Arlan Hamilton

Last updated
Arlan Hamilton
BornOctober 30th, 1980 [1]
Occupation(s)Founder and managing partner, Backstage Capital

Arlan Hamilton is an investor and the founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital. In May 2020, Hamilton released her first book from Penguin Random House entitled It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage , which is based on her career in venture capital. [2]

Contents

Career

Prior to her venture capital role, Hamilton founded and published the indie magazine Interlude and prior to that, served as tour manager to Atlantic Records recording artist Janine. [3]

In May 2018, Hamilton announced her firm would also attempt to raise a $36 million fund specifically for black female founders. [4]

Hamilton was the subject of a six-episode series on the Gimlet Media podcast Startup. [5] Hamilton is mostly complimentary about the podcast series, but did take issue with how she was portrayed, especially in sequences that cast her in an irresponsible light. [6] Hamilton's Backstage Capital's podcast The Bootstrapped VC features episodes that are reactions to the Gimlet series. [7]

In June 2019 Hamilton received recognition from Business Insider as one of the 23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech. [8]

Hamilton has funded a scholarship for black female pilots, [9] and a scholarship for black students at the University of Oxford. [10]

In June 2022, TechCrunch reported that BackStage Capital had laid off most of its staff and was pausing net new investments. [11]

In March 2024, Hamilton was announced as a strategic advisor for the Inpink platform by Gritty In Pink alongside Melissa Etheridge and Live Nation. [12]

Personal life

In 2019, Hamilton married German composer and actress, Anna Eichenauer. [13]

In 2021, Hamilton paid $112,500 for a 1956 Chevy truck owned by her personal icon Janet Jackson. [14]

Writing

Before becoming a venture capitalist, Hamilton gained notoriety as a blogger on "Your Daily Lesbian Moment," a blog site and point of connection for women seeking both platonic and romantic relationships with other women. [15] [16]

In May 2020, Hamilton published the book entitled, "It's About Damn Time," written with Rachel L. Nelson. The book is part memoir and part how-to for people who are generally underestimated in society. In the book, Hamilton details her early career as a music tour producer and, on pivoting to venture capital, the tactics she used to start the VC fund Backstage Capital. [17]

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venture capital</span> Form of private-equity financing

Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are often from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.

Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Meeker</span> American venture capitalist and Wall Street securities analyst

Mary Meeker is an American venture capitalist and former Wall Street securities analyst. Her primary work is on Internet and new technologies. She is the founder and general partner at BOND, a San Francisco–based venture capital firm. She previously served as partner at Kleiner Perkins.

Heidi Roizen is a Silicon Valley executive, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index Ventures</span> European worldwide venture capital firm

Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Index Venture partners appear frequently on Forbes’ Midas List of the top tech investors in Europe and Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leah Culver</span> American computer scientist and entrepreneur

Leah Culver is a computer programmer, startup founder, and angel investor.

RJMetrics is an American software company headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company offers big data analytics to small and midsize businesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aileen Lee</span> American investor

Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.

Women in venture capital or VC are investors who provide venture capital funding to startups. Women make up a small fraction of the venture capital private equity workforce. A widely used source for tracking the number of women in venture capital is the Midas List which has been published by Forbes since 2001. Research from Women in VC, a global community of women venture investors, shows that the percentage of female VC partners is just shy of 5 percent.

Sapphire Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Austin, and London. The firm is considered one of the world's premier venture capital firms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gimlet Media</span> Digital media company

Gimlet Media LLC is a digital media company and podcast network, focused on producing narrative podcasts and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. The company was founded in 2014 by Alex Blumberg and Matthew Lieber, who served as the company's CEO and president respectively until Lieber stepped down in 2022. In February 2019, Spotify announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gimlet for $230 million. In 2023, Spotify announced that they were merging Gimlet and Parcast into Spotify Studios.

Nazanin Rafsanjani is an American television and radio producer. She was the head of new show development for Gimlet Media until 2020, and before that served as Gimlet's creative director and a senior producer for The Rachel Maddow Show.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theresia Gouw</span>

Theresia Gouw is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor in the technology sector. She worked at Bain & Company, Release Software and Accel Partners before co-founding Aspect Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm, in 2014. Gouw was named one of the 40 most influential minds in tech by Time Magazine. and has been recognized seven times on the Forbes Midas List as one of the "world's smartest tech investors". According to Forbes, Gouw is the richest female venture capitalist, with a net worth of approximately $500 million, primarily due to her involvement with Accel (company)'s early investment in Facebook.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Fonstad</span> American venture capital investor

Jennifer Fonstad is an American venture capital investor and entrepreneur. She is the managing partner and a co-founder of the Owl Capital Group, a venture firm based in Silicon Valley. Fonstad was Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) for 17 years. She is also co-founder of angel investing network Broadway Angels. Fonstad has been recognized as a top 100 tech investor on Forbes’ Midas List twice and was named 2016 Venture Capitalist of the Year by Deloitte. She is also a Founding Member of All Raise.

