, despite more Black and Latinx female founders raising funds, they lost some share of VC funding due to record-level annual investment in 2021.
Interestingly, it was leaning into her differences and not matching the traditional pattern that VCs often look for that led Kumordzi to success."I'm a Black female [fintech] founder with a non-traditional background," said Kumordzi."It's my superpower." But there was an obvious hole in Kumordzi's skill set. She wasn't a techie. So she hired a team with the fintech-payment chops to build Sika. She needed money to hire great tech people."Hiring at an early stage can feel like a chicken and egg problem," Kumordzi said. Which comes first, the money or the team? Sika was able to hire the founding engineer of the payments team at Etsy.