With her diversity-focused venture firm, backstage capital, and a new $36 million fund dedicated exclusively to black female founders, is working to change the composition of entrepreneurship in America.
Backstage in the greenroom of the podcast festival where she’s scheduled to appear, Arlan Hamilton is quietly singing the lyrics to Janet Jackson’s “Control.” She’d like to walk on stage as the song plays, but the festival crew has copyright concerns. So instead, she is shimmying offstage in her chair, half-humming the chorus under her breath: “I’m in control / Never gonna stop /Control / To get what I want / Control / I like to have a lot.”
Like everything Hamilton does, the song request is equal parts self-aware and unapologetic. Hamilton knows that she stands out—she is the only black, queer woman to have ever built a venture capital firm from scratch. She also knows that she has a reputation for being direct, particularly when it comes to Silicon Valley biases, and how her own story is portrayed. (Indeed, the song is a jab at Gimlet Media, the podcast festival hosts, who devoted an entire episode of their StartUp series on her to what they saw as her sometimes counterproductive need for control.) But Hamilton exudes calm, even as she attempts, through her L.A.-based firm, Backstage Capital, the near impossible task of disrupting the way that venture investors pick winners and create wealth.
“It was crazy to me that 90% of venture funding was going to white men, when that is not how innovation, intelligence, and drive is dispersed in the real world,” she tells me. “I had no background in finance, but I just saw it as a problem. Maybe it’s because I was coming from such a different place that I could recognize it.”
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 2018 من Fast Company.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 2018 من Fast Company.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
THE NEW RULES OF BUSINESS TRAVEL
In the era of hybrid teams, everyone is a road warrior-not just sales teams and C-suite execs. It's part of why business travel spending is expected to finally reach, and perhaps surpass, pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year, according to Deloitte. But, as with everything, work trips are not what they were in 2019. From airlines to banks, companies are finding new ways to make business travel easier-and even a little fun.
INTELLIGENT IMPACT
BUSINESS LUMINARIES SHARE HOW AI CAN INTERSECT WITH SOCIAL MISSION.
REDDIT'S REVENGE
IN AN ERA OF AI UPHEAVAL. THE CACOPHONOUS SOCIAL HUB EMERGES AS THE HUMAN-DRIVEN INTERNET'S LAST GREAT HOPE.
SO MANY WAYS TO LOSE
In the Ozempic era, Weight-Watchers is remaking itself to be something for everyone meal-plan program and a tele-health prescription service. But have consumers already lost their appetite?
10/10 - THE 10 MOST INNOVATIVE PEOPLE OF THE LAST 10 YEARS
In honor of Fast Company's 10th Innovation Festival in September, we identified 10 industrious leaders whose groundbreaking efforts defined the past decade in business. We spoke to them about their extraordinary achievements in tech, medicine, entertainment, and more. And we explored how the impact of their work has withstood passing fads, various presidential administrations, a pandemic, and many, many quarterly reports.
The Mysterious Reappearance of the Reggie Bar
How a beloved 1970s candy got called back up to the major leagues.
Gabriella Khalil
Gabriella Khalil, creative director, answers our career questionnaire.
The Fast and the Furious
High prices at McDonald's, Taco Bell, and other chains are sparking consumer revolt.
Lost in Truncation
Lost in Truncation Generative AI was supposed to unleash our creativity. Instead, it became our cultural trash compactor. Welcome to the age of summarization.
Campus Radicals
Welcome to UATX, Austin's new well-funded and controversial anti-woke university.
