In honor of Women’s History Month, the award-winning hospitality design and concept firm, AvroKO, and its sister agency Brand Bureau, have launched Hospitable Bridge—an accelerator studio funding and supporting female founders of color who are changing the hospitality world for the better.
Knowing that most start-ups fail within the first two years and that female-founded businesses are historically under-funded, Hospitable Bridge’s mission is to step into this space to financially support businesses owned by women of color in the hospitality sector. By also providing these companies with women-led mentorship in their early stages of growth, Hospitable Bridge will help ensure these founders are directly supported by female leaders in the hospitality business.
“With less than 2% of all venture funding going to women-owned businesses, and significantly less than that going to women-of-color-owned businesses, we saw an opportunity to leverage our hospitality knowledge and provide a platform and vehicle to champion, support, mentor and fund female-founded and female-led business ventures whose missions are to innovate in a way that’s truly needle-moving for the hospitality industry,” said Kristina O’Neal, partner/cofounder of AvroKO and Brand Bureau. “The research shows that women-led startups have the power to generate 10% higher revenues but are often overlooked at the VC level—Hospitable Bridge aims to change that and highlight the power that female entrepreneurs bring to the table.”
According to a study from S&P Global Market Intelligence, public companies with women CEOs and CFOs were often more profitable. Additionally, Harvard Business Review found that if women and men around the world participated equally as entrepreneurs, the global economy could ultimately rise by $2.5 to $5 trillion. A few statistics (sources: Crunchbase, TechCrunch, Fortune, Harvard Business Review):
- <2% of all venture funding goes to women
- .006% of all venture funding goes to women of color
- $935,000 is the average investment in women founders vs. $2.1 million average for male founders
- 10% higher cumulative revenue over a five-year period for female-founded vs. male-founded start-ups
What Hospitable Bridge Offers
All Hospitable Bridge ventures will receive $15,000-$50,000 in pre-seed investment. They will also be supported via the AvroKO and Brand Bureau Partners and studios, with support and guidance including educational content, legal resources, financial guidance and operational insight; access to female mentors and business coaching; as well as consulting on public relations, graphic design, interior design, branding and strategy.
Hospitable Bridge Ventures
Hospitable Bridge is focused on engagement over volume with the aim of taking on five companies each year. For its inaugural year, the accelerator studio is kicking off this month with two burgeoning businesses—Spaceez (founder Alpa Patel) and Think Forward Society (founder Kiki Monique).
Alpa Patel, founder of Spaceez
After unsuccessfully seeking out attractive and affordable interior design for her parents’ motel business, Alpa Patel founded Spaceez—a company dedicated to providing economy hoteliers with not just functional, but beautiful interior design at an affordable price.
Born and raised in a small village in India, Patel and her family emigrated to the United States when she was 10 years old. Like many South Asian-American families, Patel’s parents eventually found themselves in the hotel business, operating a small motel in Texas. Having grown up, quite literally, in the hospitality world, Patel saw first-hand how the motel and economy hotel space is often an overlooked segment of the industry. With the birth of Spaceez, it was her mission to create a more equitable playing field across the hotel industry, ensuring that all hoteliers have access to the same resources and advantages allowing them to maximize revenues, minimize costs and deliver great guest experiences.
Kiki Monique, founder of Think Forward Society
Inspired by the social justice movement in 2020, Monique founded Think Forward Society, an organization dedicated to creating a more inclusive and equitable future for the hospitality industry. Rooted in social entrepreneurship, Think Forward Society creates tailored strategies, content, training, tools and other learning solutions to disseminate education related to race and social justice.
Monique’s background includes 15 years of experience overseeing the finance, HR and operations of renowned hospitality companies, seeing first-hand the opportunity that EDI learning can lend to hospitality cultures in order to create more diverse and dynamic workplaces. Additionally, Monique is a content creator whose mission is always to entertain, but she never misses an opportunity to enlighten, inform and elicit thoughtful discourse. Her spicy blend of lifestyle, pop culture and thought-provoking content has garnered her over 165,000 followers and more than 25,000,000 views on TikTok.
