Draper Goren Holm Announces Blacks on the Blockchain Initiative & $100,000 Pitch Competition to Propel Racial Equity

By AIT News Desk On Jun 24, 2020

Draper Goren Holm signs Equity.District’s #RacialEquityEcosystem pledge and kickstarts two initiatives to build racial equity and economic justice throughout the technology, startup, and investment ecosystem.

Draper Goren Holm signed Equity.District’s #RacialEquityEcosystem pledge lead by Techstars Cofounder Brad Feld, and Draper Goren Holm Venture Partner and Opportunity Hub (OHUB) Chairman and CEO Rodney Sampson. By participating in such initiative, Draper Goren Holm stands with propelling a racial equity-based ecosystem designed to create sustained diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout startup communities everywhere.

To this extent, Draper Goren Holm is launching the “Blacks On The Blockchain” initiative alongside Sampson’s OHUB, and is allocating $1 million in Bitcoin and 10,000 free passes to its LA Blockchain Summit for members of the Black community to acquire their first digital currency and attend a top industry conference where they will learn from and interact with blockchain industry leaders.

Furthermore, Draper Goren Holm and OHUB are creating a $100,000 blockchain investment pitch competition and joining forces to raise money from Blockchain companies to fund coding boot camps to train Black blockchain developers with the ultimate goal of hiring them.

Sampson added: “Together, we must ensure that everyone, everywhere, particularly Black people, have the exposure, skills, careers, entrepreneurship support, funding, and investment opportunities to create shared prosperity and multi-generational wealth with no reliance on multi-generational wealth.”

“We are so happy to work with Rodney Sampson and OHUB to distribute bitcoin to the Black community, invest in Black startups and help educate engineers looking to work in our industry,” said Alon Goren, Founding Partner of Draper Goren Holm. “Blockchain and cryptocurrency technology have the ability to create a paradigm shift of power and equity within society, but that power can only be realized when everybody, not just the rich and privileged, has uninhibited access to it, to education, and to opportunity. OHUB is leading that charge.”

To ensure scalable and sustainable racial equity, it’s essential that the entire ecosystem of academics, researchers, technologists, professionals, executives, big tech CEO’s, founders, funds, philanthropists, and government back up their performative rhetoric with financial resources into the black tech, startup, and venture ecosystem.