After delaying a fundraise originally planned for 2020, Stephanie Cummings just hit her target — and more than doubled her D.C. startup’s lifetime funding — with a single investment from a Black founder-focused firm.
Her personal assistant company, Please Assist Me, has secured $500,000 from Atlanta's Collab Capital, a Black-led firm that raised its first fund totaling $50 million earlier this year from big-name backers including Google, Apple Inc. and Goldman Sachs & Co. And it’s all earmarked for Black-owned businesses.
With its investment, Collab Capital also provides a growth partner to guide the startup through the growing pains of building a business.
“As a Black and female founder, having investors that look like me and believe in our vision, especially in today’s climate, is empowering,” Cummings said in an email.
What this investment means
This financing alone clinches the entrepreneur’s goal to raise a half-million dollars, now positioning her 3-year-old District venture to further build its proprietary technology. That tech powers a home management platform that coordinates errands for apartment residents with a personal assistant, from grocery delivery to prescription pickup.
The funding also enables the business to continue to scale, which includes hiring up, Cummings said. She’s now focusing on adding key roles in tech, operations, software development, sales and marketing and for assistants and on-site staff. The company, which counted 11 team members a year ago, just reached 25 people after initially aiming for that last year. And though she doesn’t have a defined headcount goal for 2021, Cummings said, “we will be growing our team each month.”
Please Assist Me partners with apartment and condominium buildings to offer the service to their residents in D.C., where it has now worked with more than 2,500 apartment units. Its District footprint “has grown exponentially,” Cummings said.
In keeping with that trend, her entire team has located to the Washington area after she initially started the company in Nashville, Tennessee, where some employees have remained until recently. Please Assist Me now has an office at WeWork Metropolitan Square downtown and regularly uses space at Georgetown incubator Halcyon, of which it is an alum.
That internal growth is also reflected in revenue; though Cummings declined to disclose exact figures, she said the company has grown 28% month-over-month during 2021 and projects 600% growth for 2021 over 2020.
Getting here — and what’s ahead
Cummings crossed paths over the years with Jewel Burks, a general parter at Collab Capital, at founder events and conferences, she said, but it wasn’t until February 2020 that the opportunity for a potential investment came up.
“She mentioned that she was starting a fund and that we should apply if we thought it was a good fit,” Cummings said. “We were planning on raising soon, but like many businesses, Covid shifted everything.”
Cummings pushed a raise originally intended for fall 2020 to spring 2021, and the two stayed in contact.
“What they stand for, the support that they provide, and their thesis tightly aligned with ours and we are happy to be a part of their portfolio,” Cummings said.
Burks, an African American female founder who sold her Atlanta tech startup Partpic Inc. to Amazon.com Inc., is also head of Google for Startups in the U.S. She’s one of Collab Capital’s three general partners, alongside Barry Givens, managing director of Techstars in Atlanta, and Justin Dawkins, co-founder of Goodie Nation.
For Please Assist Me, a Fire award winner of 2020, the fresh funding brings its total raised to date to $915,000, from investors including Backstage Capital, Service Master, Quake Capital and StartCo. Some has also come from pitch competition wins, from groups including Ford Motor Co. Fund and Vinetta Project. The company also completed the Techstars Atlanta and Halcyon’s opportunity zone intensive programs in 2020.
And still, Cummings has had her share of negative, even laughable, experiences as a Black woman pitching to investors in a man’s world, where massive disparities exist for females of color in particular.
Collab Capital’s work mirrors local efforts to help diminish the racial and gender equity gap, as women and people of color disproportionately lack access to capital, including in the startup ecosystem. We’re seeing more Black founder-focused funds emerge, from High Street Equity Partners to Zeal Capital Partners, as well as a growing roster of groups and programs focused on expanding access to founders of color and female entrepreneurs.
“There needs to be more funds focused on minority founders,” Cummings said. “Having representation in VC leads to representation in funding. I would encourage funds that are looking to diversify their portfolio to partner with funds that have a diverse deal flow or diversify the decision makers at the fund.”
