Taylor Shead poses for a portrait in the STEMuli office. Photo by Yuvie Styles.
Earlier this month, the Advocate highlighted Taylor Shead as one of our three annual Fierce Females for her work in education and technology.
This week, Shead’s hard work was recognized by tech giant Google as one of the recipients of Google for Startups’ Black Founders Fund.
The fund will provide $150,000 in financial support to Shead’s company, STEMuli, which is creating the first educational metaverse that will turn the classroom into a video game.
Kessler Park based STEMuli was selected as one of 23 companies in the 2023 Black Founders Fund cohort. Buzzbassador, also based in Dallas, was selected as well.
On top of the financial gift, the grant will also provide Google products and mentorship opportunities to STEMuli.
The fund was started in 2020 to address disparities in capital raised by companies with white founders versus Black founders.
According to the Dallas Morning News, Black-founded startups have been disproportionately impacted by an overall decline in venture funding in 2022.
“The group’s startups saw their share of the market drop from 1.5% in 2021 to only 1.1% last year,” the News reports.
In 2022, Shead became the 94th Black woman in history to raise $1 million in venture capital. She told the Advocate she is one of less than a handful of Black women in education to ever accomplish the feat.
“At the same time, it means a lot, it almost means nothing,” Shead said. “Because you still have to do something with the money that you get. And you still have to make it to the next level.”
