Already investing?
Meet prepared businesses beyond your usual networks and assess them on their evidence.
Black Capital Exchange
Prepare the ask. Prepare the response.
Right business. Right capital.
Already investing for impact, or considering your first step?
Black Capital Exchange is a proposed pilot for diverse led businesses and potential impact backers. Both sides prepare for informed conversations about what a business needs and whether there is a fit. Finance is central, alongside access and expertise.
MELLA Supply × Strategic Disruption ConsultingPlanned for Q1 2027
Explore your role02
Where do you fit?
Considering your first investment?
Learn to assess a business, its risks and funding options before deciding.
Bringing contracts or expertise?
Customers, relationships or specialist knowledge, offered with a clear scope.
Running a business?
Founders and business owners prepare a clear, evidenced ask for what the business needs next: finance, access or expertise.
Three ways to back a business.
Finance
Investment, lending or other funding.
Access
Customers, contracts, distribution and market relationships.
Expertise
Specialist knowledge, guidance and operating support.
Finance sits at the centre. Access and expertise add to it.
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One shared process.
Founder preparation
1. Diagnose the business.
Model, customers, traction, finances and capacity.
2. Plan the next 12 months.
What resources the business actually needs.
3. Build the case.
The opportunity, the evidence and what a specific contribution would enable.
A case for the real business, not a pitch borrowed from another model.
Backer preparation
1. Clarify your role.
Resources, experience, interests and capacity.
2. Understand the business.
Its evidence, intended impact, risk and needs.
3. Define a realistic offer.
What you could contribute, and on what terms.
Foundations for newer backers, peer exchange for experienced ones.
Working together
1. Meet with context.
Both sides arrive prepared and ask questions of each other.
2. Agree next steps.
An introduction, advice, a financial discussion, or no fit.
3. Follow through.
Named owners, reviewed at 30 and 90 days.
Both sides learn, both sides decide.
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The Exchange, and what follows.
Prepared founders make specific asks. Backers decide whether to respond.
This is not a pitch competition. A conversation may lead to an introduction, advice, a financial discussion, or the conclusion that there is no fit.
Agreed actions have named owners and are reviewed at 30 and 90 days.
The Exchange is where the work starts.
The team and programme partner
Who is behind it
MELLA Supply brings ecosystem mapping, community relationships and convening. Strategic Disruption Consulting brings experience in fundraising, investment, strategy and leadership.
Ana Martins
Founder and President · MELLA Supply
Ana Martins
Cape Verdean Portuguese entrepreneur and ecosystem builder in Lisbon, co founder of The Fam Kitchen Group. She brings an operator's view of what a business needs to move forward.
Danielle Taylor
CEO · Strategic Disruption Consulting
Danielle Taylor
SDC is a social impact agency working with Black and brown leaders and organisations on fundraising, investment, strategy and leadership.
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Explore your role.
What could you bring?
We are collecting expressions of interest as the pilot takes shape.
For impact backers
Investors, companies, professionals and business owners with finance, access or expertise to offer.
Prefer to meet first?
Join us on Tuesday 10 November in Lisbon. Attendance is subject to approval.
Request an invitationFor founders
Tell us what you are building and what the business needs next. About 4 minutes. Not a funding application.
Express interest as a founderNo financial pledge is required at this stage. Expressing interest is not an application or a confirmed place.
Important information
Black Capital Exchange is not an investment fund and does not guarantee funding, returns, customers, partnerships or matches. Financial investment involves risk, including possible loss. Participation does not confer an investment qualification or authorisation. Any transaction requires appropriate assessment and compliance with applicable law.