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Footwear brand Blackstock & Weber on Friday launches one of two limited-edition styles at J. Crew as part of the retailer’s many collaborations and partnerships to come. WWD

Talking with Dr. Quinn Wang felt like having a conversation with a multitude of people at once. Her insights made us think differently about the world around us. Quinn has acquired an awareness like nobody we have ever seen. She’s lived in 21 different places and plans on seeing the rest of the world when the pandemic reaches the finish line. Venture Insider

Rebecca Allen founded her eponymous shoe company, Rebecca Allen Inc., to solve a problem that many women of color face in the corporate world. At Goldman Sachs, where Allen was working in investment management, “the nude pump was something that all of the white women in my office wore. It’s the wardrobe staple. It lives under your desk. It goes with everything. And it looked so silly on me.” Forbes

This year’s Google for Startups Black Founders Fund cohort was just announced, and one of Pittsburgh’s most prominent entrepreneurs is on the list. Jim Gibbs of parking payment software company Meter Feeder is one of 50 new recipients of the fund, which includes up to $100,000 in non-dilutive funding per founder, along with Google Cloud credits, ad grants and other support resources. Technical.ly

Kudos are the first and only disposable diapers to have earned the cotton natural seal from Cotton Inc. for having 100% clean cotton touching baby’s bum all day instead of plastic. Founder Amrita Saigal spent 2.5 years developing this diaper free of harmful ingredients and made with 4x more plant-based materials than the leading disposable diaper. Before Kudos, Amrita designed an elegantly sustainable sanitary pad for thousands of women in India. Sheen Magazine

Hip-hop artist Gunna and Goodr have partnered to set up a free grocery store inside of Ronald McNair Middle School. It is a part of the Gunna’s Drip Closet and Goodr Grocery Store to provide for students and families in need. Essence

Earlier in her career, Shannon Goggin was a product manager, and her role was to figure out how to create great insurance experiences for small business customers. “I became increasingly focused on infrastructure, on connectivity, on data availability as a driver for all the cool innovative things people wanted to do,” Goggin said. This focus led Goggin, who will be speaking on innovation during the upcoming Women In Insurance California event, to become CEO and co-founder of Noyo, the API solution for benefits software. Noyo “creates that critical technology layer to transform data exchange across the insurance ecosystem,” she explained. Insurance Business America

Shadiah Sigala is the cofounder and CEO of Kinside, touted as a childcare service for today’s working parents. Sigala is herself a single mom and two-time tech founder. She previously cofounded HoneyBook, a startup that reached unicorn status and provides client management software to more than 100,000 freelancers running their own small businesses. Fortune

Imagine a pale peach color being the only foundation shade for everyone. That would be ridiculous, yet that’s historically been the reality with “nude” shoes. Now, Rebecca Allen’s inclusive nude footwear is changing the game. Insider

Blend Financial Inc. hauled in $56 million in a new financing led in part by a firm co-founded by former Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Dick Costolo, as it pushes ahead with the expansion of its benefits platform. The San Francisco-based fintech, which does business as Origin, offers a suite of services to companies’ workforces that include advising on retirement, equity grants, real estate and taxes. Wall Street Journal

In honor of August being National Black Business Month, MADAMENOIRE recently spoke with Dr. Iman Abuzeid about her company Incredible Health. Incredible Health allows nurses have control over where they work and how much they get paid in a way that pushes the healthcare system forward. MADAMENOIRE

Sugar, a startup that aims to turn apartment buildings into “interactive communities,” has closed on $2.5 million in seed funding. A slew of investors participated in the financing, including MetaProp, Agya Ventures, Concrete Rose, Debut Capital, The Community Fund, Consonance Capital, Lightspeed Scout Fund and Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH syndicate. Also participating were angel investors such as SquareFoot CEO Jonathan Wasserstrum, Ben Zises, Diran Otegbade, Oleksiy Ignatyev and Zillow board member Claire Cormier Thielke, also of Sequoia Scout Fund. TechCrunch

HR automation software startup Sora announced this morning that it closed a $14 million Series A round of funding. Two Sigma Ventures led the financing event, putting in $10 million, with prior investors completing the round. TechCrunch

This summer, Sony launched the first-ever “Demixing challenge.” In this global contest, participants from around the world — including research institutes, private companies, and hobbyist coders — submitted their AI models to run against the same test set so that their results could be compared by SDR score.

Audioshake scored nearly a half decibel higher than the second-place winner, a researcher from Facebook. In third place was a research team from Korea University. TikTok parent company, Byte Dance, was also in the top ten. Particularly notable was Audioshake’s vocal stem, which was a full decibel higher than any other competing team. Audioshake

San Francisco-based Carrot raised a $75m Series C round led by Tiger Global, with participation from OrbiMed and existing investors including F-Prime Capital, CRV, U.S. Venture Partners and Silicon Valley Bank. The round was mainly equity, with a little debt as well, to bring the startup’s total funding to $115 million. Forbes

Superhuman has raised $75M in new financing! The round was led by IVP, with participation from Tiger Global and strategic investors including Drew Houston (CEO of Dropbox), Timothy Young (President of Dropbox), Jason Citron (CEO of Discord), Henrique Dubugras (co-CEO of Brex), Arianna Huffington (CEO of Thrive), Ashton Kutcher, Will Smith, and the Chainsmokers. Superhuman

Elroy Air has raised a $40 million Series A, including financing from Lockheed Martin’s venture capital arm, to ramp up the build, testing and validation of its inaugural autonomous cargo drone.

The funding round saw participation from Marlinspike Capital and Prosperity7, as well as existing investors Catapult Ventures, DiamondStream Partners, Side X Side Management, Shield Capital Partners and Precursor Ventures. This latest round brings Elroy’s total raised to $48 million to date.TechCrunch

Aditi Shekar’s path to entrepreneurship was a very intentional one, and while it wasn’t quite a childhood dream, it was the real-world version of the goals she did have as a kid. Fast forward to today, and Aditi’s company Zeta is on a rocket ship ride in fintech.TechCrunch

Learn why the founders of Audioshake launched earlier this year!Medium

Check out Loom’s feature as one of the Top Seed-Stage Companies to Work For in 2021!Top 50 by Will Reed