According to POCIT, Pryce Adade Yebesi, 23, is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Utopia Labs, which recently acquired an astonishing $23 million in funding, making him one of the youngest Black innovators to accomplish such a milestone.
The 23-year-old almost went into politics because she wanted to make a difference in poor regions. He recalls moving frequently as a child with his family, living in locations such as Indiana, Virginia, and California. As a result of witnessing poverty and struggle, he planned to pursue politics until he realized that was not the channel through which he wanted to make an impact, at which point he switched to business and finance.
Yebesi rapidly found his fit in the finance industry after working as a summer intern for Square co-founder Jim McKelvey in 2019. Yebesi noted that while working with McKelvey, he learned a lot about Square and how it democratized access to financial systems with its Square card reader. The tool could enable many people from various backgrounds to finally be able to accept credit cards in order to expand their enterprises in a way that was previously only possible to larger businesses. Yebesi was inspired to create something similar to Square one day.
Along with co-founders Kaito Cunningham (CEO), Jason Chong, and Alexander Wu, the pioneer began creating the basis for Utopia Labs, which mixes traditional funding with cryptocurrency. He stepped out of college in 2021 to focus exclusively on the creation of Utopia Labs, and despite the fact that he was still a junior in college and only 21 years old at the time, he felt more secure after seeing how the company’s seed round was progressing. According to TechCrunch, the company raised $1.5 million from investors shortly after it began operations.
The project’s initial focus was on providing services to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), but it has since expanded to speed up cryptocurrency payment acceptance. According to Decrypt, the company is presenting its most recent fiat-payment solution now that it has received an additional $23 million in funding.
Yebesi’s core goal remains to empower underprivileged communities by providing them with critical financial resources and opportunities through DAOs. He and his team’s objective, he says, is to build “a new internet economy.”
“When value can pass so easily without so many middlemen and fragmented settlement systems, we have so many new opportunities to raise funds for causes people care about, start projects with people from all over the world that might end up being fantastic and powerful mechanisms for impact, but also can become billion-dollar companies,” Yebesi said.