GNO, Inc. Sunday Night Highlight – GNO, Inc. Launches Startup Noir NOLA
New Orleans has a rich heritage of Black entrepreneurship and business ownership. Free people of color (“gens de couleur libres”) formed a distinctive segment of New Orleans’s population from the French colonial period through the Civil War. By the mid-nineteenth century, New Orleans had the largest number of free Black people of any city in America, as well as some of the wealthiest, working as planters, artisans, musicians, teachers, landlords, and retailers. In fact, New Orleans was home to the nation’s first Black millionaires, such as Thomy Lafon, at one time the wealthiest person of color in the United States and one of the country’s great philanthropists.
Building on this history, while looking to the future, GNO, Inc. has launched Startup Noir NOLA.
Startup Noir NOLA has three components:
- Community – Building community and support for entrepreneurs of color
- Capital – Attracting funding for new minority-led companies
- Customers – Connecting new these companies to customers
Current Startup Noir NOLA programs include:
- The Greater New Orleans Innovation Internship Program – An eight-week paid internship experience for students from Louisiana’s HBCUs, focusing on STEM
- The New Orleans Technology Incubator (NETI) – In partnership with Opportunity Hub (OHUB) from Atlanta, over 90 local companies have been supported, including five that have received $500,000 in investment
You can read more about the latest winner of funding from NETI, a Terrebonne “trash to energy” company, Phoenix Waste Solutions.
You can read more about Startup Noir NOLA here.
The Startup Noir NOLA website is: https://startupnoirnola.com/