Raising capital nearly broke Jewel Burks Solomon. She was a Black founder trying to get into rooms that weren’t built for her, watching good companies get passed over because investors couldn’t see the opportunity. That frustration eventually became a strategy.
After selling Partpic to Amazon in 2016, Solomon pivoted to investing. She eventually co-led Collab Capital, an Atlanta-based firm built around backing Black founders. The first fund closed at $50 million. Today the platform sits at roughly $125 million. A personal struggle turned into a thesis.
How did She Get there?
She started angel investing, then built her own fund. Collab raised about $50 million for Fund I. Then $75 million more for Fund II. That’s $125 million in assets under management, built by a founder who once struggled to raise a much smaller check.
She Turned a Scar into a Strategy
The bold part was refusing to change the fund’s focus. Some LPs pushed her to widen the net — talk about “underrepresented” or “multicultural” founders instead. She said no.
That decision came with real risk. Getting the fund off the ground took close to $1.5 million from the general partners. Early LPs looked at her roughly $300,000 in personal angel investments and wondered if that was enough of a track record. Meanwhile, the team still had to keep operations running while they raised money. No safety net.
She held the line anyway. Fund I backed 38 companies. Then, in June 2025, Fund II closed at $75 million. This one targets Seed and Series A startups, writes checks of $1 million to $2 million, and keeps 40% in reserve for follow-on rounds.
Her Three Rules
Back proximity, not pedigree: Lived experience gives founders information outsiders just don’t have. As Collab put it in the Fund II announcement, the people closest to a problem tend to be the ones best equipped to solve it. Fund II leans into that idea — economic mobility, healthcare access, community infrastructure. Places where insider knowledge beats a fancy resume.
Protect the thesis, even under pressure: If your edge is spotting something the market missed, watering that down to please investors kills the edge. Collab told TechCrunch back in 2021 they weren’t willing to widen the spectrum. When LPs suggested a broader diversity mandate, they kept Fund I focused on Black founders. Full stop.
Conviction has to survive the final stretch: There’s a difference between a broken idea and a temporary cash crunch. Solomon has said she had enough belief in Partpic to cover that gap herself — she used her house as collateral and sold her Google stock just to keep the company alive long enough to reach the Amazon deal.
The 200-Pitch Scar
Solomon pitched over 200 investors for Partpic. Some balked because the company was based in Atlanta, not Silicon Valley. Others just didn’t believe a young Black woman could sell tech into an industrial market. That’s it. That was the objection.
The lesson wasn’t really about her. It was about a system where investors can mistake what’s familiar for what’s fundable.
Collab’s answer was to build outside that system. Early on, they even experimented with something called SPACE (Shared Profit Agreement with a Collaborative Endorsement), a structure blending equity and profit-sharing.
The Network
Big names back Collab now — Apple, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, California IBank, the Leon Levine Foundation. Fund I pulled in Google, PayPal, Mailchimp, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation too. On the founder side, the portfolio includes Goodr’s Jasmine Crowe-Houston, Culina Health’s Vanessa Rissetto, and SparkCharge’s Joshua Aviv.
Solomon’s own background helps here. Her time running Google for Startups U.S., plus her stint at Amazon, gives Collab a direct line to corporate partnerships, talent, customers, and future capital.
A Move any Founder can Steal
Solomon’s advice for founders getting rejected boils down to this: go back through your last 20 “no’s.” Sort them into three buckets — real business risk, a genuine gap in proof, or plain old investor bias.
Fix what’s actually broken. Close the proof gaps with real customers, real revenue, real data. But don’t rebuild a solid company just to look more familiar to an investor who’s really just uncomfortable with who you are or where you’re from.