The Largest Tech Accelerator Focused on BIPOC Founders
BK-XL is an early-stage startup accelerator program focused on BIPOC founders and based in Brooklyn. The 2024 BK-XL cohort consists of exceptional companies that will each receive investments of up to $500,000 and commit to building their businesses in Brooklyn. Investors who were interested in getting in touch with founders were able to participate in the Demo Day.
On July 9th, our 2024 Cohort participated in the Kickoff Event, where they got the chance to receive guidance from many of our experts and share lunch with Clara Wu Tsai, Founder of the Social Justice Fund.
The six startups that make up BK-XL's 2024 cohort, as well as their demos, are below:
Sara Berkai - Founder/CEO
Ambessa Play designs educational STEM kits that offer hands-on learning experiences. For every kit purchased, we donate one to a refugee child, ensuring that education knows no borders. With a mission to bridge educational gaps, Ambessa Play has reached thousands of children and continues to grow, inspiring curiosity and creativity in young minds everywhere.
Alex Tschopp - Co-Founder/CEO
Kady Tschopp - Co-Founder/COO
Tailored Industry is an on-demand knitwear manufacturing company. We enable brands to launch knitwear products fast and produce with zero MOQ. We own and operate a 3D knitting factory in Brooklyn, NY and have built a proprietary on-demand software. Our software simplifies the design process, shortens production lead times down to 3-9 days, and powers our factory floor operations. This combination of manufacturing and software we call
Cheick Ouedraogo - Founder/CEO
Accessible and reliable FX solutions are crucial for UMOA's growth. Maraboo connects UMOA globally with its platform, offering affordable, real-time international transfers.
Kareem Williams - Co-Founder
Ben Donahue - Co-Founder
Peepalytics AI identifies the exact signals around why talent leaves alongside an action plan for business leaders to retain their top talent. We're able to do this by generating attrition signals from the modern employee experience with data across productivity, sentiment, and performance.
Gene Zhu - Founder/CEO
Afar Foods is on a mission to spice up healthy snacking. Our debut product, the Afar bar, is a savory, crispy bar featuring globally-inspired flavors. Made with clean, vegan ingredients, each bar packs 10g protein and just 3g sugar (80% less sugar than most bars).
Yusuf Olokoba - Founder/CEO
We provide a platform that enables developers to run AI and other compute-heavy algorithms on their users' local devices. With local compute, developers and enterprises can save drastically on cloud compute spend, and their users benefit from fast and secure AI. Our platform works by compiling Python functions into object code that runs across different platforms, including the browser, mobile, desktop, and more.
