Democratizing Access to Venture Capital Investment

The Essential Conversation ·
Featuring Arlan Hamilton and Haley Draznin

Published on: March 22nd, 2021 • Duration: 43 minutes

Arlan Hamilton, founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital, a venture capital firm focused on investing in underrepresented entrepreneurs—people of color, women, and LGBTQ—joins Real Vision’s Haley Draznin to discuss why they are opening up their doors to allow both accredited and non-accredited investors to invest in the early stage fund. Hamilton opens up about her efforts to bring more diversity into venture capital and her incredible journey from being homeless—living on food stamps and sleeping in airports—to founding her fund that has raised $15 million and invested in 175 startups to date. Filmed Tuesday, March 16th.

Key Learnings: Backstage Capital is among the first funds of this kind under a new SEC rule called Reg CF, or Regulation Crowdfunding. It increases the amount that entrepreneurs can raise from the broader public from $1.07 million to now $5 million. This crowdfunding raise goes towards operations and some debt, and each investment share would receive returns of the funds under management, performance of underlying investments, etc.

You can follow Arlan and Backstage on Twitter and learn more here:
https://twitter.com/Backstage_Cap, https://twitter.com/ArlanWasHere, and https://republic.co/backstage.