The New Builders

CHAPTER FOURTEENA Secret of Silicon Valley

In the springtime of 2020, as the bad news mounted, Kathryn Finney was worried about the impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on the most vulnerable small businesses and entrepreneurs. Women and people of color, who disproportionately own smaller companies in high‐touch fields like salons and restaurants, were shut down. Even in sectors that relied less on face‐to‐face interactions, businesses run by women and people of color, which as a group have lower capital reserves, were facing greater strain from the crisis. And the aid programs set up by the federal, state, and local governments were doing a poor job of addressing the critical needs of small businesses in general, and in particular the most vulnerable ones.

As an entrepreneur herself, and the founder of a business accelerator focused on women of color called digitalundivided, Finney knew how lonely and challenging it can feel to be on the front lines of a crisis with little in the way of support and help. Who, Finney thought, was going to let Black women entrepreneurs know that they mattered?

“You have women and women of color who are doing everything right. Then they get to the end, and there's nothing there for them,” she said, describing countless conversations she was having, almost daily, with Black women struggling to keep their businesses afloat.

Finney had about $5,000 saved up – money put aside for a vacation with her husband and their five‐year‐old son. But with the pandemic ...