HBCU Founders Initiative Accelerating Entrepreneurship At Black Institutions

This article was originally published on June 19, 2026, for FIN Daily’s seventh annual Juneteenth special edition at: https://www.fin-news.com/2026/06/19/hbcu-founders-initiative-accelerating-entrepreneurship-at-black-institutions/

Pre-seed venture accelerator Nex Cubed and CEO Marlon Evans launched the HBCU Founders Initiative five years ago to engage Historically Black college and university students and alumni interested in developing solutions to close the wealth gap, ranging from increasing access to healthcare, education and financial services.

“Really HBCUFI was born on Juneteenth,” Evans said. “This was 2020, I gave our staff the day off, and I just said, ‘Hey, think about a way that you can give back to your community in some form, whatever that looks like for you.’ For me, I had this idea of what if we launched a pre-accelerator program and could just make it free to HBCU students, like what could that look like?”

Through that initial exercise, Evans reached out to friends and colleagues, including those involved in corporate social responsibility, to see if they thought an accelerator program could be helpful and, if so, whether they would be willing to join on to help in some form.

“I got a couple of yeses, folks raised their hand and I said, ‘Okay then there might be something here,’” he said, noting that he proceeded to send out some more feelers and within a year the pilot had launched.

“It’s taken on a life of its own from there, but, to me, it just kind of goes to show partnership. Look, great ideas are amazing, but if there aren’t folks who are willing to come on alongside and kind of lock arms with you and say, ‘We believe in what you’re doing, let’s get after it,’ then this never would have happened,” Evans said. “Like if I’d gotten 100 no’s and 0 yeses, then I probably would say there’s not a need for this, even though we know that the need is there.”

Evans, who serves as president of HBCUFI, called the initial response “overwhelming,” noting that “it really started to snowball” and that growth and commitment is what led HBCUFI to spin out as its own 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2021.

“It’s very rewarding just to hear the stories back from the founders of just how meaningful the program was for them. Many times we were the first outside group that was supportive of their idea and concept. Part of the reason why we spun it out is that we didn’t want to wear our venture hat when evaluating these opportunities,” he said. “It was really more about teaching on entrepreneurial mindset, understanding of how launching a business works, whether this is the idea that ultimately they pursue long term or maybe this is the first idea out of four or five, but they’ll still have the fundamentals of what is necessary for them to seek and receive funding.“

The nonprofit has now supported more than 1,600 students and alumni from more than 80 HBCUs, according to Evans, who largely credits partners like AT&T, Costco, Deloitte, Franklin Templeton, United Negro College Fund and Walton Family Foundation for not only helping establish the nonprofit, but also for assisting in growing it into the largest HBCU-centered pre-accelerator in the country.

“We were very intentional to make sure we weren’t just serving the usual suspects within the HBCU community and even those are under resourced relative to their kind of PWI counterparts,” Evans said. “We said, ‘Yeah, let’s go to Oakwood [in Huntsville,] Ala., let’s go to [the University of] Arkansas [at] Pine Bluff, let’s go to Mississippi Valley State [University],’ places where these types of programs don’t quite feel like they’re going to be able to structure the engagement in such a way that they’re able to meet their objectives-plus for the university. We said, ‘No, there’s talent there, it’s evenly distributed, let’s make sure that we’re structuring our program so that everybody has access to it.’ So, that’s been exciting to see those companies from predominantly rural areas competing against the more traditional kind of hubs of innovation.”

“Those initial founding partners saying yes to that initial call is literally what set us down on this path,” Evans said. “So, we just thought it was appropriate on our five-year anniversary to host [Better Futures Summit] on Juneteenth, and that will be the plan moving forward.”

HBCUFI currently features three main programs with the next being the Better Futures Summit, which includes the Better Futures Pitch Competition, on June 18-19 in Washington, D.C.

Better Futures was launched in 2023 and expanded into a two-day event for its fourth iteration, “marking a milestone moment to reflect on how far we’ve come, celebrate the community we’ve built, and recommit to the impact we will create in the years ahead,” according to the summit’s website.

The summit’s expanded second day features its Better Futures Pitch Competition, where 10 HBCUFI founders showcase their companies to investors, corporations and HBCU enthusiasts before the field is narrowed to five finalists, who compete for $25,000 in non-dilutive prizes that are distributed across the top three-placing startups.

“This is the 1st year of us trying to do this … we’re adding content, panel discussions. I’d love for that room at some point, if it’s five or 10 years from now, just filled with young entrepreneurs from all over the country who are getting to hear from the top VCs, the top corporate executives who are talking about where is innovation going? Where’s the economy going? What are some of the opportunities? So that they’re getting some of that kind of firsthand insight. So, lots to look forward to for sure,” Evans said.

