Shark Tank billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban took some time to give key advice to Black women founders, telling them to stop looking for funding.
Before taking the stage for a panel discussion at the 2025 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, Cuban gave some alternative ideas to Black women entrepreneurs in lieu of seeking funding. “I would tell you not to look for funding,” the shark said. “You have to figure out a way to use sweat equity to build it on your own, even if it means starting smaller and slower, because there is a learning process, and it’s twofold. One is learning about your business and making it loanworthy. Then, two is learning the language of those making the loans.”
It is a fact that there is a gap in the number of Black women founders who are finding substantial funding for their businesses. According to numbers from Stearnsbank, Black women who apply for funding are three times more likely to be rejected than other demographics, including white business owners.
Carmen Tapio, founder of the largest Black-owned business in Nebraska, North End Teleservices, shared a story of how she was discriminated against by lenders. With an 850 credit score and a stellar business reputation, she was unsuccessful in securing a Paycheck Protection Program loan
from any financial institution. “Decisions that were made decades ago in some instances…can put real constraints on the ability of entrepreneurs of particular races from participating in the systems and the programs that are out there,” she said at a virtual event hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.In addition, only 2% of venture capital funding nationwide goes toward female-only founding teams. Arian Simone, CEO and founding partner of the Fearless Fund, once addressed this issue.
The venture capital firm invested in underresourced entrepreneurs like women of color who led businesses seeking pre-seed, seed level, or series A financing. The Fearless Strivers Grant contest, which awarded $20,000 to small
businesses led by at least one woman of color, was shut down after the conservative-led firm, American Alliance for Equal Rights, sued them for racial discrimination due to the Supreme Court’s controversial affirmative action ruling.Such obstacles make it much more difficult for a Black woman entrepreneur to garner critical funding, which Cuban acknowledges. It is partly why the billionaire feels that Black women should lean more into their wealth of financial knowledge so they won’t be exploited when loans come about. “You have to take whatever time to get it right because if you go into that bank, if you go somewhere to try to get a loan and you don’t get it, you still got to be in a position to work and go forward,” he explained, according to People of Color In Tech
.“What’s even worse, and this is something I think is the most important point—there’s a lot of predatory lending out there, and it’s awful. [The lenders] see people who may not have the financial literacy or understanding, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll make you a loan.”
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