Blavity CEO Morgan DeBaun leads one of the largest Black tech conferences and creates a space for startup founders

Good morning! e.l.f. Beauty is accused of inflating revenue, Trump has a new pick for attorney general, and Fortune ’s Sheryl Estrada writes about Blavity and its annual AfroTech conference. — Entrepreneurial motivation. After graduating from Washington University, Morgan DeBaun moved from St. Louis to the Bay area to work for the software company Intuit. But over time, she felt that Silicon Valley didn’t have a connection to Black consumers. “I was surprised to find that no one was prioritizing us as a target demographic,” DeBaun, now 34, told Fortune .

She eventually left her full-time job and in 2014 launched Blavity , a media and tech company, for Black millennials to have a platform to tell their own stories. “Blavity really started with: How do we create product and solution services that put the Black community at its core?” said DeBaun, founder, CEO, and chair of the company.

Through organic growth and acquisitions, Blavity’s brand portfolio has grown to reach over 100 million individuals per month. Its major investors are GV, Plexo, Macro, Kapor Capital, and Comcast Ventures. Blavity has over 150 employees, with Jeff Nelson, a cofounder, serving as COO. The Los Angeles-based company’s widely popular conference AfroTech , first held in 2016 in San Francisco, has become an anchor event.

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Morgan DeBaun, Founder, Chairperson, and CEO of Blavity, Inc. Courtesy of Blavity

The annual conference brought together 37,500 attendees last week at George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, focusing on AI and cybersecurity. Along with professional networking, it’s become an event that big tech companies, like Google and Nvidia, and even big banks and retailers, attend to find top tech talent. This year, multi-platinum artist and tech entrepreneur will.i.am and Colin Kaepernick, founder and CEO of Lumi and former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, were among the guest speakers…

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