If Bobbie Racette could split herself into “a million pieces” as a mentor, she would.
She’s an Indigenous, queer woman in tech, and the first Indigenous woman in Canada to raise a Series A round for her now-exited startup, Virtual Gurus. Because of this, Racette explained at the NACO Summit in Ottawa on Thursday morning (which NACO supported BetaKit’s travel to attend), she’s found herself to be a natural mentor to future entrepreneurs.
“As a knowledge keeper, my role is to share everything that occurs with other Indigenous [people], and open those doors.”
“I have a lot of founders, especially Indigenous entrepreneurs, who reach out to me daily,” Racette told Syntax Strategic founder Jennifer Stewart on stage. “They need support, and I can’t support them [all], so I thought, why not build a platform that can support them?”
That’s the motivation behind her new startup, Tapwi.
Racette explained that Tapwi, Cree for “truth,” will contain all the resources she needed to build her previous startup. It will function as a search fund, acquiring small businesses (“from gas stations to tech”) for underserved founders-in-training. The pupils will run those businesses under Tapwi for a few years, until they can take the business over themselves. Tapwi’s waitlist is sitting at over 700 industry partners, Racette said.
“I don’t have the money to buy 700 businesses,” Racette said, eliciting a laugh from the audience. She added that, for the moment, Tapwi is building out a resource tool for people with early-stage businesses.
Tapwi’s intention to train up underserved founders is an extension of Racette’s newfound role as an Indigenous “knowledge keeper.” There’s no doubt that the decade-long journey of Virtual Gurus came with many teachings.
As Racette tells it, she was down to her last $300 and depressed in 2016. No one would hire her, so she founded Virtual Gurus just to make a job for herself. The gig work marketplace uses AI to connect businesses with virtual assistants to help with everything from admin work to bookkeeping. She faced over 170 rejections from investors when trying to scale the platform. While she eventually overcame those obstacles, the journey came to an end last year as she left the CEO job just a few months before Virtual Gurus was acquired by US-based Zirtual.
RELATED: Bobbie Racette steps down as CEO of Virtual Gurus after closing undisclosed funding
“I would say the acquisition of the company wasn’t the most ideal for me, but what I can say is that Virtual Gurus opened up a lot of doors for me that would never be open,” Racette said. “As a knowledge keeper, my role is to share everything that occurs with other Indigenous [people], and open those doors.”
Racette isn’t just sharing her knowledge. As an angel investor, she wants to invest in as many startups as she possibly can (and as many as her wife will allow) in an effort to “pay it forward.” By doing so, Racette said she isn’t looking for a return on investment; she just wants to help others like her.
“If I get a return in the pool, amazing, if I don’t, then let that be a learning lesson and help that person start another business,” Racette said. “I really wish I was there for me when I was younger.”
Feature image courtesy Alex Riehl for BetaKit.