NewBWS · Member-Owned · Campaign opens Juneteenth 2026
A village, rebuilt.
A century after Greenwood burned, we are building infrastructure the community owns. Not promised to the community. Owned by it. This is the work our grandparents began and could not finish. We are finishing it.
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Already in the village
What this is
The professional network for our ecosystem.
Think LinkedIn — but built for Black investors, founders, operators, and institutions. Owned by the people in it. Protected so no amount of capital can redirect it away from us.
A members-only network
Every member is vouched for. Every connection carries a name. No recruiter spam, no fake accounts, no algorithm feeding you ads.
Built for capital that circulates
Investors find founders. Founders find operators. Operators find mentors. LPs find GPs. The village is the deal flow.
Owned by the people in it
No venture capital. No behavioral ads. No exit to a bigger platform. Member-funded through a Wefunder community round and protected so it can never be sold out.
Who this is for
Built for us. Open to the village.
Our community has always built what the country would not. In 1787, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded one of the first mutual aid societies in America. In 1896, Mary Church Terrell and the women who came with her founded the National Association of Colored Women. In 1909, the NAACP. In 1963, the men who would become the 100 Black Men of America sat down in a New York room and got to work. Each generation built the institutions its moment required. This is ours.
If you are Black and in this ecosystem
This is yours.
Whether you are a fund manager writing your twenty-seventh check, a founder closing your first, an operator moving between rooms, or an institution steward shaping where capital goes — this village was built for you to do your work without explaining yourself first. You don't have to translate. We already understand.
If you are an ally
You are welcome at the table.
Co-investors, LPs, partners, and allies who want to build with us are part of the story. Our strength grows when capital from every direction circulates through us. Come in with respect for whose house this is, and you are welcome.
The ecosystem
One village. Many rooms.
Greenwood was not one thing. It was banks and newspapers and theaters and grocery stores, circulating capital through the community before it left. NewBWS is built the same way — as an ecosystem of institutions that reinforce each other. We are starting with the network. We are not stopping there.
Pillar 01
Now · Campaign opens Juneteenth 2026
The network.
A professional network for investors, founders, operators, and institutions.
The starting point. A members-only network where capital, talent, and firms find each other. "We are enough" translated into daily infrastructure.
Pillar 02
Fall 2026
The Village Directory.
A verified directory of Black businesses, open to the public.
Anyone can find a Black-owned business by category, city, or specialty. Dollars circulate in the community before they leave.
Pillar 03
Vision public Juneteenth 2026 · First course Fall 2026
The Academy.
The educational institution at the heart of NewBWS.
Four tracks: Personal Finance, Entrepreneurship, Investing, AI literacy. Taught by practitioners, integrated with the network, owned by members. Our own school for the economic movement.
Pillar 04
2027 and beyond
Village Commerce.
B2B circulation between member businesses.
Member-to-member purchasing infrastructure. Funds hire Black-owned law firms. Firms hire Black-owned agencies. Black Wall Street, operationalized.
The leaders we admire are not looking for another networking app. They are looking for the institutions this generation is supposed to build. The network is the keystone. The rest is the building.
Why now
The ecosystem exists. The infrastructure does not.
On June 1, 1921, a white mob burned Greenwood to the ground. Thirty-five city blocks. Ten thousand Black Americans displaced. A century of wealth, erased in eighteen hours.
What made Greenwood possible was infrastructure Black people owned — banks, newspapers, theaters, law offices, grocery stores — circulating capital through the community before it left. What made Greenwood vulnerable was that the infrastructure was physical. It could be burned.
NewBWS is the answer to that vulnerability. A community-owned digital network cannot be torched. The code is ours. The data is ours. The feed serves the village, not a shareholder.
Total AUM across the Black investment ecosystem
Black-led VC and PE firms
The share of venture capital going to Black founders in 2024
The lowest in tracked history.
The capital is here. The talent is here. The firms are here. What every generation has been denied is infrastructure the community owns. That is the gap we are closing.
