In 2019, she established Sis Got Tea. Clark’s business is currently online, but she is in the midst of crowdfunding to raise money to open a physical location.
She has her eyes on spaces close to the University of Louisville and already has plans for the kinds of events she’d like to host in her space: open mic nights for queer erotica, dance classes centered around body acceptance, tastings with a local LGBTQ-owned chocolate shop.
However, raising funds through traditional avenues has been difficult for Clark.
“When you try to go through a bank, you really start to see the systemic barriers that are in place that prevent folks of marginalized identities from getting the funding that they need,” she said. “My family doesn’t have a nest egg — like generational oppression and generational poverty are a real thing, you know.”
It is not possible – simply not – that it might not be an investable idea…..
BBC spokesgoblin Evan Davis, for it is he: Next up, the Dragons are offered a unique opportunity by a fledgeling business targeting the lucrative LGBTQIA++-#•÷π∆¶✓7 market. But will the founder and CEO queer the pitch?
(throbbing business music, guy sweatily ascending staircase)
Hello, Dragons. I’m here to offer you the chance to invest £1,000,000 in return for a 1% stake in my homosexual bicycle repair shop and lifestyle brand, “BMX Bum Bandits”. Who wants to try out my unique seatless bicycle?
Duncan Bananatime, muttering Caledonianly:
“I’m out.”
Much easier and more effective to claim that you can’t get funding because of “oppression of the marginalised etc..” than to admit that it’s a batshit-crazy idea that will go bust in weeks.
Christ, someone so dim that she can’t make money off chocolate.
Also something that people have to understand is that banks lend conservatively. They lend to buy things that are quite easy to repossess. You want to buy a building to put your cafe in? They’ll lend on that. Marketing, salaries? They won’t.
And $65K sounds steep for starting a cafe. I know it takes some money, but still…
If it’s such a great investment opportunity, merely being held back by the Patriarchy deliberately marginalising “folks of marginalized identities”, then why don’t the writers at salon and their ilk at the grauniad have a whip-round?
They’d be guaranteed a spectacular return from all those queer open mic nights and alphabet-soup chocolate tastings.
So we could have a TV show called “fluffy pink dragon’s den” in which hopeful wokies pitch business ideas to Marcus Rashford, June Sarpong, Polly Toynbee and Richard Murphy.
They could skip over all the tedious stuff about money, and just invest in whoever has the highest Victimhood Poker hand.
The left: Capitalists are evil rapacious bastards who’d sell their granny to make a quick buck.
Also the left: Why won’t capitalists invest in my idea?
I remember spending weeks on my business plan and cash flow analysis which persuaded the Bank Manager to give me an overdraft in order that I could get my business off the ground…
…I bet Xe has done none of that.
My family doesn’t have a nest egg
If you don’t have money, banks are very unlikely to give you any.
NINJA loans anyone?
NIT-JAR loans more like from any fool lending that load of nonsense money
Steve HeHe but shirley its i’m out and proud.
CJ Nerd, nice idea but I can’t see Richard Murphy sticking his hands into his own wallet to invest in anything. Most likely his contribution will be to draft plans to tax rich people more and more and use that to
investpiss up the wall.Does “LGBTQ-owned chocolate” taste any different from straight chocolate? On second thoughts, don’t tell me – I don’t want to know.