Flipstik founder and CEO akeem Shannon was in the audience this morning at the UMSL Accelerate DEI cohort reveal party, and confirmed that his startup just closed a $1.2M funding round.

“We’ve been funding all this year…what that led to for us was in organic sales we grew 900% from last year… across all channels,” Shannon told bizblip.com. “It allowed us to not only get in Target, which a lot of people have heard about, but to Best Buy to Metro by T Mobile and QVC for Black Friday… All of that was possible because we had funding and it was driven by St. Louis angel investors who believed in what we were doing and wanted to help and support us. And it just goes to show you that when you invest in minority founders, like we’re talking about here today they do what they say they’re gonna do.”

The St. Louis startup makes a consumer product that uses a proprietary adhesive (licensed from NASA) that lets people stick their smart phones to practically any surface — serving as a kickstand, selfie stick and wall mount.

Akeem Shannon (on right, pictured with video guru James Thomas)

Shannon achieved a fair amount of media coverage when he pitched Flipstik to Shark Tank. He mentions that appearance on social media a lot, but remains tight lipped about whether or not he took the offered deal.

Flipstik was founded in 2017 and has picked up at least $150,000 in grant funding, plus a handful of pitch competition prizes. From the 2020 cohort at Arch Grants the startup landed $50,000, then got another $50,000 in follow-on funding this year. Shannon is also a graduate of the UMSL Accelerate-DEI Accelerator — where he also picked up a $50,000 equity-free grant.

“I am not surprised that Akeem is now doing so well getting into retailers like AT&T, and a few months ago Target,” Accelerate-DEI executive director Dan Lauer told bizblip. “He is one of the most coachable founders I’ve met, able to prioritize well all the many things that have to happen to scale a business.”

Full disclosure: Akeem Shannon was one of the judges for the Pitches Get Stitches pitch competition put on by bizblip parent company News Lab Inc.  He did so freely, with no compensation or promise of future favor.