Different by design
The algorithm is not for us.
So we built our own. Every design decision on this platform starts from a different question than the one the big networks ask.
The big networks
Built for recruiters.
NewBWS
Built for relationships.
The big networks
Algorithm optimized for ad revenue.
NewBWS
Algorithm optimized for capital that circulates.
The big networks
Owned by a $3 trillion corporation.
NewBWS
Owned by the members who use it.
The big networks
Your data is the product.
NewBWS
Your data is yours. Walled garden. Zero tracking pixels.
The big networks
Anyone with an email can join.
NewBWS
Every member is vouched for by someone already here.
The big networks
Premium features behind a paywall.
NewBWS
Warm introductions are free. The paywall is on extraction, not access.
First principles
Eight convictions, inherited.
These principles are not ours alone. They are the convictions of Black builders, investors, and organizers across generations — distilled into the rules this platform refuses to break.
Community ownership must be structural.
Decisions stay with the community, protected by a legal safeguard no capital can override. The platform can never be sold against community interest. The safeguard is called a golden share.
Economic power should be visible.
Every surface of the platform renders the village's collective strength — because seeing the power of the community drives participation in it.
The multiplier effect is sacred.
Capital that circulates within the community is the point. Every connection is weighted for its contribution to that circulation.
Serve the ecosystem, not the individual.
Recommendations surface who the village needs you to meet, rather than who an algorithm picks based on similarity.
The algorithm serves the village.
No engagement bait. No rage optimization. The feed is tuned for wealth-building, not attention extraction.
Build for permanence.
Institutions that outlast their founders. Code that does not lock members in. Data that members own and can take with them.
Honor many professional identities.
Investors, founders, professionals, organizations — each with distinct surfaces on the platform. The village is jazz, not unison.
Excellence on our own terms.
The platform assumes capability, not deficit. It uses market language. It celebrates what is, not what was denied.
What you can do here
Everything a professional network should be. Nothing it should not.
Directory
Find the capital that is already here.
A verified directory of Black-led funds, operators, founders, and institutions — filterable by industry, check size, stage, geography, and HBCU affiliation. The people moving capital, in one place for the first time.
Feed
Publish without being punished.
Share your work, your theses, your wins, without an algorithm that punishes depth or boosts outrage. Our feed is tuned for wealth-building, not attention extraction.
Connections
Every introduction comes with a name.
Vouched connections mean you always know who opened the door. Trust is legible. Warm intros are the default, not a premium tier.
Messages
Reach decision-makers directly.
Private, async messaging once you are connected. No recruiter spam. No InMail upsell. No paywall to reach the people you need.
Profiles
Context built for capital.
Investor profiles lead with thesis, check size, stage. Founder profiles lead with company, raise status, what you are building. Professional profiles lead with your excellence. Designed for the work, not the résumé.
Organizations
A presence for the village's institutions.
Firms, funds, and organizations get a dedicated surface. Claim yours pre-launch.
Where this goes
A network today. An institution tomorrow.
We are not building a product. We are building an institution. The point is permanence. The point is that it outlasts us.
Now
Juneteenth 2026
The campaign opens.
- —Wefunder Regulation CF campaign opens to the community
- —Founding member waitlist activated
- —Founder and fund manager profiles available for pre-claim
- —Private beta cohorts begin rolling invitations
Build
Summer 2026 → Winter 2027
Private beta cohorts.
- —Sequential private cohorts of founding members
- —Invite-only member directory, feed, connections, messaging
- —Continuous shaping of platform by cohort feedback
- —Village Directory (public-facing business directory) enters beta
- —The Academy — first course "Liberation Path: Personal Finance Fundamentals" ships to private beta cohorts
Launch
Black History Month 2027
The platform opens publicly.
- —Public platform launch alongside the broader Black History Month narrative
- —Pro tier launches: $9/month for advanced filters and priority matching
- —Institutional tier pilots for firms and organizations
- —The Academy opens three tracks publicly — Personal Finance, Entrepreneurship, Investing. Ujamaa Accounting releases to members.
