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Good morning. Good afternoon.
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My name is Arielle Pardes.
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I'm a senior writer with WIRED and
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I am joined today by Arlen Hamilton, the founder,
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and managing partner of Backstage Capital
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and Katie Rae,
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the CEO and managing partner of The Engine.
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Welcome to both of you.
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Thank you.
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Hi thank you for having us.
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I could not have asked for two better people
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to talk to today about my favorite topic in tech,
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which is the money.
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We're gonna be talking about how
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we build the stuff that matters,
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which often comes down to funding the stuff that matters.
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And that is where both of you come in.
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So Arlen, I wanna start with you.
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You founded Backstage Capital almost exactly five years ago,
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and the mission was to invest in underestimated founders.
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So I wanna ask what that word means to you and what kind
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of opportunity you saw in these underestimated founders that
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other investors weren't seeing.
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Sure.
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So yeah, we celebrated five years a week ago today.
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We... so underestimated is actually a term
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that was gifted to me by one of our founders three years ago
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during our second year anniversary.
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And it really is just speaks to the difference between
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thinking of black and brown founders and women in general,
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at founders as a charity or competition.
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And what we want you to be...what we want people to hear
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when they hear underrepresented or underestimated is
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that's your competition.
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That someone or a group of people
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who have been overlooked and discounted,
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but it's not to say that they're not on par with you,
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or maybe in some cases,
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even beyond your reach and are lapping you in fact.
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And so seven or eight years ago,
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when I was looking into the world of Silicon Valley and
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other tech hubs,
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which were few and far between at the time
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when I came across the statistic that 90% of venture funding
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goes to straight white men
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and they make up a third of the country.
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It didn't make any sense to me.
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And so I started looking around as a gay black woman
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thinking, well, first thought was that sucks
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because where does that leave me?
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But then it really quickly turned into
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what an opportunity.
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What a gift that so many people are overlooking us
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and taking us for granted to be honest.
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And so my thought was,
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if we have done so much with so little as I've seen so many
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of us do what would happen if we were given more,
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if we had that slight chance that was not afforded to us
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prior.
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And so first I went out asking people to do this.
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And then once I realized I was... it was falling
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on deaf ears I said, I'll attempt it myself.
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And so I put together a few million dollars from scratch to
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do that over the years.
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I love that idea of if people have been working on so
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little, because they're so underestimated,
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what would happen if you gave them more?
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And I wanna return to that concept because I think it's
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really powerful, but Katie,
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you're also reaching a slightly different set of founders
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and companies with your fund, The Engine though,
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as I understand it,
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your founders and companies often need more to do more.
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They need more upfront capital.
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They need more time in their development cycles.
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And so I wanna ask you the same question.
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What was the opportunity that you saw as an investor in
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taking a chance on some of the companies
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that you've invested in?
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Yeah, so if you take a look at what The Engine does,
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we back really transformational technology that could shape
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a market and solve a huge world problem all in a go,
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right?
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And, but it requires patience, it requires capital,
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and it requires imagination on how to get these types of
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companies to market, right?
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It's not just straight software.
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So if you're gonna change the world's energy grid to be
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carbon free, you know,
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you only have a few transformational technologies that could
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work to do that.
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So you have to reach back into, you know,
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the best universities in the world.
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We're partnered with MIT.
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And look at how could that happen and then back founders to
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do that.
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But it means that your timeframes to market are often,
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you know, 10 years, not two or one or zero.
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And it means that you could potentially be having to raise,
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you know, a hundred million dollar first round,
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not one to two.
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So that means that you have to be creative about the
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capital raising, creative about how to back companies
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like this.
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But the opportunity, the economic opportunity is enormous.
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But you have to have the wherewithal
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to pull that all together.
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And so that's what we do at The Engine.
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And, you know, we back founders coming out of PhD programs,
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postdocs, professors who have created these real
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breakthroughs, across many, many industries.
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Whether it's de-carbonization, the energy grid or how we
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can truly extend human life in meaningful ways
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to a very large set of the population
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or how we're better connected.
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So we think of that as advanced systems.
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All of those are really important for our planet and
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under invested in because they look more complex or it's not
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in the regular playbook.
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But we just are,
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we're psyched that we have that opportunity.
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And we think we'll make a ton of progress for the planet,
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but also returns for our investors.
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I'm very glad that you brought that up because
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neither The Engine nor Backstage Capital are charities.
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You are not philanthropists, you are investors.
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And so you're investing in people and companies that you
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think will make a difference,
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but you're doing so to get returns.
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And we often see investors,
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especially in venture capital sidestepping,
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the kinds of founders and startups that you are interested
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in because they fear that they won't make money.
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I actually just saw this week,
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the global head of technology at Deutsche Bank was
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quoted saying,
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"Rarely in my investment career do I see what's good for
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society is also good for investment returns".
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And so I wanted to ask each of you,
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what is wrong with that perspective?
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What have you seen through your funds that proves that maybe
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you actually can make money by investing in diversity,
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investing in social good,
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investing in tech that changes the world?
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One thing to note when it comes to venture is I think just
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in the last month or so they released
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someone released data.
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I think it was PitchBook or Crunchbase that said
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something like two thirds of all venture funds return one X
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or less over their seven to 10 year period.
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And so one way of framing it is that, you know,
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being safe so far is not really working.
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If for no other reason, getting outside of the, you know,
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color lines, no pun intended is interesting
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[mumbles]
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being competitive or who looks at trends or, you know,
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in the same way that people look at, you know,
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other trends like cryptocurrency and things like that,
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you know, take a, just to take an academic critical,
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look at it rather than dismissing it all in.
