The Cake
Venture Capital Pioneer, Arlan Hamilton, Pens Letter to Readers
In this new exclusive column for ZORA, Backstage Capital maven Arlan Hamilton and her team offer entrepreneurship, tech, and business wisdom for women of color
My name is Arlan. I’m 38. Black. Woman. Incredibly homosexual. Used to be on food stamps. Used to have a negative bank balance. Used to have no place to live for weeks and months at a time. Today, I am a venture capitalist with more than 130 tech companies in my portfolio that span several industries and are disbursed all over the United States. Every company I invest in is led by women, a person of color, and/or an LGBTQ founder.
I started a boutique venture capital firm called Backstage to begin to close the gap between the amount of confidence, seed investment money, and other resources going to White men in the United States (more than 90% of all venture capital) versus anyone else. I felt this would help change the narrative of and for those people most affected: the underrepresented entrepreneurs who had and have been overlooked and underestimated for far too long.
What drives me in this work is an unrelenting dedication to catalyzing those who may not have as loud a voice as I…
