Who Won BGV’s 2025 New York Pitch Competition

Black Girl Ventures has always believed that great ideas exist everywhere, but opportunity does not. At our latest pitch competition, that gap was on full display.

Founders stepped onto the stage with solutions shaped by lived experience and backed by the kind of insight you cannot manufacture.

They weren’t pitching theories. They were presenting what their communities have needed for years.

This event wasn’t just about winning a vote. It was about watching founders claim space in industries that rarely make room for them.

When the barriers come down and founders are supported, coached, and resourced, their ideas do what they were always meant to do.

They move. They spread. They change the way entire markets work.

Tammeca Rochester — 1st Place Winner

Founder of Harlem Cycle  

Harlem Cycle is more than a fitness studio, it’s Harlem’s first and only indoor cycling space built on the belief that wellness begins with belonging. 

Under the leadership of founder and CEO Tammeca Rochester, the studio has become a community-powered wellness hub, delivering more than 30,000 classes and engaging over 13,000 participants across Harlem. 

She’s redefining what access to wellness looks like for communities of color and creating spaces where people feel seen, supported, and equipped to thrive.

During her pitch, Tammeca invited us into a powerful vision: “What if we could all just belong?”  She spoke to the reality that while communities of color face higher rates of chronic health conditions, they’re often excluded from meaningful wellness spaces. 

Harlem Cycle is changing that, not by following trends or transactional fitness models, but by building leadership from within. 

With a team made up of 90 percent Harlem residents, many of whom started as clients, Tammeca’s proving what happens when access, education, and opportunity stay rooted in the community.

As our 1st Place Winner, she shared a bold next chapter. Harlem Cycle has secured its third studio location, opening in Newark in January 2026, with plans to open three to five new locations each year across urban centers nationwide.

Through physical studios, an on-demand platform, retreats, and corporate wellness programming, she’s scaling a model that drives community-centered health equity and a projected $27 million market opportunity.

Tammeca brings deep expertise to this work, drawing on her 13-year engineering career, an MBA from NYU Stern, and recognition from outlets like The New York Times, Essence, and TEDxHarlem.

Tammeca is expanding what wellness access looks like in communities that have been overlooked for far too long, and that’s the kind of systemic shift we invest in at BGV. Support her vision by visiting Harlem Cycle and following @harlemcycle on Instagram.

Sam Ishage — 2nd Place Winner

Founder of MarkitIt

MarkitIt is transforming the pop-up market world by bringing transparency, connection, and real support to the small businesses that power local economies.

Founded by Sam Ishage, a Sudanese American and first-generation entrepreneur who also built the fragrance brand EGAHSI, MarkitIt grew out of her lived experience navigating the challenges vendors face while trying to grow offline.

During her pitch, Sam pulled back the curtain on an industry most people only experience from the outside. Pop-up markets feel joyful for shoppers, but behind the scenes vendors often invest hundreds or even tens of thousands of dollars just to show up.

Many juggle dozens of tabs, outdated platforms, long DM threads, and months of planning for a single weekend. As Sam shared, “That’s not a business system. That’s survival mode.”

MarkitIt is solving that. The platform uses AI to match vendors to the right markets based on what they sell, who they serve, their price point, their schedule, and several other factors. It eliminates guesswork and wasted time by creating a smarter and more efficient way to discover opportunities.

It functions as LinkedIn for pop-up vendors and includes a community space similar to Reddit or Glassdoor with verified reviews and shared insights. It brings real transparency to an industry that has never had it.

In one month, the team completed more than ninety interviews, onboarded one hundred vendors and six organizers, and secured its first contract. Vendors are already using MarkitIt to track opportunities and connect with organizers.

The demand is clear, and the platform is becoming the infrastructure small businesses have been trying to build on their own.

As our 2nd Place Winner, Sam presented a bold vision. MarkitIt is raising 750,000 in pre-seed funding to expand across three metro areas, onboard 1,500 vendors, and host 500 events.

Her mission is to redefine how small businesses grow offline and ensure that every market is a win for the entrepreneurs who keep local commerce alive.

Sam’s work embodies our belief that when small businesses have support, entire communities rise with them.”

She is building equitable solutions, strengthening local economies, and giving small business owners the tools and transparency they deserve. Follow @markitit on Instagram to support their journey.

Sade Parham — 3rd Place Winner

Founder of Blue Water Girls

Blue Water Girls is bringing something the tanning and sun care industry has never seen: clean, inclusive, melanin-centered products designed for women who have long been overlooked in this category.

Founded by Sade Parham and her best friends, the brand is reshaping a nine hundred million dollar market by building sun care that celebrates darker skin tones, challenges outdated beauty narratives, and delivers real results with clean, effective formulations.

During her pitch, Sade shared how the brand was born. Three black women who love the sun, the beach, and the glow that comes with it found themselves frustrated by tanning products that weren’t created with them in mind.

The marketing never reflected women who looked like them, and the industry often treated tanning for darker skin tones as taboo. Instead of accepting that, they decided to rewrite the story and build a brand where women of color feel centered, seen, and celebrated.

Their hero product, Private Island Glow, is a first of its kind tan accelerant and glow serum powered by tyrosinol, an amino acid that helps the body naturally produce melanin.

It creates a sun kissed glow with less time in the sun and features a clean, elevated scent inspired by vacation: sea salt, jojoba, and tuberose. The product directly addresses what customers have been asking for: something effective, non sticky, non toxic, and designed with their skin in mind.

The opportunity is massive. The tanning industry is projected to reach more than one billion dollars by 2030, and women of color command trillions in spending power.

By centering inclusive storytelling and clean formulations, Blue Water Girls is positioned to tap into a four billion dollar sun care market and capture sixty four million dollars in revenue within the next five years.

Their traction speaks for itself. In less than a year, the team surpassed eighty thousand dollars in revenue across multiple sales channels and secured a new wholesale partnership with Nordstrom.

The brand will launch online in Nordstrom in the coming weeks and is in conversation for an in store launch in 2026. All of this has been built through organic growth and a loyal community that feels represented and championed.

As our 3rd Place Winner, Sade outlined their next chapter. The team is raising five hundred thousand dollars to expand beyond their hero SKU, invest in product innovation, and make key hires to support supply chain and marketing.

With more than thirty years of combined experience working in Fortune 500 companies and a proven track record of scaling a six figure business together, they are prepared to build Blue Water Girls into the go to destination for inclusive sun and body care.

Sade’s commitment to visibility, access, and innovation aligns with the heart of BGV’s work, creating space for founders to lead industries in new directions.

Follow @forbluewatergirls on Instagram to support their journey.

The founders you met here are creating more than businesses. They are building solutions that speak to real people with real needs. Their traction is not hype.

It is the result of listening, refining, and showing up for communities that have waited too long for products built with them in mind.

If their work resonated with you, take a step that matters. Learn about their companies. Share their stories. Support their growth. Change happens when people choose to back it.

At BGV, we are building an ecosystem where underestimated founders don’t wait for an opening. They create one. When we rally behind them, we aren’t just supporting a business.

We are shaping what the future of entrepreneurship looks like.

Subscribe to the Digital Orange Juice for juicy ideas and the people who fund them. You can find out about our next pitch competitions here. Also, be sure to join our new community BGV Connect!