430. Interviews: Arlan Hamilton - Breaking the VC glass ceiling for underrepresented founders

In today's episode, we bring you an interview with Arlan Hamilton, founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital. From improbable beginnings, Arlan Hamilton is making waves in the venture capital space by investing in companies led by underrepresented founders. Less than 10% of all venture capital deals go to women, people of colour, and LGBT founders and Arlan has made it her mission to change that. We kick things off talking about her book It's About Damn Time. With rave reviews from Mark Cuban, Stacey Abrams, and Jameela Jamil, Sam and Arlan discuss the book writing process and how to turn being underestimated into your greatest asset. From sleeping on the floor of the San Francisco International Airport to becoming the first non-celebrity black woman to be featured on the cover of Fast Company, we hear about how Arlan's upbringing, her past life as a tour manager and her unconventional journey through Silicon Valley has shaped both her and the company she runs. This podcast is brought to you by Mitek (https://bit.ly/2VXQy3o)(NASDAQ: MITK). Mitek is a global leader in mobile capture and digital identity verification solutions built on the latest advancements in computer vision, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Mitek’s identity verification solutions enable an enterprise to verify a user’s identity during a digital transaction, which assists businesses operating in highly regulated markets to reduce financial risk and meet regulatory requirements while increasing revenue from digital channels. Financial services, marketplaces and other organizations around the world use Mitek to reduce friction creating the digital experiences their customers expect. Mobile Deposit® and Mobile Verify® are used by millions of consumers for check deposit, new account opening and more. The company is based in San Diego with offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris and St Petersburg. Learn more at www.miteksystems.com. This podcast is also brought to you by Equinix (https://equinix.com). Equinix is the world's largest data center & colocation provider, enabling fastest application performance, lowest latency and a digital ecosystem for financial services. Its platform of 200+ data centres worldwide protects, connects and empowers the mission-critical infrastructure for over 10,000 businesses. This podcast is also brought to you by Salesforce (https://www.salesforce.com/uk/?ir=1). Right now, business leaders are re-thinking, re-assessing and re-purposing business as usual to deal with this new crisis. It’s a global conversation Salesforce is having called Leading Through Change. And it’s all about businesses relying on each other to achieve one simple goal: Help. Learn more at salesforce.com (https://www.salesforce.com/uk/?ir=1) Small business financial services are only 1% finished. Our latest research examines the Jobs to be Done and cultural insights on what US business owners need, and the digital services that will help them meet their goals. Download the research for free by heading to bit.ly/digitalsmb (https://bit.ly/digitalsmb). Fintech Insider by 11:FS is a podcast dedicated to all things fintech, banking, technology and financial services. Hosted by a rotation of 11:FS experts including David Brear, Simon Taylor, Jason Bates, Leda Glyptis and Sarah Kocianski and joined by a range of brilliant guests, we cover the latest global news, bring you interviews from industry experts or take a deep dive into subject matters such as APIs, AI or digital banking. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and please leave a review Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fintechinsiders where you can ask the hosts questions, alternatively email podcasts@11fs.com! Special Guest: Arlan Hamilton.