Who you are defines how you build.

This is the Entrepreneurals Thought Leaders series.

Brought to you by Stanford E-Corner.

On this episode, we're joined by Arlen Hamilton, founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital,

a venture capital firm dedicated to minimizing

funding disparities in technology by investing in high potential founders who are people of color,

women, and LGBT. Backstage has invested in dozens of startups led by underestimated founders

and has been featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Courts, and many others.

Thank you.

There is, I would say, oftentimes, two narratives that get told about founders.

There is a narrative about founders as vision holders, where you have a founder who can see into the future more clearly than anybody else,

and uses that vision to trumpet the resources they need.

Think about Elon Musk saying, I want to go to Mars and we're all going to get there.

And then there's another narrative that says that actually entrepreneurship is not about knowing

the end, but it's all about managing the process.

And that the end can be far bigger than you ever even expected.

And the great founders are ones that can manage the risks along the way.

And there are process-driven methodologies.

The design school at Stanford is probably the most famous here with the D-school methodology.

And so I want to start out with this question.

Did you know when you were a child that you wanted to be a venture capitalist?

Did you have the vision of being a venture capitalist when you were a child that you wanted to be a venture capitalist? Did you have the vision of being a venture capitalist

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