Angel Gregorio didn’t stumble into entrepreneurship by accident.

A former assistant principal and mentor to court-involved youth, Gregorio worked as an educational advocate, helping students find appropriate school placements after returning from youth detention centers.

The solutions-based skills she developed during that experience shaped, in part, why she wanted to build systems of access and support for others.

Access to capital and physical space remains one of the biggest barriers for Black-owned businesses in the United States. A new LendingTree analysis found that in 2024, 39% of Black-owned businesses were denied financing—including loans, lines of credit, or merchant cash advances—compared to Hispanic and white-owned businesses.

Against that backdrop, Gregorio has built a model that removes upfront financial barriers altogether, offering entrepreneurs free or low-cost access to physical space, customers, and community infrastructure. She is the founder of The Spice Suite, a spices and herbs shop that also serves as a free pop-up space for entrepreneurs to sell their products. She also manages Black and Forth, a Washington, DC–based commercial community that leases a unique collection of converted industrial space and reclaimed shipping containers to Black-owned local businesses and hosts a biweekly farmers market.

When Founder Brew visited the eclectic space in May, commercial tenants included a skincare service, cafe, loctician, nail salon, and hair salon.

This is an excerpt of our interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.

What problem were you trying to solve when you built The Spice Suite and Black and Forth?

A lot of Black people just need space and opportunity, and so I had the space and gave them an opportunity. I met two needs at once. The space is free, so that just cuts your costs, your investment. That makes it a low-risk opportunity for them when they come in and do a pop-up here or decide to participate in our farmers market or pop-up shop or our residency program at Something Suite.

Read more about The Spice Suite’s incubation program.—JH

Max Albert never expected to become an ad tech founder—but that’s where the 30-year-old CEO of startup Adrenaline Interactive’s decades-long passion for gaming led him.

That passion sparked at age nine, when Albert’s mom started taking him to Mario Kart tournaments at their local library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The prize was the stuff of any game-loving nine-year-old’s dreams: a GameStop gift card.

“I basically never lost. For two years, I played every month,” Albert told us. “And I felt richer than Elon Musk when I was like nine years old, standing in the GameStop with $100 that I won. I just love gaming because it brings me such a great community of friends who are really smart and kind and loyal.”

Before long, he was programming his own games. He later carried on his family’s tradition of attending the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a computer science degree. He continued creating games, including an NFL-themed game in which he helped brands place ads.

“I’d work with them to create these authentic product placement campaigns inside the game. And I saw the real power of it: My gamers loved it, the advertisers loved it, and it was really lucrative for my studio,” Albert recalled.

“But the problem with these product placement campaigns was that it was entirely manual. And so the whole thesis of Adrenaline is, how can we create software to automate the process of product placement within games?”

Read more about Adrenaline Interactive’s founding story.—JG

Brynn Putnam, who sold Mirror to Lululemon in 2020, has closed a $20 million Series A for her new “together tech” startup Board. Union Square Ventures led the round, with participation from angel investors including Tim Ferriss, Biz Stone, and Scott Belsky. (TechCrunch)

Forage, a payments startup that helps retailers like Dollar General and delivery services like Uber Eats accept EBT cards for payments, raised a $40 million Series B led by Mouro Capital. (the Wall Street Journal)

Suno, a music startup that allows users to create songs by typing in AI prompts, raised a $400 million Series D led by Bond Capital, with participation from IVP, Union Square Ventures, Forerunner, Quiet, and Alkeon Capital Management, along with previous investors Lightspeed, Menlo Ventures, Matrix, and Schroders Capital. (Variety)