- Application for the next investment round program is open on Nubank’s website;
- The initiative selected companies with Black founders and leaders with impact initiatives in the Brazilian market
- In total, the fund will allocate BRL 1 million until the end of this year.
Brazil‘s fintech Nubank announced the first three startups selected by the investment fund Semente Preta (Black Seed), created by the fintech to encourage diversity in the technology environment in Brazil. The chosen startups were {Parças}, by Alan Almeida; OnlineOS, by Isaque Cruz and Rafael Alves; and TeamHub, by Tatiana Santarelli.
Through this initiative, Nubank will invest BRL 1 million in Brazilian startups created by Black entrepreneurs. The acceleration program has open applications for the next round of selection, which closes in September of this year.
Announced at the end of March, the Semente Preta program selects companies in the validation stage of their minimum viable product (MVP) and that have a positive impact on the market they operate in. Startups in financial services, data, people, digital marketing, games, software, applications, and programming, among others, are considered.
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In addition to financial support, Nubank will promote the exchange of experiences and networking of the selected startups with other market players. The neobank will also offer mentoring sessions for entrepreneurs with different fintech teams.
The startups that will receive investment from Nubank
In 2017, entrepreneur and Bachelor of Laws Alan Almeida created {Parças} with the mission of “transforming Brazilian penitentiaries into cells of personal growth.”
The first person in the family to earn a higher education degree, his professional experiences in large companies led to the idea of promoting programming courses to act in the market that always suffers from the low supply of labor.
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Today, {Parças} has more than a dozen full-time people dedicated to giving a chance to this mostly marginalized public. The expectation is that by the end of 2021, 1,000 students will go through the company’s courses, as founder Alan explains, “with the partnership Nubank & {Parças}, we expect that in 15 years all Brazilian penitentiaries will be a cell of transformation and professional qualification.”
TeamHub was born by the hands of Tatiana Santarelli, who decided to become an entrepreneur when she had been in the People Management market for almost 20 years. With extensive experience in the segment and mother of two children, the entrepreneur faced the challenge of creating from scratch a technology company for projects of good organizational practices alongside her partner Rodrigo Grossi.
The challenges that came with the pandemic reshaped the business, and the moment is now one of growth: “We uncomplicated the management of organizational culture through a dynamic process, interactive and accessible to all,” she says. This year, the goal is to invest even more in the areas of marketing, technology and increase the number of people working in TeamHub.
Isaque Cruz and Rafael Alves wanted to make a difference and found that purpose when they set up OnlineOS together. Observing the challenges one of Isaque’s brothers was facing with his service provider, they set up a low-cost system to help small business operations and offer affordable software. From 2019 to now, the project has evolved and today they both dedicate 100% of their time to the venture. “It was an honor to be selected to receive an investment from a company like Nubank, which cares about startups and diversity in entrepreneurship. This shows that we are on the right track and very happy to be part of this ecosystem,” concludes Isaque.
With the investment from Semente Preta, the priority now is to expand the customer portfolio and finance the growth of the company’s technology area.
