#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Tani Chambers, Founder & CEO, RAVN
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Wealth Building Tailored to Black Women
After many encounters with financial advisors who failed to understand her on a cultural and personal level, Tani Chambers wanted to create a judgment-free space for Black women to achieve their wealth goals. As Founder and CEO of RAVN, a wealth-planning platform that matches women with finance professionals and peer accountability groups based on their values and goals, she’s done just that. We spoke with Tani about her background, how RAVN operates within state-based privacy frameworks, and how policymakers can step in to make capital access more equitable for startups.
Tell us about your background. What led you to create RAVN?
I have a background in finance, financial media, tech, and marketing. I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 20 years now, and one of my most notable ventures was an eco beauty bar. There, I met lots of women who would come in regularly and ask me for business and financial advice. I noticed a trend: these women were struggling when it came to navigating their finances—personal or business.
After I closed the eco beauty bar, I realized just how prevalent this issue was among predominantly Black and Latina women and entrepreneurs. It not only affected the women I was coaching, but my peer group as well—fellow founders, family members, etc. It was a wealth gap issue that began with not having proper access to capital, and which only seeped into other parts of these women's lives, including them not being able to properly retain or grow those funds if their ventures did reach success.
What is the work you all are doing at RAVN?
When most people want to get their finances in order, they seek out a financial advisor. When I did this however, it was not a good experience. I left feeling scolded and chastised for bad money management instead of feeling understood and empowered. RAVN’s platform is specifically catered to Black women, matching them with culturally attuned financial advisors who understand our experiences, the reasons we make the decisions that we do, and the systemic issues we face.
When a new client submits an application to join, it gives us an opportunity to see where they are in their financial journey. Even if they're not yet in a place where we feel we can start working with them, we don't send them away. We give them resources that may be able to help them join a cohort in the future.
Those chosen through the application process then move to a consultation. We then take all of the information we've gathered and use our algorithm to match clients to an appropriate financial professional, and we place them in an accountability group. Our cohorts support each other through a year-long program that features six to eight weeks of curriculum with group calls, office hours with professionals, and access to financial advisors. We’re in semi-stealth mode as a company until the early spring, but most of our beta cohorts are up-and-running now with our current members.
During our recent Innovation For All roundtable for women founders, you were vocal about smaller startups navigating capital access barriers and the issues that often come with them. What has your experience acquiring funding looked like? What roadblocks have you faced?
When I meet with venture capitalists (VCs), I’m generally met with responses like, “I don't know if this is really gonna work.” They tend to doubt our market size and viability or that we can generate the revenues I say we can, though I constantly demonstrate our ability in both of these areas. I understand how VC works, and ultimately, I understand that only a small fraction of founders seeking venture capital receive funding, and an even smaller portion of Black founders—.43 percent—receive VC funding. In total, 95 percent of startups seeking venture capital will be turned down. A 5 percent funding success rate is abysmal. Raising capital as a founder requires a lot of time and effort. It can be disheartening walking into a meeting knowing that it's a 95 percent chance I will not succeed, but we don't have enough options, so I show up anyway. When I see numbers like that, it makes me think that the government needs to step back inl. It's not enough when you’re operating in a country where part of the American Dream is successfully being able to build a thriving business. Clearly, not everyone can achieve that dream through currently available funding streams.
In my experience, being a solo founder is seen as a negative when seeking venture capital, though some of the largest companies and unicorns have had solo founders. Research has shown that 65 percent of startups fail due to co-founder conflict.
Lastly, traditional funding like bank loans and lending programs through the SBA, often have outdated requirements that don't support the regime of innovative, high-growth startups. It's a catch-22 because it's primarily based on what you've already accomplished (revenues) and not how the funding will help you grow quickly. This is why we're almost "stuck" pursuing venture capital or private funding options with less desirable terms.
Do you encounter user data? What’s been your experience navigating privacy laws that differ state-to-state?
We do encounter some user data, and that will expand in the future as we launch and evolve our technical product. Right now, we haven’t run into many issues navigating privacy state-to-state, but we do have a separate privacy policy for California. We are compliant by virtue of our technology partners and services we use to build the company as well. We don’t—and won’t ever—share personal identifying information, and that helps reduce our compliance profile, too.
That said, one uniform, consistently enforced federal policy framework could help make running RAVN easier, especially as a fintech startup. Compliance can be very costly and is one of the reasons we've delayed our technical product. However, if an overarching framework is developed, it would need to consider small businesses and startups and preferably segment the requirements accordingly. Creating a framework built around regulating large companies and big tech could be harmful to smaller companies and startups like RAVN.
Are there any other local, state, or federal startup issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
The current accredited investor policy makes no sense at all. The financial thresholds in place restrict many financially smart, would-be investors, especially people of color, from participating in the investment space. But the people making these decisions don't ever have to worry about qualifying, so they don’t understand. The thought process is,”If you don't have money, you don't understand money.” And that's just not true.
I’ve also seen a few new public-private partnerships pop up here in New York, but being locally-based is not a part of the requirements to benefit from these programs—all you have to do is build your business here. Frankly, New York is not desperate for development. Yet these new programs are attempting to attract startups outside New York to build here instead of supporting homegrown talent. I also see money being reinvested into the same places over and over, abusing policies like opportunity zones to continue to direct funding to the same place, instead of businesses and areas truly in need.
What are your goals for RAVN moving forward?
This year we plan to come out of our semi-stealth mode and launch publicly. Our goal is to impact 10,000 Black women with our education and content on wealth building and create more Black women investors. And it could be as simple as directing these women to open a brokerage account and depositing money or contributing to their employee-sponsored retirement account for the first time.
Long term, we will build upon our model, which combines technology, community, and professional financial services to roll out a suite of financial products that are inclusive and offer a personalized experience. We want to demonstrate how this combination can effectively result in a customer-centric, high-growth, and profitable venture while supporting economic equity.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email advocacy@engine.is.
