Ep. 198 - Arlan Hamilton, Founder of Backstage Capital & Author of It’s About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage

Arlan Hamilton is the founder of Backstage Capital, and author of the new book, It's About Damn Time. This episode was recorded live as part of our IO live event series. 

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO, a provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs. Build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking, tools, tactics, and trends, in collaborative innovation. Let's get started. 

Brian Ardinger: Hey, Arlan. How are you? 

Arlan Hamilton: Oh yeah. I've only been using Zoom a million times a day. 

Brian Ardinger: Thanks for coming on the show here. 

Arlan Hamilton: Yeah, thanks for having me. 

Brian Ardinger: How are you handling the quarantine? Everything going well, relatively speaking?

Arlan Hamilton: Not everything, but you know, it's the day-to-day that everybody's saying. It's very true. It's getting me by. I feel pretty optimistic even though there's some incredible things going on right now. 

Brian Ardinger: Let's get started. With me we have Arlan Hamilton.  She's the founder of Backstage Capital and author of the new book called it's About Damn Time. I am so excited to have you on the show. The question I wanted to start with is last week at this time, you're talking to Mark Cuban and a week later you're talking to us here in the middle of the country in Lincoln, Nebraska, and some other places.  What is your impression of the world that's been disrupted? How do you see the world changing and how is that affecting yourself and your portfolio companies that you're working with? 

Arlan Hamilton: It's something we've never seen before, and I think a lot of people are, are trying to figure it out. I think a lot of people are giving out some advice and trying to have it all figured it out. And I don't know if we will yet. You know, I think we're still in it. I think we're still dealing with the trauma of it, even though a lot of us don't even realize that's what this is. And so I think for me it's a slow and steady. It truly is a day-to-day. And personally, I feel at my best being a bridge to communication or connecting people, and that's why I'm having so many conversations with people around the world during this time just to kind of keep my sanity and keep me feeling like I'm useful. 

Brian Ardinger: I totally understand that. And I'd imagine for a person like yourself who is probably on the road a lot, I know you've been out in the marketplace, not only meeting with startups, but also talking about what it's like out there in the real world. It's probably more challenging to do that from a remote location, but we're all on the same boat. You've got a new book coming out fairly shortly. It's called, It's About Damn Time. Can you give the audience a little bit of background on what the book's about and some of the key stories or benefits that you hope people get from reading it?

Arlan Hamilton: Yeah. It's about Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into your Greatest Advantage. I wrote it because I get hundreds and hundreds of inbound messages per day across multi-platforms. The number one thing I'm asked is, will you invest in my company or my idea? The second most frequently asked question is, will you be my mentor? And that doesn't scale very well. But the way that it can scale is by writing this book and all of the things that I try to do on a daily basis online with all the resources that we give. The book is my way of giving to someone, and I always try to imagine the person, right. Believe in myself in some cases, but given the person that may need it, the same thing that I received when I picked up Brad Feld's book, for instance. Venture Deals 101 in 2013 or so, and all of these books that I've read along the way in my journey from going from broke and homeless on food stamps to raising more than $10 million and investing in more than a hundred companies. There's so much in that journey and packed into the last five years that I think is relatable, believe it or not, relatable to a lot of people, because I've had all kinds of jobs and all kinds of obstacles, and it's a relatable story.

It's that, and it's also the fact that when I was looking for these types of resources. They were mostly from white men in the business sections of these bookstores at the airport.  And the information was fantastic, and the people were fantastic, and I even know Brad now, which is such a wonderful journey. But it's the same thing that drove me and still drives me to invest in underrepresented founders, is there should be better representation in business books that are written for multiple people and profiles, but by a black woman. 

Brian Ardinger: Tell us a little bit about that journey. I know a lot of folks are familiar with your story. Tell us a little bit about, it really has been an amazing five years. I don't know if you remember, but you and I actually met via Twitter probably about four or five years ago when we were spinning up the IO Summit, which was our first event. It's been going three years. 

Arlan Hamilton: I do remember, yes.

Brian Ardinger: And you pinged me, making sure that I had representation as far as audience and speakers, and you've got me connected with a couple of your portfolio companies to bring into the show.

Arlan Hamilton: I remember where I was sitting when that happened. That's so crazy. 

Brian Ardinger: What I found so interesting about that. You weren't popular or big or you hadn't been on Fast Company at the time, but you reached out and you were living what you talk about now, like being engaged in the community, helping your portfolio companies and fighting the good fight. That always impressed me about you, that you were out there telling the stories and making things happen. Even at the very early stages. Why don't you tell the audience about what that journey has been like over the past five years? Going from quote nothing to being on the cover of Fast Company being at South by Southwest, all these kinds of things people aspire to, that most people don't have a chance to do.

Arlan Hamilton: It's funny because as many stories as I tell in the book, I haven't gotten to all of them. There are many that have happened in the last, and that you just reminded me of one. In 2015, in March, which is like five years back. Right. I slept in a car with my mom, who was in her sixties at the time, so that I could attend the fringes of South by Southwest. Right. And nobody knew it. But that's what I did. And it was not, because you know, to be kind of cool, it was with my mom. We didn't have a place to live, but I want it to be there and try to meet people to raise the fund. 

And this year, if it had gone on as planned, I would have spoken seven times in keynote positions. It's just so intense to think about that. And then the Fast Company, I was on the cover of Fast Company, which is still crazy to say, the October, 2018 issue, I was a first non-celebrity black woman to be on it, and Oprah, Serena Williams, and Beyonce had been on it before as black...