What's Transparent Collective?
We're a 501(c)3 that puts all of our energy into breakdown barriers and closing gaps for tech entreprenuers outside of the traditional silicon valley networks.
Breaking down barriers for overlooked founders in tech
The Silicon Valley entrepreneurial dream is fraught with challenges when you come from a different racial, ethnic, gender, or location-based background. Most significantly, underrepresented founders lack connections to investors and resources that are more easily accessible to those that grew up in or share similar circumstances.
As a result, certain founders struggle to raise critical venture capital funding to drive their companies forward. That's where we come in.
OUR STORY
Who we are
TC started with James Norman and Adrian Walker, who were childhood friends and attended the University of Michigan School of Engineering together. They both eventually ended up in the Bay Area building their own tech companies. Despite their hard work, extensive network, and ability to pitch their products, they experienced the harsh reality that raising money to grow their startups as non-white males in Silicon Valley was near impossible.
Considering that they both had a similar journey and the same results, this wasn't a happenstance, this was a problem. So in 2015, they decided to team up with more friends in the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem, Clayton Bryan and Rohini Pandhi, to gather people together and have candid conversions about difficult challenges and potential fundraising strategies that would help more founders of all backgrounds succeed; hence the name Transparent Collective.
Our first batch of founders came through the program in early 2016, and shortly thereafter Lara Jordan joined the TC team. What started as a 24 hour event to fine tune startup pitches for a demo day (the TC Startup Showcase) grew into a comprehensive week-long program that touches on all the key aspects of founding and running an early stage company. Since then, we've helped hundreds of founders raise millions of dollars in funding and build successful companies.
OUR TEAM
Meet the Team
COO / Treasurer
Previously Product @Mecury, @Square / @Block. Active angel investor. EECS @University of Michigan, MBA @University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business.
Program Director
Digital strategist who specializes in working with early-stage D&I Impact. Founder @ Pericus, Previous content lead @ 500 startups, BA @ Washington&Lee University.
Program Manager
Sr Manager @Hispanics in Philanthropy. Skilled in live & virtual events and project management. B.S. in Media, Culture, & Comms @ NYU.
Support of our efforts
Please consider donating to Transparent Collective. We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all proceeds go to our programming and ecosystem efforts.