Fearless Fund invests in under-resourced entrepreneurs including women of color led businesses seeking pre-seed, seed level or series A financing. Our mission is to bridge the gap in venture capital funding for women of color founders building scalable, growth aggressive companies.
We know that companies with a female founder perform 63% better on average than all-male founding teams (FIRST ROUND CAPITAL, 2015). Despite a greater potential to produce higher returns, women are historically underfunded, particularly women of color.
In 2018, U.S. companies raised a total of $130B in VC funding, yet only 2.2% of that total went toward female-founded companies and less than 1% of total funding was allocated toward businesses founded by women of color (FORTUNE, 2018 & GIRLBOSS, 2019).
Fearless Fund was established to address the gap that exists in venture capital funding for WOC-led businesses and to finally push the needle on the abysmal statistics that drive the current narrative for WOC-led businesses today.
OUR TEAM
Fearless Fund Team
Arian Simone, General Partner
Arian Simone, Chief Executive Officer and Founding Partner of Fearless Fund, is a serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, angel investor, author, and PR & marketing specialist. Arian received her MBA from Florida A&M and has over 17 years of entrepreneurial experience: from pioneering and growing a successful PR and marketing firm to founding Fearless Magazine and the Fearless Platform in 2010, with a mission of inspiring millennial entrepreneurial women. Her background has allowed her to foster significant relationships in the entertainment industry with billion-dollar corporate clients such as the Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures and more.
Rodney Sampson, fund advisor
Rodney Sampson is a serial entrepreneur who cofounded, built and sold Multicast Media Technologies, EFactor (EFCT) and Intellectual Currency, a world class integrated go-to-market, publishing, diversity and advisory firm with clients ranging from major Hollywood film studios, cable networks, tech companies, global corporations, publishers and African heads of state. In 2013, Sampson co-founded Opportunity Hub as a follow up to the highly successful Kingonomics’ book release. Today, as Executive Chairman & CEO of Opportunity Hub, Sampson is focused on scaling its suite of collaborative and interconnected technology products, programs, initiatives and fund globally. Sampson is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brooking Institution in Washington, DC and a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. Sampson previously served as the 1st Head of Diversity at Mark Burnett Productions, executive producers of the hit ABC show, ABC’s Shark Tank.
Tracy Gray, fund advisor
Tracy Gray is currently the Founder and Managing Partner of The 22 Fund, a growth venture capital and advisory firm focused on increasing the export capacity of Southern California companies, positioning these companies to accelerate growth and scale via international sales. She is also an Executive in Residence at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) and chairs LACI’s Diversity in Entrepreneurship Advisory Council. In addition, Ms. Gray is the founder of the non-profit We Are Enough (WAE). WAE’s only mission is to educate ALL women on how and why to invest in women-owned, for-profit businesses or with a “gender lens.” Ms. Gray was formerly Senior Advisor to the LA Mayor, an investment professional at a venture capital fund and a systems engineer on the Space Shuttle program. Ms. Gray holds a B.S. in Mathematical Science with an aeronautics emphasis from the UC Santa Barbara and dual MBAs from Columbia University and UC, Berkeley.
If you are an accredited investor Interested in investing with Fearless Fund, please reach out to hello@fearless.fund