Prairie View A&M University’s Agriculture/Business Building
PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (June 1, 2021) – Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) has a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Diversity Fund Houston (DFH), a micro venture capital (VC) fund created to invest in minority tech founders and provide opportunities for them to learn, scale and solve the challenges impacting their communities. Through this partnership, the university hopes to establish a program that introduces students to the world of venture capital and fund management as a career path.
The scope of this agreement, explains Rick Baldwin, Ph.D., assistant professor in PVAMU’s College of Business (COB), is twofold: it will first develop a “holistic infrastructure to enhance the PVAMU entrepreneurial and venture community.” Second, it would “establish a venture capital fund management and investor program.”
Tiffany Williams, DFH co-founder and managing partner, brings to light the state of VC for minority tech founders. “Black and Brown founders receive less than 2 percent of venture capital funding,” she says. “And, less than 3 percent of fund managers are Black and Brown.”
Williams and her fellow co-founders, Phillip Yates and Kiley Summers, are all entrepreneurs themselves and have worked and mentored a number of diverse founders in Houston’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Williams says the three have seen “incredible work ethic, drive and innovative ideas from Black and Brown founders, but often they lack access to capital.”
Williams, a former adjunct professor in PVAMU’s Languages and Communication Department, says she also witnessed the hard work, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit of students at PVAMU. So she knew “it would be a great place to strengthen the pipeline of diverse talent for venture capital and fund management.”
“The College of Business has a long history of offering courses and programs to create and support a culture of entrepreneurship for our students,” says COB Dean and Professor Munir Quddus, Ph.D. “The opportunity presented by Diversity Fund Houston was very timely, since a partnership has the potential to substantially enhance our students’ exposure to and understanding of the world of entrepreneurs while bringing in new programs and talented people.”
As part of the MOU, PVAMU will begin offering two pilot courses this month. “These courses,” says Baldwin, “are designed to promote entrepreneurship and innovation among PVAMU students and provide a platform for the newly created Student Enterprise Zone located in the College of Business. Title III funds the Student Enterprise Zone to promote entrepreneurship.”
The first course is offered to undergraduate students within the COB. Titled Diversity Entrepreneurship, the five-week course aims to provide students with an understanding of the historical and contemporary state of women, ethnic and minority entrepreneurs. With curriculum contributions from DFH, it will also introduce students to venture capital, fund management, valuations, due diligence, and real-world application opportunities. Students will hear from Williams, Yates and Summers, as well as other industry fund managers and tech founders. Additionally, says Williams, “we want to establish a Panther Investment Fund for students to learn how to manage a fund firsthand.”
The second course, called Funding New Ideas, will be a 10-week MBA class. It is designed to expose students to traditional and non-traditional options for finding capital to fund projects. Areas of interest, such as fund structure, growth strategies, company metrics and company pitch, among others, will be covered.
In addition to these course offerings, the MOU hopes to foster an environment of entrepreneurship through an annual tech and innovation summit. “Our goal is to create a ‘SXSW for HBCUs,’” says Williams. The first event is slated for Fall 2021 and will serve as a regional convening of national resources and capital focused on supporting and investing in diverse-founded and/or led companies.
Through this partnership with DFH, Baldwin says, “we hope to provide PVAMU students additional career options and opportunities to develop their ideas for commercialization.”
Williams adds, “We hope that launching this course contributes to strengthening the greater ecosystem and leads to building generational wealth among Black and Brown communities.”
This partnership is open to all members of the PVAMU community. It seeks to enhance the academic course instruction and creative work of students and faculty in the College of Business.
By Katie McNew
-PVAMU-