Tameka Bland got the idea for the online delivery service LimitLess in 2020 after she tried to order food for her mother-in-law, who lives in West Louisville.
Bland discovered that some companies would not deliver to her mother-in-law’s address after 5:30 p.m. She said the situation inspired her to create a service specifically focused on the nine neighborhoods that make up West Louisville.
“I’m a native of West Louisville and I know it’s a food desert,” Bland explained. “I wanted to do something that would help the people in that area. LimitLess is a tech-based delivery service that connects consumers with fresh produce, groceries, restaurants and more.”
So far, Bland has spent more than $30,000 of her own money to cover app development and marketing cost for the company. The LimitLess delivery app won't launch until early January 2022. However, Bland is already offering a subscription-based, business-to-business concierge service that makes pickups from area suppliers for restaurants, daycares and event companies.
Last Thursday, Bland appeared on “BGV x TriNet Pitch Competition,” an online pitch competition for African American entrepreneurs, to raise more capital for Limitless.
The “BGV x TriNet Pitch Competition” was created by Washington, D.C.-based Black Girl Ventures (BVG), a company founded in 2016 to provide Black/Brown female-identifying founders with access to community, capital and capacity building.
The pitch competition is a cross between “Shark Tank” and crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Entrepreneurs are given four minutes to pitch their companies and answer questions from a panel of business professionals. Viewers pick the winner by donating money to the company through the Raisify platform.
The entrepreneur with the most votes, not necessarily the one who raised the money, wins the competition.
Voting for Bland ends on Thanksgiving night. She hopes to raise $350,000 to use for working capital, operating expenses and hiring a team.
So far, Black Girl Ventures has funded 264 women of color, who are collectively generating more than $10 million in revenue and supporting 3,000 jobs.
Bland said she learned about the BGV show in September, when the company was holding a local pitch competition in Cincinnati.
“I was one of six people selected from the many people who applied,” Bland said. “But since I wasn’t a resident of Cincinnati, they put me in the national competition. We pre-recorded our pitches on October 23.”
Bland is not your usual tech entrepreneur. She spent more than two-decades working as a hair stylist. Her only prior experience with technology was creating a no-code website for her salon, which she closed to focus on Limitless full-time.
Bland credits much of her success to the AMPED Russell Tech Business Incubator, which she joined in February. (More on RTBI here.)
“If not for that program, I probably wouldn't be as far along as I am because of the additional resources and the education that it provided me,” Bland said. “I was learning prior to joining the incubator, a bit of this and a little bit of that. But when I started taking courses, learning about business models and about competition, it started to come naturally.”
Bland said the incubator and Bellarmine's Women in Leadership program prepared her for the BVG competition.
“I had to do a pitch competition for Bellarmine, and I came in second. We had to do another pitch competition for the incubator, and I found out again that I scored high, so I was confident about my chances in the national competition,” Bland added.
The panel on the BVG show was impressed with the local focus of Bland’s startup, but they questioned the wisdom of competing with established delivery companies like DoorDash, UberEats and Instacart.
One of the judges pointed out that the major delivery companies have made efforts to expand their operations in underserved neighborhoods. The panel encouraged her to focus instead on the business-to-business service, which Bland told them has already brought in more than $40,000.
Bland said she appreciated the advice, but she still intends to move ahead with her plans for the delivery app. She will continue the subscription-base concierge service, membership costs up to $900 a month, but she is also sticking to her original vision.
“Helping the business owners combat their issues was kind of a no brainer, but LimitLess is the baby,” she said. “We definitely want to combat the food insecurity problem.”
