Amira Rasool On Raising $6.2 Million To Introduce Independent Brands to Global Shoppers
Building a venture-backed company doesn't always begin with an investor pitch deck. Sometimes it begins with recognizing an opportunity the rest of an industry has overlooked.
For Amira Rasool, Founder and CEO of The Folklore, that realization came after years working inside the fashion industry. Long before becoming a tech founder, she was a high school student attending New York Fashion Week, running her own fashion blog, and later interning at companies and publications including Cynthia Rowley and Women's Wear Daily. By college, she had already launched her first e-commerce business and was building a career in fashion media.
A trip to South Africa during her senior year of college changed the trajectory of her career. Surrounded by designers creating distinctive, high-quality fashion she had never encountered while working in American fashion media, Amira recognized a gap. Incredible brands existed across Africa and the diaspora, but they lacked the visibility and distribution needed to reach global consumers. When she returned to New York wearing pieces she purchased on the trip, strangers repeatedly stopped her to ask where they could buy them.
Instead of continuing on the traditional fashion media path, Amira decided to build the solution herself. She quit her job, enrolled in a master's program at the University of Cape Town, and moved to South Africa to immerse herself in the market. She spent the next year meeting designers, researching the industry, and building relationships before launching The Folklore in 2018 as an e-commerce platform connecting brands from Africa and the diaspora with global consumers.
What began as a bootstrapped e-commerce business would eventually evolve into a venture-backed technology company. As the retail landscape changed, Amira pivoted The Folklore from direct-to-consumer e-commerce to B2B wholesale and eventually into technology that helps brands sell across major marketplaces and sales channels. Along the way, the company secured partnerships with retailers including Farfetch, Nordstrom, Macy's, and Urban Outfitters and raised $6.2 million in venture capital funding.
In this episode of The First 200 Podcast, Amira shares how she turned an overlooked opportunity into a global business, why she repeatedly pivoted instead of holding onto a model that wasn't working, how she landed partnerships with some of the world's largest retailers, how Techstars transformed her approach to fundraising, and why founders need the confidence to view investment as an opportunity they're offering investors—not a favor they're asking for.
Watch the full conversation on the YouTube player below, or listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What inspired you to start The Folklore?
Amira Rasool: I was introduced to all of these incredible designers while living in South Africa that I had never heard of before, despite working in fashion in New York. I realized there was this huge gap in visibility and distribution, and I wanted to create a platform that could connect these brands with consumers around the world.
How did you know there was a market for The Folklore?
Amira Rasool: When I came back to New York wearing pieces I had purchased in South Africa, people would constantly stop me and ask where I got them. That showed me there was an appetite for these products. The problem was that consumers simply didn't have access to the brands.
Why did you move to South Africa before launching the company?
Amira Rasool: I wanted to immerse myself in the market and really understand the industry before trying to build a business around it. I enrolled in a master's program at the University of Cape Town and spent that time meeting designers, learning about the challenges they faced, and building relationships. That gave me a much stronger foundation when I eventually launched The Folklore.
What did the early days of building The Folklore look like?
Amira Rasool: In the beginning, I was doing everything myself. I was bootstrapping the company, working directly with designers, figuring out logistics, building the website, and trying to get customers. I didn't have this huge team or a lot of capital behind me. It was really about figuring things out as I went and using the resources I had available to prove that the opportunity existed.
Why did you decide to pivot The Folklore from direct-to-consumer to B2B?
Amira Rasool: We started as a direct-to-consumer e-commerce company, but over time I realized there was a much larger opportunity on the B2B side. The brands needed more than another place to sell products. They needed access to retailers, technology, and infrastructure that could help them grow their businesses. That realization led us to shift the model and build solutions around what the brands actually needed.
How did you land partnerships with major retailers?
Amira Rasool: A lot of it came down to being proactive and building relationships. We weren't waiting for retailers to discover us. We were showing them the value of these brands and helping them understand the opportunity. Over time, that allowed us to work with companies like Farfetch, Nordstrom, Macy's, and Urban Outfitters and give our brands access to retailers they otherwise may not have been able to reach.
What did Techstars change about the way you approached fundraising?
Amira Rasool: Techstars helped me understand how venture capital actually works and how investors think about opportunities. Before that, I didn't necessarily have the network or the language that comes with being inside the venture ecosystem. It taught me how to position the business, communicate the size of the opportunity, and approach fundraising much more strategically.
What changed when you stopped treating fundraising like you were asking investors for a favor?
Amira Rasool: I started realizing that I'm also giving investors an opportunity. I'm not just asking someone to give me money. I'm giving them the opportunity to invest in a company that I believe can become extremely valuable. That shift in mindset changed the way I walked into conversations because I wasn't approaching investors from a position of feeling like I needed them to validate me.
How have you thought about pivoting when the original business model wasn't working?
Amira Rasool: I've never wanted to hold onto a business model just because it was the original idea. The mission and the problem we're solving can remain the same even if the way we solve it changes. If the market is telling you something isn't working, you have to be willing to listen. Every pivot we've made has been about getting closer to what our customers actually need and where we see the biggest opportunity.
What advice would you give founders trying to build and raise venture capital?
Amira Rasool: You have to believe that what you're building has value before you expect an investor to believe it. Fundraising is difficult, and you're going to hear no a lot, but that doesn't mean the opportunity isn't real. Learn how investors think, understand your numbers, be clear about the size of the opportunity, and remember that you're not simply asking for money. You're offering someone the opportunity to participate in what you're building.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Amira's story is a reminder that some of the strongest venture-backed companies are built by founders who recognize opportunities others have overlooked. By combining her fashion industry experience, firsthand knowledge of the African market, and a willingness to continuously adapt, she built The Folklore into a company connecting brands from Africa and the diaspora with global retailers while raising $6.2 million in venture capital.
In the full episode, Amira shares how a trip to South Africa inspired The Folklore, why she moved to Cape Town to immerse herself in the market, how she bootstrapped the company in its earliest days, why she pivoted from direct-to-consumer e-commerce to B2B technology, how she landed partnerships with major retailers, what Techstars taught her about venture capital, and how changing her mindset around fundraising transformed the way she approached investors.
Watch or listen to the full episode of The First 200 Podcast to hear Amira's complete journey and how she became one of the first 200 Black women in the United States to raise $1 million in venture capital funding.
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