Aaron Samuels is a Black Jewish performance poet turned venture capital investor at Collide Capital who co-founded Blavity and created AfroTech before raising a $66M fund backed simultaneously by Amazon, Alphabet, and Twitter. He uses "identity saliency" as an investment lens, focusing on how strongly a founder's lived identity connects to the problem they're solving, while continuing to publish poetry and perform as part of his dual identity bridging artist and entrepreneur roles. Aaron Samuels is a Black Jewish performance poet turned venture capital investor at Collide Capital who co-founded Blavity and created AfroTech before raising a $66M fund backed simultaneously by Amazon, Alphabet, and Twitter. He uses "identity saliency" as an investment lens, focusing on how strongly a founder's lived identity connects to the problem they're solving, while continuing to publish poetry and perform as part of his dual identity bridging artist and entrepreneur roles.