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Jewel Burks Solomon was working a customer service desk at an Atlanta industrial parts distributor when the idea struck her. Customers called in constantly, struggling to describe parts they couldn't name. The friction was obvious. So was the fix: point a phone at the part and let the machine identify it. That instinct, born somewhere between a warehouse shelf and a call queue, became Partpic. It became an Amazon acquisition. And it became the foundation for a $125 million venture capital operation that sits at the center of one of the most deliberate wealth-building projects in American tech.
Solomon grew up in Nashville in a family of business owners. Her grandfather founded businesses in Alabama in the 1960s. Her father owned real estate and retail operations. She graduated from Howard University in 2010, entered enterprise sales at Google, then joined industrial supplier McMaster-Carr before quitting to build what she had seen was missing.
These are the companies and ventures Jewel Burks Solomon has built, led, and shaped.
From the warehouse floor to Silicon Valley's biggest exit
1. Partpic
Solomon co-founded Partpic in Atlanta in 2013 alongside Jason Crain. The startup used computer vision to let users photograph a mechanical part and instantly identify it for purchase. It was a small team solving a precise industrial problem. Partpic raised over $2 million in seed funding from notable investors including AOL co-founder Steve Case and Comcast Ventures, integrating its technology into the apps and websites of major parts distributors. Amazon acquired the company on Nov. 3, 2016. Solomon negotiated the deal herself.
2. Amazon Visual Search and A9.com
Following the Partpic acquisition, Solomon moved inside Amazon to lead the integration of her company's technology into the Amazon mobile app, based at A9.com, the company's search and advertising subsidiary. She led the integration of Partpic's technology into the Amazon Mobile App and launched it to more than 150 million Amazon Mobile Shopping App users as PartFinder in 2018. During that tenure she also contributed to Style Snap, Amazon's AI-powered fashion recognition tool. She left in 2019.
The capital she built and the platforms she designed
3. Collab Capital
Solomon co-founded Collab Capital alongside Barry Givens in 2020 with an inaugural $50 million Fund I, investing in 38 companies including the waste management platform Goodr and Culina Health. The thesis was direct: Black founders were building real businesses in healthcare, economic mobility, and community infrastructure, and the capital wasn't following them. Fund II closed at $75 million and includes heavyweight limited partners like Apple, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and The Leon Levine Foundation, pushing total assets under management past $125 million.
4. Google for Startups US
In January 2020, Solomon became the first head of Google for Startups in the United States. She held that role through 2023. She created the Black Founders Fund and Latino Founders Fund, which deployed $50 million in non-dilutive funding to underserved businesses since 2020. The scale of deployment made it one of the most impactful corporate startup initiatives of that era. Equity-free capital, distributed at that volume, permanently altered the funding landscape for hundreds of founders who otherwise would have had none.
Board seats and the institutions she stewards
5. CallRail
Solomon serves on the board of CallRail, the Atlanta-based AI-powered lead intelligence platform. The company serves over 200,000 businesses globally and ranks among the Southeast's most prominent SaaS businesses. She sits as an independent director, bringing her experience in scaling venture-backed companies and product-led growth strategy to a board where that perspective carries weight.
6. Spelman College Board of Trustees
Solomon was elected to the Spelman College Board of Trustees in 2025. Spelman is among the most storied HBCUs in the country, producing generations of Black women in business, law, and public service. Her seat on the board reflects a pattern: Solomon does not simply write checks. She enters institutions where capital and talent intersect, then shapes how both move.
7. The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
Solomon serves on the board of The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. The foundation manages over $1 billion in assets and directs philanthropic capital toward Black-led organizations and neighborhood-level investment across the region. Her presence there completes a portfolio that runs from early-stage venture to institutional philanthropy, anchored at every level in a single, consistent bet: that underserved communities produce outsized returns when given access to real capital.
