🔥The 9th Round of Easy Loan, Earn $40 Reward is in progress❗️ ⏰ Promotion Period: January 15th - Feburary 15th, 2025 👉 Register now and check more details at gate.io/campaigns/358

Chicago will win because we have folks like Claude Cimeus 🇭🇹. So grateful for everything this guy does for our community and looking forward to this week! 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

The Fifth Star Funds summer newsletter is out! Catch up on our latest investments, a new partnership with Goldman Sachs, and exciting updates from our portfolio. We're on a mission to elevate the Black tech founders of Chicago: mailchi.mp/fifthstarfunds…

We did it! Somehow managed to talk about mental health, immigrant parents, religion, imposter syndrome, getting acquired, privilege in entrepreneurship, and Fifth Star Funds all in an hour. George Khalife is one of my faves in Chicago Tech and was wonderful to chat on his podcast.

Thanks to Abhinaya and PawnShark for organizing this on Wed 8/17! I'll be speaking about Exit Learnings, Privilege, and Social Impact in Tech. Looking forward to the chat! 🙏🏿

Kicked off the Lightning Talks series yesterday with Shawn Park Thanks to our amazing speakers who were open about their experiences with exiting companies 🙏🏼 Samir Mirza Drew Stern Matt Silver and our sponsors: TeamWorking by TechNexus, Hubspot for Startups & SVB

We can't improve what we don't measure. Check out the report from World Business Chicago in partnership w/ Fifth Star Funds & Chicago:Blend on the state of funding for underrepresented founders. We're fighting to close the Friends & Family funding gap for Chicago's Black tech founders.

Congratulations to @FifthStarFunds portfolio companies @Buoypricing and @Eventnoire for being selected as recipients for the third Google for Startups Black Founders Fund! When we #FundBlackFounders, we all win. Congrats to Candice & Jeff! More info here: blog.google/outreach-initi…

We’ve been selected as recipients of Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women grant! This initiative is the largest of its kind in scope and provides Fifth Star with multi-year investment to close the Friends & Family funding gap for Black women. More info: fifthstarfunds.com/post/partnersh…

Thanks to our guest speakers Halima Nguyen & Alya Adamany Woods of Cooley LLP, Tim Grace of LongJump, Samara M Hernandez of Chingona Ventures and Samir Mirza of Fifth Star Funds, who talked to our Chicago Venture Fellows yesterday about the basics of fund formation.

Fifth Star is hiring a full-time Managing Director to lead the organization and scale our impact as the nation’s preeminent Friends and Family fund for Black tech founders. See our link below for more info and please share the role in your networks! fifthstarfunds.com/managing-direc…

Abin Kuriakose Samir Mirza we out here for bask_n_robbins 😍

A wonderful night bringing together founders from the Fifth Star portfolio. This is what the future of Chicago Tech looks like. Stay tuned for announcements soon on our newest investments! 🙌🏾

The Fifth Star team is proud to announce that our portfolio has grown to 20 Black-led startups here in Chicago! Please meet our newest investments: BarterE The Better Spot FlareFinSys Health Blockchain Security Services (HCISS) LLC NXGRAD PiggyBack Network Spark App supperclub fifthstarfunds.com/post/20-startu…

Everyone is talking about Black founders only receiving 1% of venture capital. But what is actually happening and how do we solve it? A 🧵

NEW: I looked at a white paper by Fifth Star Funds, which seeks to serve as a "family and friend" round for founders without such network. I looked at the impact this could have: on average, Black founders raise less than 1,000 from family and friends. techcrunch.com/2023/04/06/fri…

Founders in the Casa! #Chicago #startuplife

We're so excited to announce that Elle Ramel and Samir Mirza are joining the Chicago:Blend board of directors! Read the full press release! chicagoblend.org/news-insights/…

Excited to announce our $11.5 million Series A at Pie Pie, where we're on a mission to defeat social isolation. Our vision: doing things you enjoy with people you like should be as easy as calling a Uber. Looking for new friends? Easy as Pie. wsj.com/articles/bonob…