A BLACK ENTREPRENEUR RAISED VENTURE CAPITAL, STARTED AN ONLINE NEWS OUTLET FOR WOMEN
Sharmadean Reid is a London-based entrepreneur who discovered that a membership-based business model and the right target audience can offer a winning combination.
She started The Stack World, which is an online news publication that runs to help female entrepreneurs advance their businesses in the aspect of beauty, business, culture, society, and wellness, according to Business Insider.
Also, Stack members enjoy the perks of exclusive entry to virtual, administrated happenings. It is also an online platform that reports on topics that interest females while including business and finance-related content, Business Insider reported.
Despite Reid’s success, she is just one of ten UK-based Black women entrepreneurs in the last ten years who engaged in venture capital.
Reid told the publication that despite an uptick in small business investments, a small portion of capital is kept by the UK’s women of color. Despite this, the 37-year-old was able to collect nearly $5.5 million in Index Venture’s funding round for another business BeautyStack, which she embarked on in 2017. The booking platform allowed 2,000 beauty professionals to link up with 20,000 clients, but the pandemic interrupted Reid’s business model. Lockdowns caused many beauty businesses to shut down. In response, Reid started The Stack World, after she decided to take a turn from a beauty focused-business.
“It was coming to terms with how that felt as a leader — to let go of something you were so obsessed with,” Reid said to Business Insider. “I had to evolve and do something different.”
Instead of throwing in the towel, Reid stretched to make another leap of faith through launching The Stack World. The discovery of her niche has led to The Stack World attracting more than 1,000 members who invest in paid memberships since it was launched. Additionally, over the last three months, business section visitors soared to the 90% mark. Two hundred hosted events 200 have been held as growth evolves.