by Jeroslyn JoVonn
October 23, 2025
Elite Media’s first-ever “Preserve It 100” pitch competitors awarded $100,000 to 5 Black-owned companies.
5 Black-owned companies just lately obtained a share of a $100,000 funding from Elite Media, a part of the corporate’s effort to encourage trade leaders to assist creators who push the tradition and neighborhood ahead.
On Oct. 17, MADE, a verification system designed to safeguard Black creativity, received the inaugural “Preserve It 100” Pitch Competitors hosted by Elite Media. The announcement was made at The One Membership’s “The place Are All of the Black Folks” Convention in New York Metropolis.
Elite Media Founder and CEO Chris Crawford joined a panel of judges for the competitors and took middle stage to current $50,000 to Tommy Johnson, founder and CEO of MADE, together with $12,500 every to the 4 different finalists.
“The ‘Preserve It 100’ pitch competitors celebrates the facility of consideration, the facility of objective, the facility of supporting each other,” Crawford stated in an announcement. “As we speak, the neighborhood received. Each contestant introduced it. Their audacity and ambition was on full show. We’re proud to assist this inaugural group of creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs convey their visionary concepts to life.”
MADE was chosen partly for its mission to uplift Black-owned companies and defend Black creativity. The platform stood out amongst pitches from Mec Zilla, founding father of CrackedVC, a brand new system designed to interchange conventional enterprise capital; Morgan Means, CEO and founding father of Evental, a digital market that helps suppliers monetize stock and supply real-time pricing and reserving; Adam Franklin of Twendi, a sports activities media platform highlighting African and diaspora athletes by way of cinematic short-form storytelling; and Ayo Abigail, director of Technique and Outreach for Stroll of Identical, a model pioneering “empowerment jewellery” that fuses vogue with objective.
Every finalist obtained monetary assist from Elite Media, a Black-owned, women-led promoting company primarily based in Harlem dedicated to serving to creators convey their visions to life. The $100,000 in prize cash got here immediately from the corporate’s personal company funds, half of a bigger problem to advertisers, manufacturers, and trade leaders to match Elite’s funding in creators, entrepreneurs, and concepts that transfer tradition and neighborhood ahead.
“The time for disruption is now–our communities deserve motion,“ Crawford stated when saying the pitch competitors final month. “We’re placing our cash the place our mouth is, already investing upwards of $2 million of our personal company {dollars} again into the Harlem neighborhood that nurtures us. We see the chance to broaden that influence inside the advert trade, deliberately in non-traditional areas. We are actually difficult the trade and convening areas to maneuver previous the vainness metrics and create real-time domino results of change that can remodel communities.”
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