Day: August 29, 2022

To commemorate the first anniversary of Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator, the company announces a new initiative to help champion sustainable growth for Black-owned businesses on the Amazon platform in a blog post.

The first step in the new initiative is the creation of a Black-owned Business badge, which allows customers to find and shop for black-owned businesses. The badge, which is currently in testing for select eligible products, can be found in the search results and Additional Details section.

“As part of Amazon’s commitment to supporting and empowering the Black community, we are testing a new badge to make it even easier for customers to identify and shop products that come from Black-owned businesses,” said Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of Amazon Worldwide Selling Partner Services, in a statement. “We are eager to learn how the badge best helps customers discover Black-owned businesses and how it can help Black entrepreneurs succeed and grow in Amazon’s store.”

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The startup community has been hit where it hurts in recent months: the balance sheet. With inflation rates at all-time highs, a recession looming, and venture capital behemoths like SoftBank threatening a long winter, VC money is becoming increasingly scarce. So, where does that leave startups that rely on that cash to expand their operations?

Our friends at TechCrunch spoke with investors from a variety of growth stages and industry sectors, with a focus on mobility and climate tech, to learn how they see the funding landscape today and what red flags — and green flags — they see for startups looking to raise another round. Most of the investors we spoke with agreed that there is a general pullback and conservatism in funding, with many VCs being much more deliberate in their due diligence.

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