- —Weekly curated 1:1 introductions go live for all members
Long-term
2027 and beyond
The full village.
- —The Academy expands — AI literacy track, live cohorts, instructor marketplace
- —Village Commerce — B2B purchase infrastructure between member businesses
- —Deal-flow visibility — founders post raises, investors browse
- —LP-to-GP matching for emerging fund managers
- —The Cookout activates at 2,000 paying members
- —BWS Studio — publishing and podcasting infrastructure
- —Annual State of Black Capital report
- —Mobile app, data partnerships, and ecosystem API
A word from the founder
Why I'm building this.
My name is Rasheid Scarlett. I am building NewBWS because the work our grandparents started is not finished.
Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society in 1787. Mary Church Terrell co-founded the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 and the NAACP in 1909. The men who would become the 100 Black Men of America sat down together in 1963. Every generation built what its moment required. Greenwood proved what was possible when Black people owned the ground beneath their work. In 1921, an eighteen-hour mob proved how vulnerable owned ground could be when the ground was physical.
A community-owned digital network cannot be burned. The code is ours. The data is ours. The feed serves us — not a shareholder, not an algorithm tuned for someone else's ad revenue, not a future acquirer.
I am not building a product. I am building an institution. I have structured it so it cannot be sold against you, advertised on, or redirected by any amount of capital that might come later. Those protections are written into the company's legal DNA. They cannot be unwritten.
If you believe this community already has the answer — and it does — you are not a customer of NewBWS. You are the village. You are the inheritance.
On Juneteenth 2026, the door opens. I hope your name is among the first inside it.
Founder & CEO · NewBWS
Community ownership
Opens Juneteenth 2026Owned by us. Shaped by us. Built to last.
NewBWS is structured to serve the community. Permanently. We are a for-profit company with a legal obligation to serve a public mission, not just shareholders. The structure is called a Public Benefit Corporation — the same one Patagonia and Kickstarter use. It is the framework that lets us make a commitment to our community binding, not just stated.
Community investors come in through a Wefunder community round opening on Juneteenth 2026 — Friday, June 19 at 9:00 AM ET. The legal framework is called Regulation Crowdfunding, or Reg CF.
You are not a customer. You are an owner.
When you become an owner, you receive:
- —A real piece of ownership in the company, via a standard investor agreement called a SAFE — short for Simple Agreement for Future Equity. As the platform grows, so does your stake.
- —A share of profits as the platform matures. Modeled after Basecamp's approach: no requirement for NewBWS ever to be sold or go public for owners to see returns.
- —A founding-owner badge on your profile that never expires.
- —A seat at the table. Every quarter, a council of members reviews the platform's priorities and what it focuses on next.
- —The knowledge that a platform you own cannot be sold against you.
The lock on the door.
We built a legal safeguard into the company that makes selling NewBWS against the community's interest impossible — not discouraged, impossible. The safeguard cannot be overridden by any amount of capital or any future leadership decision. The mechanism is called a golden share. Its job is simple: to make sure NewBWS can never be redirected against the community that built it.
Protections we cannot take back, no matter how large a future offer:
- —Selling against community interest
- —Running programmatic or behavioral advertising
- —Selling or licensing member behavioral data
- —Using AI to target or manipulate members against their interest
- —Raising venture capital equity
- —Deploying dark patterns
The invitation
Be the village.
Every institution that mattered to our community started with a small room of people who decided to start. Eight men at Cornell in 1906. Twenty-two women at Howard in 1908. A handful of clubwomen gathering in 1896. The 1963 New York meeting that eventually became the 100 Black Men of America. Each one of them had to say yes before it was obvious.
This is that room. You are early because you got here early. The waitlist is where you tell us you're coming.
No spam. No behavioral tracking. No selling of your data. Ever.
A century after Tulsa, the institutions are being rebuilt. This time, the community owns the ground they stand on.