Thank you to Pablo Fernandez of Flexpoint Tech for creating these notes. To contribute to the TWiST PodNotes archive email us.

Top Insights

• She believes and preaches: Acknowledging privilege doesn’t take it away.
• On larger investors for her fund: They are invited to come back to her found but she doesn’t want to be beholden to them.
• Prefers small like-minded investors to big LPs: it’s more fun.
• She believes 80% of the companies could do without any funding and bootstrapping.
• Building Backstage Capital has be like: It’s been pushing a boulder up a mountain.

Intro

About Arlan Hamilton

• She's black, female and a lesbian.
• She’s from the south, and was raised by a single mom.
• She has a podcast called Your First Million.
• She’s happy to talk about race unlike others.
• She published a book It’s About Damn Time & narrated the whole book on Audible.

Her history & perspective:

• She got rejected a lot.
• She describes how hard it was to break in and how she did it. There’s a lot of scrambling of people reaching it out to her that previously rejected her. Some people are guilty because of Black Lives Matter, and George Floyd’s death
• Some people now have more leverage so they can work with her. Arlan doesn’t accept any and all money she is offered.
• Integrity is very important for her.
• She’s very protective:
  • Of her companies.
  • Of her brand
  • Of her people.
• She doesn’t want to be someone’s savior, the token black person that shows the caught up with the times.
• She treats everybody as though they are good at first, but quotes Rihanna: “Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness“
• There’s a difference between someone that finally got that Black Lives matter and someone that just doesn’t want to look bad.