No. 120: 3 Thursday AM Reads – Netflix for Black Folks Mais En Francais | Atlanta Investors Building Tech Ecosystem

Francophone Africa and Europe can expect access to more African and African-American content through Afrostream. The two-year old startup led by Tonjé Bakang has been on a tear this year, finishing up at Y Combinator and landing funding from Troy Carter’s Cross Culture Ventures (have they finished raising their $50M fund?), Orange Digital Ventures, Ace & Company, and The Family. Yesterday, Afrostream announced a content deal with Viacom to stream BET France content and collaborate on developing content. Earlier this fall, the startup inked a content partnership with Sony. The startup wasn’t on my radar before, but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out now.

Atlanta’s technology scene continues to grow. Paul Judge and Allen Nance announced a $25M fund that will support hardware and data entrepreneurs in their Tech Square Labs. According to Urvaksh Karkaria, the partners have raised about half of the total fund size, including $2.5M they personally invested. Around $7M has gone into developing Tech Square Labs. These two are really digging in to help entrepreneurs “build something from nothing” as Judge likes to say.

David Cummings’ post on customer acquisition versus product development has been on my mind the past few days. Always be closing!

KWAME