Free Tech For Black Founders Initiative Saves Startup Aiming To Help Small Businesses

Peep Connect cofounder and CEO Valentine OsakwePEEP CONNECT

Out of the economic and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic, young Black founders Valentine Osakwe and Zerryn Gines found opportunity. The team launched Peep Connect, a customer insight and analytics platform for small businesses in January, just before the world went into crisis. Now, through resources made available since the pandemic and in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, the company is picking up steam. On Monday, Peep Connect launched its mobile platform. 

Peep Connect takes advantage of the Tech For Black Founders (T4BF) initiative, a coalition of tech companies that have vowed to provide free technology and services to startups run by Black founders. Osakwe, 26 and Gines, 21 are bootstrapping the company and say without the initiative there would be no launch. 

“Just for an analytics feature, we were looking at paying a couple thousand dollars a month, Gines told Forbes.” Now Foursquare is providing us tools, free for a year. It put us in a position to be six to eight months ahead of where we would have been without them.”

Mike Katz, CEO of mParticle, a customer data platform, along with founders from startups Amplitude, Branch, Braze and Radar started T4BF in June to address social and fiscal inequity in response to George Floyd’s death. Katz says there is no limit to what mParticle will give to Black founders and is vying for more companies to join. 

“This is about doing our small part in terms of fixing systemic racism and a big part of that is correcting a structural disadvantage that Black people have, from that standpoint there’s no cap,” Katz told Forbes. ”It’s about doing the right thing completely disassociated from any type of business outcome or financial objective.”

While the largest tech companies Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have given upwards of $552 million in the name of combating racial injustice, smaller tech companies are approaching the issue differently. To date, 30 tech companies including Foursquare and Notion have joined the T4B4 initiative. 

Read more: forbes