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And then of course, anecdotally,
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I'm surrounded by people, surround,
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absolutely surrounded by people in our portfolio,
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more than a hundred companies.
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So 250, 300 founders total who have been overlooked.
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And I believe good 20% of them will go on to either
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in this company or the next lead unicorn companies
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if they want to.
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They're creating impact now and we're talking about,
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what is it, 20?
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What is the 2030 or 2040?
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I don't know exactly right now,
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but at some point we're gonna be a majority minority.
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And so we're gonna have to speak to,
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we have to start now to speak to that audience.
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And it just the past 10 years,
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everything that black and brown people who have been paying
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attention have predicted has come true.
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And I think this year is like a combination of that.
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It's come to a head and to, to overlook it now is,
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is just at the investor's peril.
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And maybe one thing to add to that totally agree is that,
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you know, if you talk to people,
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the young people of today,
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just go out to the universities and, you know,
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people of every race, class, gender,
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what you hear so often is
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we want to do good.
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And so if you just follow the youth in what will be,
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they want to be on a mission that is good for our planet,
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good for other people,
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you're gonna make money by being aligned.
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I'm sorry.
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The youth always know.
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So you just sound old when you say that.
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Yeah.
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You know, when you say, Oh yeah,
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you can't make money by doing good.
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You're just old.
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Right.
Retire
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I also want to
That's how I feel about
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You also can't make money if we don't have a planet
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or a functioning society,
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or many of the other things that I think we are grappling
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with very much this year.
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And Katie, I know many of the companies
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that are in your portfolio are
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focused on future proofing in a very literal way where we're
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trying to build things that ensure that there is a future
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in which we can make money as investors.
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And actually I have an audience question for you, Katie,
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which is sort of on those lines,
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which is, how do you get policymakers
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to invest in low probability,
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high impact scenario preparation.
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So when we're thinking about risk and how important it is
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to invest in understanding those risks
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and preparing for them,
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how do you get policymakers to consider that as well?
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Well, you know,
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it's a great question and it's something we spend
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a lot of time on because you know,
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we don't have an educated Congress
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about science and technology.
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We only have three people
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in Congress with a science or technology degree.
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And they are woefully understaffed in their understanding of
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what's actually happening.
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And so,
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and not because they're not good people and wouldn't wanna
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set good policy for the future.
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I don't believe that at all.
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So that means that it's incumbent upon, you know,
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people with that knowledge to really work with the folks
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that will set policy.
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And so there's a quite a large group of people that do that,
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but it requires really education.
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I mean, look at climate change.
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We still have people negating that,
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okay so California's burning people.
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I mean that was a real wake up call.
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Look, go to Miami, look at all the basements
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they're flooded.
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The sea is rising.
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There's no way around not acknowledging that yet
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we still don't.
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So, you know, we all have to continue
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to educate those that will make policy,
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but we also on the venture capital side in the
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entrepreneurship and innovation side have
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to also show the way.
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What's the capital needed?
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Why is that capital needed?
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How do you establish these industries that will do good?
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And so you have to put forth and help the policy makers
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really see what's going on.
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It's not their fault that they don't know this deep science,
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you know,
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and so it's a collaboration that needs to happen.
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Yeah.
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And I love this idea of modeling that through your
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investments and through the work that you do.
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We just have a couple of minutes left,
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but I did wanna acknowledge that this year has been a huge
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wake up call for not just issues of disaster preparation,
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but also Arlan I know you're seeing just as of this year,
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a huge surge in interest around funding, diverse founders,
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black and brown founders in particular.
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And so I was wondering if you could sort of leave us with
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some thoughts about how we take this energy into the future
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and ensure that the founders and companies that are
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underrepresented right now are the ones that we're paying
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more attention to in the future.
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What have you seen from this year
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that may be be telling about how we
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get more money into the hands that need it going forward?
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Yeah I think, you know,
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this summer has just been very interesting.
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Phone has been ringing off the hook in a way that has,
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you know, we haven't changed, I haven't changed,
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but circumstances have.
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And to me it's not a cause for celebration.
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Obviously it's a very painful time, a traumatic time
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for so many people.
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And for me also time will tell, you know,
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this can't be a moment.
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It has to be a movement and it has to stand the test of time
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because already, I mean, even already there's been,
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I would say 40 to 60% drop off in the interest since June
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because people's attention span and stamina is just so
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lacking when it comes to anything that's uncomfortable or
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different or outside of their comfort zone.
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And the people who are still in the fight,
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the people that even large corporations,
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some of them have been able to stay in the fight.
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And really, you know, beyond the headlines
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and beyond the [mumbles] have really said,
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what do we do?
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And are learning from the people who have been in the
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trenches this whole time.
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And you know, it wasn't a wake up call by the way,
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to black people.
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This what you're referring to.
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It was not a wake up call to us.
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We've been woke for the entire time.
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So the people who were jolted awake really should
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stay awake, you know, do what it takes.
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I won't call out a energy drink.
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Cause I don't know who your sponsors are,
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but do what it takes or they can stay awake and make it a
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durable, sustainable part of the fabric
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of your companies and internally.
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And that's, you know, that starts internally too,
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with really looking at who you have on your teams,
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how you're representing yourselves outwardly,
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how are people who are looking for jobs,
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do they feel included based on what they see of your company
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so far?
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There's a lot that can be done.
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And there are so many people who already do this work,
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who you can tap into
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rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
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I love that.
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Arlen, Katie,
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I could talk to you for another hour,
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but unfortunately that's all we have time for,
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but thank you so much for taking the time today for being
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part of our WIRED25 and for sharing those insights.
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Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.