law called Jumpstart Our Business Startups, the JOBS Act.
What it does is allow entrepreneurs to raise money from accredited [people] who are more wealthy, and the non-accredited [people] meaning everyone else. That really opened up opportunities for us to be able to leverage our community to raise equity to get money for shares.
2020 has been a year of reckoning for all of us on all fronts, and it has forced us to look inward and really capitalize on the power that we all have collectively.
Streamlytics went from 30K in the morning to 250K by close of business because ordinary people like you and I pushed their business forward.
So what can activism look like
- Following and amplifying the voices of our smart founders who share inspiring stuff daily.
- Supporting black media who tell our stories.
- Investing our money into the brands we care about.
- Educating ourselves on history, Government, and the law.
- And finally, stop being so hard on our founders and business leaders, I have seen so many wagging fingers about valuations, quality, labels ect. While mediocracy is never the goal I think we are often overly critical of our own brands, initiatives, and work.
Congratulations to the Streamlytics team for their big win yesterday and proving how powerful the black dollar is, yet again! Learn more about Streamlytics by watching this video and following them on Instagram here.
