With $5.25M Boost, Valence is Aiming to Redefine How Black Professionals Connect

Rachel Uranga

Rachel Uranga is dot.LA's Managing Editor, News. She is a former Mexico-based market correspondent at Reuters and has worked for several Southern California news outlets, including the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Los Angeles Daily News. She has covered everything from IPOs to immigration. Uranga is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and California State University Northridge. A Los Angeles native, she lives with her husband, son and their felines.

With $5.25M Boost, Valence is Aiming to Redefine How Black Professionals Connect

Valence is trying to be more than just a LinkedIn for Black professionals. It's trying to narrow the wealth gap, with help from algorithms.

The social networking platform for Black professionals launched last year and has already attracted 10,000 members. It just got a $5.25 million boost from a Series A round led by GGV Capital.

It's now aiming to get to 100,000 members over the course of the year. Part of that effort will mean hiring engineers and developers who can help refine its database and allow members to make meaningful connections beyond their alma maters, locations and shared employers.

Valence is developing a "customization engine for people in their career journey," said CEO Guy Primus, who took the helm in June.

"We want to take the data a level further and be able to customize again the reason for the interactions, as opposed to just a first level connection or a geography or a school," he said.

"We want to be able to have some type of algorithm for why people connect and not just, you know, the superficial reasons that most people connect."

The former chief executive of the Virtual Reality Company said he is looking at how Valence can use its existing data set to build out a platform that connects people along their lines of interest and other factors that aren't always clear from the kind of standard resume fare found on LinkedIn.

Valence is positioning itself as a tool for corporations looking to diversify their ranks, but it's also establishing itself as a platform for founders.

Last month, the company launched a funding network that connects investors with rising Black founders, curating investment opportunities for pre-seed stage entrepreneurs.

The effort dovetails with its mission to narrow the wealth gap and open up opportunities.

Valence points out that only 3% of Silicon Valley's workforce population is Black, there are 3 Black CEOs in the Fortune 500, and just 1% of venture-funded startup founders are Black.

That helps explain why Black Americans make up nearly 13% of the population, but have only 3% of its wealth.

Sean Mendy, a founding partner at Concrete Rose Capital in the Bay Area, helped facilitate many of those funding connections for Valence. What surprised him was just how early entrepreneurs were in their company development, but he said it made perfect sense given the lack of capital access Black Americans had.

"Traditionally it's been difficult for Black professionals to take the lead in starting companies because of the lack of capital," he said.

Fuller, a general partner for Upfront Ventures, which participated in the round and helped incubate the company, co-founded Valence out of frustration with the lack of networks startups and others had to black talent.

"The goal of creating a fluid bridge between Black Talent and economic opportunity and development couldn't be more important in today's world," said co-founder Kobie Fuller in announcing the round.

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Starships Were Meant To Fly: Astrolab's New Jeep-Sized Rover Gets a Lift from SpaceX

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Starships Were Meant To Fly: Astrolab's New Jeep-Sized Rover Gets a Lift from SpaceX
Photo by Samson Amore

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

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Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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