These two startups have three things in common. Can you guess what they are?
MedHaul, founded by Erica Plybeah, is a med tech company that streamlines finding and booking transportation to health care facilities via quality providers.
SecondKeys, co-founded by Amber Hayes, runs a software platform that looks to provide a smooth, efficient experience for landlords, tenants, and contractors.
Guessed how they're similar?
1. They’re both based in Memphis.
2. They’re both Black-owned businesses.
3. They’re both receiving funds from a massive, international technology behemoth.
On Oct. 6, Google for Startups — the company’s initiative that aids fledgling businesses — announced the 76 recipients of its $5 million Black Founders Fund, which provides promising Black founders with non-dilutive cash awards to boost their businesses.
Both Plybeah and Hayes each received awards of $50,000 for their startups.
“We are committed to helping Black founders who have been deeply impacted by COVID-19 and who are disproportionately locked out of access to the funding they need to succeed,” Jewel Burks Solomon, head of Google for Startups U.S., said in a press release. “By combining cash awards with Google for Startups mentorship and programming, we hope to help create a more level playing field for these founders, who are building amazing companies and making an impact on their communities.”
The cash awards can be used in a variety of ways, and Plybeah, Hayes, and other recipients will also receive technical resources, mentors, and advice from Google for Startups’ programming.
Collaborating with Google isn’t new for Plybeah, who is currently participating in the inaugural Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders, which began virtually on Aug. 10 and is set to conclude in mid-October. MedHaul was one of 12 startups chosen in late July out of more than 900 applicants for the program.
With a background in clinical informatics, she founded her company in 2017, after winning the Memphis Medical District Collaborative and Epicenter’s Operation Opportunity business plan competition, which came with $20,000 in seed funding. In addition to this, she received $50,000 after MedHaul participated in Epicenter’s Logistics Innovation Accelerator in 2017.
Plybeah was also selected by Google in 2018 for its weeklong Google for Entrepreneurs Exchange: Black Founders program in Durham, North Carolina, an experience she called "transformative."
“That program definitely changed my founder life. I built the strongest relationships with the founders I went through my cohort with,” Plybeah told MBJ in September. “I look at them as family and talk to one of them at least every day, even now.”
For SecondKeys, the grant from Google is the latest in a string of victories, as it placed third in Established's Startup of the Year Competition last fall, and won the LaunchTN Pitch Competition in August — which came with a a $150,000 investment from LaunchTN's Impact Fund.
So far, SecondKeys has 18 clients — these are landlords, property management groups, and real estate developers — across 2,400 rental units.
SecondKeys is also close to bagging its first city as a client; by a year from now, Hayes would like for her company to be working with four different cities. That, however, could just be the beginning, as she has loftier goals.
“The ultimate goal is that any time somebody moves or rents a place,” Hayes told MBJ in August, “SecondKeys is there, and they’re using our software."
