Silicon Valley is obsessed with unicorns, startups that reach a valuation of $1 billion valuation or more. But Aniyia Williams and her team over at Zebras Unite are more interested in zebras. Unlike unicorns, zebras are real animals. So, when applied to startups, zebras are the ones that bring in actual revenue.
When we talk about the greatest of all time (G.O.A.T.) in tech, it seems only reasonable that it would be a zebra, not necessarily a unicorn. Granted, it could be a zebra-unicorn blend, but it couldn’t be just be a unicorn.
The zebra movement is all-inclusive, Williams told me on an episode of the CTRL+T podcast. That’s regardless of race, gender, sexuality, ability status and so forth. Its focus is on startups building businesses that approach issues from a social impact lens and are focused on generating revenue, she said.
“We are optimizing for profitability over fundability,” Williams said.
We also chatted about Williams’ new organization, Black & Brown Founders, which aims to support black and Latinx founders in tech, and help them to become zebras.
Check it out.