While trying to rebuild the nearby support network she lost in moving to Brooklyn from Atlanta, single mom Diamond Harris revived a startup idea for parenting support that she had shelved at the start of the pandemic.
On Twitter in early February, Harris responded to a post by Central Ohio venture capitalist Janine Sickmeyer, updating progress raising the first fund in her Overlooked Ventures LP.
"I really wish someone could explain this to entrepreneurial single moms like me," Harris replied. "I've Googled so much and I don't even know where to begin to fundraise for my ideas."
Sickmeyer connected Harris to her other startup, Cobble – a business-building app collecting the rigorous system she devised while bootstrapping legal services software to acquisition.
"In the Black community, you don’t have direct resources that show you the way," Harris told Columbus Business First.
"As soon as I logged in to the (Cobble) software, it was like everything I could have imagined," Harris said. "It allowed me to organize my thoughts and gave me an idea of what it was I should be doing as a pre-seed startup. ... It gave me direction."
Cobble went live Tuesday, after about a year of beta testing with 380 entrepreneurs like Harris.
More than 150 new users signed up the first day, with a handful converting to paid subscriptions before the free week's trial is up, Sickmeyer said. The overall user base is now 700.
The startup arose from the Upper Arlington entrepreneur's research in building legal services software NextChapter for more than six years while being turned down for outside investment.
After that business was acquired in 2019, Sickmeyer started angel investing. For months she repeated the same conversation with female and nonwhite founders who lacked access to VC mentors, pointing them to online courses, books and planning tools. She thought she could compile her years of research into a step-by-step workbook.
"One night it hit me, ... I know how to build a web app," Sickmeyer said.
She hired a remote team, but at the same time started building Overlooked, a VC fund focused on founders from underrepresented groups. The fund launched faster than expected last spring, so Sickmeyer turned Cobble operations over to its first employees. The startup has raised $250,000.
The web-based app is agnostic to industry or business type; users include makers of consumer goods, subscription software startups, and investors looking for prospects.
Prompts guide users to describe their product, the problem it's solving, the target market and estimates of monthly expenses and revenue. Responses are auto-filled in appropriate spots to build business and marketing plans or pitch decks.
"Working through all the pain points, marketplaces, product-market fit, so much of (business-building) is trying to make sense of the murkiness," said Jess Segraves, head of operations.
"Every business has some questions that need to be answered, such as target market, competitors, pricing and what is their compelling market proposition?" she said. "Why this business and why now? We think that applies to anyone, regardless of specific industry."
Cobble will seek distribution through incubators and services such as federal Small Business Development Centers, Segraves said. Formerly in digital marketing in Columbus, she is based in eastern Tennessee.
Future rollouts include a marketplace for business services and software such as accountants and attorneys.
Beta testers used Cobble free. One tester now writes for the app's online founders' library. The live version has tiers based on feature sets: free, or $25 or $50 monthly – and users can toggle between tiers based on their needs.
