By: Rhett Buttle

On March 1, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that awards to ten minority and women-led venture capital firms in Durham, North Carolina’s Historic Black Wall Street will receive a $32 million federal investment. The awards are projected to kickstart more than $90 million in overall investments to early-stage small businesses in the state. These funds coming from the American Rescue Plan are part of an effort to make equity capital investments available to historically underserved small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This announcement by Vice President Harris, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo, and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper of funding awarded through the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) is expected to lead to an additional $60 million in private investment. The SSBCI helps make this type of investment possible. Originally established in 2010, it provides funding to states, the District of Columbia, territories, and Tribal governments for programs to increase lending and investing in small businesses. The American Rescue Plan expanded the SSBCI to provide $10 billion in support and is expected to catalyze up to $10 of private investment for every $1 of SSBCI capital funding.

You may be asking how this kind of private investment can happen. The answer in North Carolina and other states is that the awardees of SSBCI funding are also committed to and skilled in raising the private funds. For example, one of the recent recipients, Symphonic Capital, is an early-stage fund that invests in companies closing access gaps in health and wealth. Another venture firm, Wocstar Capital, is focused on creating wealth in communities of color by championing and training women of color entrepreneurs and diverse tech teams.

RevTechLabs is a majority female and Latina-owned entrepreneurship center and accelerator that will invest in over 200 early-stage companies with traditionally underrepresented founders in financial, health, and insurance technologies. In addition, LeVert Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund that will invest in next-generation technologies that have the potential to transform the agricultural technology industry.

Black business ownership is growing at the fastest pace in 30 years and there have been more small business applications in the past three years than in any other three-year period in American history. Investments like this one in North Carolina and other states can help continue to foster this success.