Innovate Mississippi is proud to welcome Jewel Burks Solomon, managing partner at Collab Capital, as the keynote speaker for this year’s Accelerate Conference. Solomon’s path from tech founder to venture capital leader embodies determination and community-minded innovation. Her story is one of focus, purpose, and a commitment to creating opportunities for underrepresented founders.
Solomon’s startup journey began with a moment of frustration—and inspiration—at her job in Atlanta. After leaving Google in 2012 to join industrial supplier McMaster-Carr, she noticed how often customers struggled to identify replacement parts over the phone. That observation sparked the idea for Partpic, a startup employing computer vision technology to identify machined parts from photos, helping people instantly find what they need.
Solomon isn’t an engineer, but she had learned a bit about sales and high-growth in college and on the job, so she built a team—including Mississippi native and Georgia Tech alum Dr. Nashlee Sephus—to turn her concept into a viable product. Within four years, Partpic had raised $2 million, landed major customers, and completed an acquisition by Amazon in 2016.
“It was a grind,” she reflected, “but it was all great learning.” That experience continues to inform her approach to mentoring founders and evaluating startups today.
At Amazon, Solomon spent three years helping integrate Partpic’s technology into the company’s mobile shopping app—work that placed her on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence long before “AI” was a buzzword. During that tenure, she also contributed to Style Snap, Amazon’s fashion-recognition tool, and says that experience gave her invaluable insight into scaling a product from a small Atlanta office to hundreds of millions of global users.
After leaving Amazon, Solomon returned to Google to head Google for Startups US, where she launched initiatives that have distributed more than $45 million in non-dilutive capital to Black- and Latino-led businesses since 2020. That work deepened her resolve to close the “trust gap” she experienced as a founder—a gap she describes as the hesitation investors often feel toward entrepreneurs who don’t look like them. Determined to change that dynamic, Solomon teamed up with partner Barry Givens to launch Collab Capital in 2019.
With $125 million now under management across two funds, Collab Capital takes a high-engagement approach to venture investing. Founders are brought to Atlanta for in-person onboarding, connected to executives-in-residence, and supported with recruiting, fundraising, and customer introductions.
“We consider ourselves an extension of their team,” Solomon says, emphasizing that this hands-on partnership model was born from her own experiences as a founder seeking genuine investor support. Several Collab Capital portfolio companies are now over $10 million in annual revenue—evidence, she notes, that the model is working.
Solomon got her entrepreneurial drive at home. Raised in a family of small-business owners in Nashville and Mobile, Ala., she learned firsthand the importance of community-focused enterprise. After earning her business degree from Howard University, she parlayed internships at Goldman Sachs and Google into her first job at the tech giant, where she discovered the power of sales, resilience, and the courage to “ask for the big yes.” Today, as a board member for The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, Endeavor Atlanta, J.P. Morgan’s Advancing Black Pathways, and the Center for American Entrepreneurship, Solomon continues to champion access and equity for the next generation of American business leaders.
Solomon’s luncheon chat at Accelerate 2025 will bring these lessons into full relief. From pioneering AI technology at a small startup to redefining venture capital as more inclusive and hands-on, Solomon embodies the spirit of innovation that drives both founders and investors to build a better future.
Innovate Mississippi is honored to host her as this year’s keynote, on November 12, 2025 at the Sheraton Flowood Refuge Hotel & Conference Center.
