Raising VC Against The Odds: The Journey Of A Black Female Founder

Melanie Samba never thought she'd become a founder raising venture capital, but she needed a conference intelligence platform, one that would simplify discovering conferences for executives to attend and demonstrate their ROI. It turned out that many others did, too.

In launching SPROXXY, she overcame several obstacles. The overarching one was her self-doubt as a Black female founder with no technical experience, no co-founder, and who recently had a baby. Despite facing barriers as an underrepresented founder, she used her market knowledge, market traction, and effective communication to secure funding.

"Having had experience with corporate conference planning and spending, I understood the problem and the size of the market that SPROXXY was addressing,” said Sig Mosley, SPROXXY angel investor. “I was impressed with Melanie as an entrepreneur and the talent she brought to the company."

Through participation in accelerator programs and leveraging her industry experience, Samba navigated the challenges.

From Excel to SaaS: The Birth Of A Conference Intelligence Platform

For 20 years, Samba worked in corporate communications and marketing roles, which included organizing conferences and securing speaking engagements on behalf of the organization. To keep track of everything, she used Excel spreadsheets. The process was repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to human error.

“Organizations are spending massive amounts of time and money [on conferences] without knowing the ROI,” Samba said. She understood the pain point firsthand. During the pandemic, she hired a design firm to build a tool to meet her needs. 4thly, a San Francisco accelerator program invited her to join its virtual program. She hadn’t considered switching from marketing and communications to being a tech founder, but she joined 4thly’s spring 2022 cohort anyway. The rest, as they say, is history.

In January 2023, she was named to PRWeek’s Dashboard 25 of movers, shakers, and innovators in the comms tech space. In May 2023, SPROXXY developed a redesigned minimum viable product (MVP). It brought on beta testers and launched a waitlist that grew to more than 1,000 companies. The newly designed software was launched on December 31, 2023. Beta customers were transitioned to that version. Customers have begun paying for the service.

The redesigned platform, SPROXXY officially launched on February 20, 2024. It is a SaaS-based conference intelligence platform that helps companies and agencies track metrics that help demonstrate the impact of conferences. Customers can use the platform to:

• Research and discover where the competition is spending their money.
• Know who else in their organization is attending the conferences and track overall spending.
• Track share of voice, media engagement, and deal flow.

Strategies For Success From A Black Female Founder

Samba, founder and CEO at SPROXXY, checked many boxes for why being a tech company founder would be difficult, but perhaps the hardest for her was not being a techie. Being a tech founder was never on her to-do list. She didn’t have the technical expertise, nor was she part of networks with investors. This is common for underrepresented founders, reinforcing disparities in business and funding opportunities.

She hired an in-house team to ensure that the tech team is fully aligned with Samba’s vision for SPROXXY and participates in all product development meetings. The company’s culture is collaborative, and transparent, and keeps everyone accountable.

Founders often overcome not being a techie by demonstrating strong market knowledge, showing traction, and effectively communicating their vision and the scalability of their business model.

"The market has shown that corporate meetings and conference spend will continue to swell toward pre-pandemic levels creating the need for better strategic insight into spend ROI,” said Justin Anderson, associate director at Solidea Capital. “As we see the beginning of the proliferation of AI in software, Solidea believes SPROXXY AI is a tool that organizations will use to drive spend efficiency in a way the market has been waiting for—and of course, Melanie is a rockstar! “

"After getting to know Melanie, it became clear that there is no better person in the world to build this exact solution than her,” said Scott Kraege, general partner at Ivy Ventures. “The need is real, the scope is huge, and Melanie is going to make it happen."

Because Samba represents the user, she participates in all product development meetings. “I understand the pain point because I’ve lived all sides of the business,” she said. She’s organized conferences, chosen conferences to attend, and had to report on the ROI of attending a conference.

“You read all the stories about women raising VC, and the disparity compared to men. She was fearful about raising money:

• The industry talk was that 2023 would be a tough fundraising environment.
• Black women face significant barriers in raising venture capital, including systemic bias, and underrepresentation in the predominantly white and male tech and venture sectors.
• Startups require product development, marketing, sales, operations, and more expertise. A founding team with diverse skill sets is perceived as better equipped to handle these challenges than a solo founder.
• Female founders often face the "motherhood penalty," where they are perceived as less committed to their careers or incapable of balancing work and family. Samba started the company when her baby was one month old.

As it turns out, 2023 wasn’t a bad fundraising year for solely female-founded companies, including SPROXXY. According to Pitchbook’s Female Founders Dashboard and Venture Monitor, solely female-founded companies:

• Achieved the highest share of deals, though 2023 only ranked fifth in overall deal count.
• Ranked second in 2023 after 2021 in dollars raised. However, their share of investment dollars remains stubbornly low at 2%. The highest percentage was reached in 2008—2.8%.

However, for Black founders, fundraising was a dismal year. Venture capital for them was down for the third year, and they raised less than half a percent of all venture dollars.

In hindsight, “I should have been more aggressive,” said Samba. Heeding industry warnings of a tough fundraising environment, she raised her pre-seed round of $2.2 million in phases. Her goal for the first tranche was $500,000. She exceeded her goal and raised $1.1 million.

Best practices for overcoming fundraising challenges include participating in accelerator programs in which there is training, mentorship, and access to capital. In addition to 4thly, Samba participated in Techstars and New York City Economic Development’s Founders Fellowship.

How do you use your market knowledge to overcome fundraising and sales challenges?