Parcast is a digital media firm and podcast network, that specialized in producing both scripted podcasts as well as audio dramas. It was founded in 2016 by podcaster Max Cutler and his father Ron Cutler in Los Angeles California.

Molten Ventures, formerly Draper Esprit, is a venture capital firm, investing in high growth technology companies with global ambitions, with offices in London, Cambridge and Dublin. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact X</span> British venture capital firm

Impact X Capital is a venture capital firm which looks to invest in underrepresented entrepreneurs from across Europe. Impact X Capital was started by Eric Collins. Its initial founding members include Ursula Burns, Ric Lewis and Lenny Henry.

<i>Its About Damn Time</i> 2020 American book

It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage is a 2020 American book written by Arlan Hamilton with Rachel L. Nelson. It's About Damn Time is "an empowering guide to finding your voice, working your way into any room you want to be in, and achieving your own dreams".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Mignano</span> Co-founder of podcasting platform Anchor

Michael Mignano is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is a venture capitalist at Lightspeed, the co-founder of the podcasting platform Anchor, and former head of Spotify's talk audio business. In 2019, Mignano was regarded by Fortune Magazine as one of the most influential young people in business in their annual "40 under 40" list. Mignano studied Computer Science at the University of Delaware.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brianne Kimmel</span> Venture capitalist

Brianne Kimmel is a Ukrainian-American venture capitalist and angel investor. She is the founder and managing partner of Worklife Ventures, a venture capital firm she founded in 2019.

References

  1. ↑ "Arlan Hamilton". womenoftoday.com.[ permanent dead link ]
  2. ↑ Delaney, Kevin. "Arlan Hamilton Went From Homeless to Running $20 Million in VC Funds. Here's How She Did It". Time. Time. Archived from the original on 7 March 2022. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  3. ↑ Susannah Hutcheson (April 13, 2017). "How I became a venture capitalist: Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital". USA Today. Retrieved January 27, 2019.
  4. ↑ Jennifer Calfas (November 27, 2018). "This Venture Capitalist Started Her Own Firm Without Any Investing Experience or Degree. Here's How She Did It". Money. Retrieved January 27, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Arlan Hamilton 1: Silicon Valley, By Invite Only". Gimlet Media. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
  6. ↑ Hamilton, Arlan (2020-05-05). It's About Damn Time. Penguin Books. ISBN   9780593136416.
  7. ↑ "The Bootstrapped VC". Backstage Capital. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
  8. ↑ Leskin, Paige. "The 23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  9. ↑ "Tech entrepreneur to fund Wings Alliance scholarship for black British female pilot". Pilot Career News. 10 February 2020. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
  10. ↑ "Student Spotlight: Oxford-Arlan Hamilton & Earline Butler Sims Scholar | University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
  11. ↑ "Backstage Capital cuts majority of staff after pausing net new investments". www.techcrunch.com. 26 June 2022. Retrieved 25 September 2022.
  12. ↑ "Arlan Hamilton Joins Gritty In Pink as Strategic Advisor alongside Live Nation, Melissa Ethridge, and More". KTLA. 2024-04-09. Retrieved 2024-05-24.
  13. ↑ "Arlan Hamilton (1980- ) •". 2021-04-25. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  14. ↑ Russell, Melia. "Famed investor Arlan Hamilton paid $112,500 for a 1956 Chevy truck owned by her personal icon: Janet Jackson". Business Insider. Retrieved 2022-02-15.
  15. ↑ Mohan, Pavithra (28 May 2020). "'I'll be doing this for decades': Arlan Hamilton's challenging the status quo of VC". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
  16. ↑ Hamilton, Arlan (2020-05-05). It's About Damn Time. Penguin Books. ISBN   9780593136416.
  17. ↑ Hamilton, Arlan (2020-05-05). It's About Damn Time. Penguin Books. ISBN   9780593136416.
  18. ↑ "40 Under 40". Fortune. 2018. Archived from the original on January 28, 2019. Retrieved January 27, 2019.
  19. ↑ "Announcing Fast Company's second annual Queer 50 list". Fast Company. Retrieved 2021-06-03.
  20. ↑ "Arlan Hamilton is No. 17 on the 2022 Fast Company Queer 50 list". Fast Company. Retrieved 2022-06-19.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.