Forbes Spotlight | 100 Black-Owned Businesses to Support
Voting with your pocketbook is one of the best ways to effect change in a capitalist society.
The U.S. is home to roughly 2.5 million Black-owned businesses, according to the Census Bureau. Although the vast majority are sole proprietorships or small-scale affairs, an increasing number have regional reach and national ambitions. Below, we resurface 10 Black entrepreneurs who have recently been featured in Forbes and provide a directory of an additional 90 Black-owned businesses to support. It is by no means an exhaustive list: We aren’t including numerous high-profile celebrity entrepreneurs like Oprah Winfrey or Rihanna or the many successful black business owners who sell services to other corporations, like World Wide Technology’s David Steward.
These entrepreneurs and owners sell cosmetics, clothing, books, cars and financial products that you can buy. Fewer offer healthcare or consumer tech products, in part, because they lack access to venture funding. If you are interested in learning more about other Black-owned businesses, there are a number of apps and directories online, including The Buy From A Black Woman Directory, The Black-Owned Market,Etsy’s Black Owned Shops, Black Enterprise’s Top 100 list, Bank Black and Bon Appetit’s list of Black-owned restaurants.
We originally included 75 businesses on this list. We added an additional 25 for Blackout Day on July 7, 2020.
Featured MaC Venture Capital Portfolio Companies
Mayvenn
Founder: Diishan Imira
Headquarters: Oakland
Website: mayvenn.com
Instagram: @mayvennhair
Founded in 2013 by Imira, 39, Mayvenn is a venture-backed digital salon where customers buy human hair extensions and wigs and book appointments with stylists. Mayvenn employs 63 people (81% of whom are people of color) and it directs business to 3,000 black stylists across the country. Since salons have been forced to shut down during the pandemic, Imira has raised$1.3 million in relief cash that he’s giving to his network of stylists. (For more, see our Forbes magazine story.)
Blavity
Founder: Morgan DeBaun
Headquarters: San Francisco
Description: online media company for black millennials
Website: blavity.com
Instagram: @blavity
