A Venture Capitalist With Change In Mind

Arlan Hamilton wants to disrupt the investing system—and she’s doing so with a radical approach.

- Jennifer Calfas

ARLAN HAMILTON WAS HOMELESS, sleeping on the floor of San Francisco International Airport and couch-surfing for months when it finally happened.

The 38-year-old launched Backstage Capital in 2015, a venture capital firm that invests in under-invested founders like women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community.

Hamilton isn’t your stereotypical venture capitalist. She’s the first black queer woman to create her own venture capital firm—and she did it with no investing experience, no college degree, and little money to work with. “Whatever I do, I know I’m going to achieve it,” Hamilton recalls thinking before she launched her firm. “It’s going to take a long time, and it’s going to be really, really difficult. So whatever it is, I really have to mean it.”

For years before she launched Backstage Capital, Hamilton had spent many long hours at Barnes & Noble reading tech and investing books because she couldn’t afford to buy them. She taught herself about investing and venture capital by watching YouTube and Vimeo videos. She moved several times, from outside Houston to outside Austin, to be closer to the burgeoning tech scene, and then moved to Silicon Valley. The more she learned, the more she set her sights on correcting what she saw as an injustice: An incredibly small percentage of venture capital funding goes to women, people of color, and LGBTQ entrepreneurs.

“I couldn’t stomach the idea of women having to sit around and not get asked to the party and not get asked to be part of the next 20 to 50 years. It just didn’t make any sense to me,” Hamilton says. “I also thought whoever does do this stands to make a lot of money.”