I have to tell you, ladies, what's really been going on.

Some of you who have been with me from the early days know me as a small business owner and makeup artist. Who consistently talked about how important it is for us to use clean and green beauty products.

If you came to the store you saw signs posted reading "Paraben Free Zone".

I first opened LAMIK as a store in Houston, Tx. My collection of natural beauty products catered to women of color. After 14 years, I felt a sense of purpose to make LAMIK available to women of color across the globe. I decided to close our small business and pivot LAMIK to becoming a high growth tech start-up. As an opportunity would have it, I applied for a startup pre-accelerator called DivInc. I then commuted to Austin Tx for the startup accelerator program and started building LAMIK 2.0, as a tech-enabled direct to consumer brand.

Two eye-opening things I have learned as a female founder of a beauty tech-enabled startup raising funding:

1. .002% of black women get venture funding for their startups

2. Most accredited investors I've been introduced to are men who are under-educated on our community, and underestimate me and you!

So over the last 45 days, I've had over 50 meetings and interactions with investors about your buying power and influence, but some of them don't seem to get it, or don't want you to get it! And it is time to change this process! We deserve to be self-sufficient, we deserve to have strong businesses and be funded! We deserve to be acknowledged and respected in every industry.

I owe you an apology. I looked outside of our strength for what we can do!

So, I believe we should take matters into our own hands, I am bringing this to you first. Let's Show Them Who We Are!

Four Powerful Facts that Motivate Me:

1. Women of color spend 9X as much on beauty products than their non-women of color counterparts

2. Women of color spend 80% more on cosmetics

3. Black women makeup up 14% of women population but spend a quarter of annual beauty sales

4. 92% of the nation's population over the past 15 years was grown by ethnic groups

So take note, this is what we are going to do: We are running a crowdfunding campaign on iFundWomen.

We will show up, pitch in, and move forward. We have an opportunity to Show Them Who We Are!

Contribute here: https://ifundwomen.com/projects/lamik-beauty-clean-cosmetics