Silicon Valley is leaving money on the table, and Arlan Hamilton will go to extremes to prove it. She's a venture capitalist like no other — black, female, gay — and she's out to prove that investors in the Valley are overlooking big returns they could tap into by investing in more outsiders. Arlan calls them "underestimated" founders, and she's planning to get as rich as Richard Branson by investing in them. But her thesis is still untested, and she's running out of time to show Silicon Valley what she's got.

This is the first part of a six-part series on Arlan Hamilton and her company, Backstage Capital.

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