HBCUFI also features an eight-week pre-accelerator program that looks to guide founders each semester “as they validate their business ideas, build an MVP, tap into expert support, and navigate pathways that propel their ventures forward,” as well as the Designing for Social Good program, an eight-hour immersive workshop that brings together HBCU students and subject matter experts to ideate solutions to social challenges using Design Thinking.

Latisha Jones, a Flint, Mich. native and graduate of Spelman College’s class of 2026 with a degree in sociology and anthropology, has participated in HBCUFI programing since her freshman year on top of internships, serving as v.p. of Spelman’s Entrepreneurs Club and as a fellow at Spelman’s Center for Black Entrepreneurship.

“People always ask like, what can you even do [with a degree in sociology and anthropology]? In this climate today, it’s really what can’t I do with a humanities degree from a liberal arts college in an age where everything is AI and artificial. Critical thinking becomes kind of a lost art. I’m super excited and very grateful that I’m able to navigate those situations because people have tried to make me feel like an imposter, but I know that I belong in those rooms just as much as anyone else,” she said.

Jones is a semifinalist in this year’s Better Futures Pitch Competition for Chip In, a fintech platform she co-founded that aims to simplify shared expenses by helping friends split payments seamlessly, optimize group spending and stay on top of reimbursements.

The application, which is currently backed by 150+ waitlisted users, was built by an all-Black women founding team, including Co-Founder and Prairie View A&M University graduate Anisah Hassan, with experience at Goldman Sachs, L’Oréal and Shell, according to Jones, who plans to continue investing in her start-up post-grad.

Jones, who previously pitched the venture in the HBCU Black Ambition Pre-Accelerator, credits the HBCUFI programming for being pertinent, informative and timely for students and alumni.

“The market is ever changing and what I can say about the HBCUFI curriculum is that it definitely adopts or adapts to the times. None of the information that is ever presented to us is dated or irrelevant. I’m very proud of just constantly going at it and not giving up, especially when you have been told no so many times. I think literally having this opportunity to explore, this opportunity to be curious, is golden. I do believe they capture founders at the perfect moment and it’s when they have an idea, right?” Jones said.

She noted that HBCUFI’s mentorships were engaging and relevant, helping push her skills and knowledge while also advancing her product.

“They give us people that have done it before, people that have successfully raised, people that have successfully exited. So, it’s not like they’re doing this for their help. They’re doing it for the love that they have and, to my point earlier, of reaching back as you climb,” Jones said. “That is something that is so important to me because there’s so much opportunity for everyone in this space, especially as Black and Brown founders. There’s enough out here for all of us to be successful and there’s no reason to continue to gatekeep information when it’s not holding you back from you being successful, right? It just allows others to be able to be successful with you.”

Seeing the success of Jones and countless others is what makes the work so rewarding for Evans.

“We are filling up a void there. We’re starting to see more HBCUs invest in entrepreneurial centers on campus, which is super exciting,” he said. “Just hoping that we can get this flywheel going so that people realize that if they’re not taking a look at opportunities coming out of HBCUs, they’re really missing some great deal flow that hopefully at some point the LPs are starting to demand or ask, like, ‘Why did you miss this one?’ And will require more investors to take a look.”

Evans and Nex Cubed launched the HBCU Founders Fund in 2023 to invest exclusively in teams where at least one of the founders attended an HBCU.

“We knew we needed to bring more dollars to this, which is part and parcel why we started initially, is that we knew that not a lot of venture funding was going toward these founders. With that fund, we’re still fundraising, but we’ve raised over $9 million to date from Bank of America, Costco, and the state of North Carolina, who were anchor investors, and we’ve made over 30 investments out of that fund,” Evans said.

The goal for the HBCU Founders Fund is to be a $40 million strategy, according to Evans, who finds the target Limited Partners are corporations and foundations, particularly those looking to build on previous diversity, equity and inclusion pledges.

“We are our ancestors like wildest dreams, and I do believe that is true. I also believe that our ancestors surely knew that this moment would always happen, right? And even just thinking about entrepreneurship, as it relates to Black humanity … We are still inventing. We are still just as resilient. We are still breaking barriers. We are still creating new solutions and solving problems,” Jones said. “I think that is such a beautiful testament and also a beautiful way to celebrate [Juneteenth] and celebrate the sacrifices that our ancestors made, and most importantly, to celebrate the future that we now have.”

Editor’s Note: This article appeared in NPNews sister publication FIN Daily’s seventh annual Juneteenth special edition, which published on June 19 and is available here.