Going Against the Flow: Black Female Founder Raises $7m For Renewable Energy Tech Startup

Jessica O. Matthews is only the 13th black female founder to raise more than $1 million in outside funding.

Jessica O. Matthews, the 29-year-old founder of Uncharted Play, a renewable energy tech startup, is beating the odds.

Earlier this week, her company raised $7 million in venture capital in a funding round led by NIC Fund, with participation from Kapor Capital, Magic Johnson Enterprises, BBG Ventures and Lingo Ventures. The company says it will use the $7 million to build out its staff.

That makes Matthews the 13th black female founder to raise more than $1 million in outside investment. Of the seven thousand VC deals made between 2012 and 2014, less than one percent of funding went to black women, according to data from#ProjectDiane.

And the black women who received outside funding on average only got $36,000, while the average seed deal size in February of this year was $4.5 million, according to CB Insights. At the time of the #ProjectDiane report, only 11 black female founders had raised more than $1 million in outside funding.

Uncharted Play’s first product, SOCCKET, is a soccer ball that doubles as a power generator. The SOCCKET uses the rotational energy that gets generated every time the ball rolls to produce three hours of light for every hour of play.

Uncharted Play’s second product is the PULSE, a jump rope that doubles as a light. Both the SOCCKET and PULSE are powered by MORE (motion-based, off-grid, renewable energy, Uncharted Play’s proprietary technology for micro-generator systems. Those systems can integrate into anything that moves, which is what transforms the product, like a soccer ball or a jump rope, into a source of off-grid power. Uncharted Play’s goal is to better utilize kinetic energy in order to complement or even replace other energy systems.

Uncharted Play’s business model entails partnering with product manufacturers across industries like consumer electronics and infrastructure to put the MORE technology inside the everyday products we use, like strollers, shopping carts and suitcases. The idea is that you could then use the energy produced by that product to charge your cell phone and other things.

“We not only aim to disrupt how energy is generated, but how it is consumed,” Matthews said. “We envision a world where people shift from a ‘hoard & save’ energy mentality to a ‘continuous and on­-demand’ energy experience.”

Ex: Techcrunch