Hello Alice’s steadfast commitment to supporting small businesses remained strong, even amid adversity.
Founded in 2017 by Elizabeth Gore and Carolyn Rodz, Hello Alice is driven by a mission to support the growth and success of small businesses. This dedication was evident from the outset, especially when the company faced a financial setback due to the cancellation of South by Southwest (SXSW) at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Instead of moving forward with a large marketing campaign as planned, Hello Alice redirected those funds to launch a grant program, offering critical support to small business owners in need during a challenging time.
“It was the biggest amount of money we’d ever spent on anything at the time. And then the world shut down and there’s initially that moment of us saying, ‘Oh my gosh, like what’s gonna happen to us?’ And then we said, ‘If we’re dealing with this, and here we are that we had the luxury of having raised capital, we had investment support around us, we had a solid team of brilliant talent, what are all these micro businesses around us doing right now. How much should they be struggling and what about that restaurant owner that can’t open their doors at all,” Rodz told AFROTECH™.
She added, “We’re a digital platform, we’re a technology platform and we can pivot and adapt and figure this out, but there’s so many businesses out there that don’t have that luxury right now. So, we decided to take what was left in the allocation for our marketing campaign and launch a grants program and we launched it in days because we had the money already set aside.”
$50M In Grant Funding Dispersed
“It makes me proud of the ecosystem within which we operate that rallies behind small businesses and that sees opportunities and supports them and the many partners that we’ve had throughout these years that have come on this journey with us,” Rodz mentioned.
Challenges While Being Named In Lawsuit
Hello Alice’s announcement comes amidst a challenging time for the venture capital space, where funding for Black-owned businesses has faced significant scrutiny. As previously reported by AFROTECH™, the company was named in a class-action lawsuit in October 2023, filed by America First Legal, Mitchell Law PLLC, and Ashbrook Byrne Kresge LLC. The lawsuit stemmed from Hello Alice’s partnership with Progressive Insurance Co., through which 10 Black-owned businesses received $25,000 grants.
The lawsuit was filed by Nathan Roberts, the owner of a trucking dispatch company in Ohio, who alleges he was not informed that the grant was specifically designated for Black entrepreneurs.
Rodz mentions that Hello Alice hired renowned Supreme Court lawyer Neal Katyal, recognizing that the implications of the case extended well beyond a single grant program. Similarly, Fearless Fund had faced litigation over their $20,000 Strivers Grant program, which was designed for Black women founders. The lawsuit, filed by legal activist Edward Blum and his American Alliance for Equal Rights group, settled in September 2024, leading Fearless Fund to discontinue the program, AFROTECH™ reported.
“We knew our mission when we started Hello Alice was that we wanted to ensure opportunity for every entrepreneur and that meant we had to fight. This is all we had because this is about more than just the Hello Alice instance what this meant in a specific grants program, but this was really about a broader effort to disband many of these programs,” Rodz said. “So we decided we’re gonna get the best lawyer that we could with Neal Katyal, the top Supreme Court lawyer in the country. That meant it required a lot of financial resources and so we had to set aside, as much as we possibly could to make sure one, that the business was viable to continue to fight as strong as we could. And then three just giving the confidence to our team and to our small business community of over 1.5 million businesses that we were gonna give this all we had, but this meant that there was gonna be a lot of changes to the way that we operated in the short term, but in the long term this was gonna make us a stronger and healthier business.”
Valuation Increased To $130M
Since that time, Hello Alice has intensified its focus on supporting the well-being of small business owners, securing new funding from high-profile investors like Mastercard, Backstage Capital, Guy Fieri, Golden Seeds, Harbert Growth Partners Fund, How Women Invest, LP, Lovell Limited Partnership, Tyler “Ninja” and Jessica Blevins, and Tamera Mowry and Adam Housley, which has raised its total valuation to $130 million.
The firm’s increased funding has supported financial health tools that are powered by artificial intelligence for small businesses and the expansion of its Business Health Score tool, which is designed to improve credit scores.
Moreover, investors have also given Hello Alice the confidence to persevere through the storm. In October 2023, the class action lawsuit against Hello Alice was dismissed by an Ohio federal judge.
“When I look back now on the other side of it all, I’ll say it’s one of those kind of silver lining things that forced us to get so bare bone on what was critical to grow this company. And in spite of all of that hardship, we ended up growing,” Rodz expressed.
