Arlan Hamilton built Backstage Capital while experiencing homelessness and sleeping on airport floors, teaching herself venture capital from books and online resources without any traditional finance background, having previously worked as a bank data-entry worker and music tour manager. She deliberately reframes minority founders as underestimated rather than underrepresented, trademarking the term for financial services, and has created what she calls scalable mentorship through books and content because she was receiving hundreds of mentorship requests and wanted to transfer everything she learned from food stamps to raising tens of millions at scale. Arlan Hamilton built Backstage Capital while experiencing homelessness and sleeping on airport floors, teaching herself venture capital from books and online resources without any traditional finance background, having previously worked as a bank data-entry worker and music tour manager. She deliberately reframes minority founders as underestimated rather than underrepresented, trademarking the term for financial services, and has created what she calls scalable mentorship through books and content because she was receiving hundreds of mentorship requests and wanted to transfer everything she learned from food stamps to raising tens of millions at scale.