Natives Rising, a startup hub for Native Americans, is winning support from technology and finance groups to help boost the start-up founders of today’s most promising entrepreneurs. The $2 million in funding was drawn from foundations like the Gates Foundation and Comcast NBCUniversal. In addition, Microsoft is partnering with Natives Rising to bring more tech training to Native Americans by offering internships at its Seattle campus.
The initiative, called Native Startups, is part of a larger movement in the tech community to help address the shortage of Native American talent. The lack of skilled employees has resulted in a dearth of high-tech start-ups, especially among Native Americans.
“It’s very clear … there’s this huge opportunity in this space,” said Scott Cook, the founder and executive chairman of Intuit, during an event Thursday with Natives Rising to announce the funding. “It’s obvious to us that the future of Silicon Valley is going to be written by founders that look like this.”
Native Startups will help Native American entrepreneurs in three ways: by bringing them access to high-tech tools and education through NativesRising.com, funding from a $2 million venture fund managed by the philanthropic arm of Intuit and a $1 million investment fund for Indian Country Education Foundation.
The Native startup hub will offer free educational programming and workshops on web, mobile and cloud technology. Intuit’s iFoundry is also providing a range of free business services to support startups, including legal help and marketing tips. The Native American tech education group CodeReady has become the third partner in this effort.
“I’m very, very optimistic about the opportunities out there,” said Cook. “There’s a huge talent pool … that hasn’t been tapped by society. I think this is a really good place to work on fixing that.”
The $2 million fund was seeded with $1 million from Intuit and $1 million from the Indian Country Education Foundation (ICEF), which works to improve education among Native Americans.
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