My Path to Partner
Backstage Capital welcomes Bryan Landers as General Partner alongside Christie Pitts and Managing Partner Arlan Hamilton. Among many responsibilities, Bryan will be building out Backstage’s platform and community in 2020, and you can get involved. Find out how at the end of this story.
One might ask, how does a straight, White man with no experience in venture capital end up as a General Partner at a VC firm dedicated to investing in underrepresented founders? It’s a good question. Well, this is my Backstage story. It’s a journey I could never have imagined before I found myself walking this path alongside a friend and the people we recruited around us in the fight to eliminate underrepresentation in venture-funded startups.
Collaborator
It all started with a podcast I created called Mission & Values, examining company culture at young startups and the why behind what drives them and aligns their team. Podcast interviews allowed me to spend time with great founders to learn directly from them about their HR and culture wins and challenges, which was the space I wanted to explore for my next startup while I was freelancing as a product designer.
I quickly realized that most tech podcasts and blogs weren’t featuring many of the amazing founders I was meeting — notably women and people of color. How could I be one of the first people to share the stories of these ambitious founders and their teams? It was such a jarring realization that before I began the first season of my podcast, I decided to represent more voices and shine a well-deserved spotlight on more underrepresented founders.
A few miles away in Los Angeles, my podcast somehow caught the attention of a truly remarkable VC. A self-described Black, gay woman named Arlan Hamilton followed me and my podcast on Twitter. I was already aware of Arlan’s work — she had started a fund to invest exclusively in great founders who identified as she did, and people were beginning to take notice. In June of 2016, I reached out to Arlan via Twitter DM with the hope of gaining a founder guest referral, but I also floated the idea of featuring her story on my show. There was no way I could’ve guessed where that request would lead.
Soon after our Twitter exchange and a brief call, I visited Arlan’s home in West Hollywood and collaborated on what would become a very special episode of Mission & Values featuring Arlan and her story as well as a number of Backstage portfolio founders speaking to the impact her investments were making. When Arlan learned I was a designer and developer, we quickly found other ways to work together. By the first half of July 2016, I had helped with Backstage’s pitch deck and released the Backstage podcast feature episode.
In August, Arlan dreamed up a beautiful project idea where we’d gift books to people who might need and make use of them. I documented the lean process we used to ship our v1 in a weekend. I came up with a name for it — Cover. And we both had a great time taking it from idea to reality in a short amount of time. Pretty soon, I found myself redesigning and growing the Backstage website and creating all kinds of branded goodies like bookmarks, stickers, and t-shirts.
EIR
At the start of October 2016, I accepted the role of Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR). Initially I was going to be a Designer in Residence, which sounds super cool, but no one I spoke with had heard of that title whereas EIR was fairly well-known. I started consulting with Backstage portfolio companies and continued to grow Backstage’s brand through marketing. I learned that even though I did not identify as a woman, person of color, or LGBTQ, my own empathy and the skills I’d learned through design, along with Arlan’s inspiration and editorial direction, allowed me to effectively amplify and highlight other voices.
In January 2017, we officially announced that Backstage had acquired Mission & Values, which was the foundation from which we could launch more podcast adventures. By February, we dropped the teaser for our official, branded podcast, The Bootstrapped VC. Throughout my Backstage journey, Arlan and I have been very conscientious about how we navigate the world of diversity and inclusion in regards to my identity and privilege, and the resulting external perceptions. Notice our efforts to call this out and invite everyone into this exploration with the title of our very first Backstage podcast episode, “Bryan is Caucasian, in case you haven’t caught on”, released in March 2017.
My role in our podcasts were fairly all-encompassing. I produced, co-hosted, recorded, and edited the shows and I designed the cover art and made all the accompanying marketing copy, images, and videos. Through the podcast, I learned more about Arlan’s incredible story, and helped our team, Crew, and portfolio founders, Headliners, hone their narratives and grow awareness of what we already knew to be true — that there were incredibly talented and more-than-worthy underrepresented founders being overlooked.
Over the years we released about 80 episodes, including a 6-episode Season 2 of Mission & Values featuring Backstage Headliners. I wrote helpful content for founders on our Medium blog and lead our content hub, which we called Green Room. I also acted as our CTO, setting up and managing our email, SaaS accounts, and other data. I was fairly at home wearing all these hats from my past startup experience. The early days of Backstage were much more like a startup than a traditional venture firm. Given our micro-VC (or even smaller than that…nano?) operational budget, we had no choice but to be scrappy and strategic to punch above our weight.
Design Principal
In September 2017, we held our 2-year anniversary event in San Francisco, and I officially went full-time at Backstage as a Design Principal. This opened up more time for me to experiment with going deeper into portfolio projects. I helped our founders with their pitch decks (design, narrative, and messaging) and even collaborated on more extensive projects like designing the logo for PopCom. I also designed our Santa Monica office space, where our remote team visited from all over the US.
In February 2018 we formed our Deal Flow Team, a diverse group, including me, tasked with surfacing and selecting the best companies for investment who applied for funding via open application. It was a wild experience to see so many startups and learn where each of us gravitated in terms of sector, stage, and founder qualities. We had some heated debates assessing companies that we all enjoyed, and our decisions were made stronger by our disparate professional and personal life experiences.
One of the most memorable experiences we had was helping to get many of our founders out to Austin, TX, for SXSW in March of 2018. Aniyia L. Williams hosted a badass event called Hustle House that featured many of our Headliners. We also found space at a nearby school auditorium for the largest gathering of our portfolio to date. It felt like a family reunion, and I was so humbled and honored to feel welcome and appreciated in that room.
In May 2018, we invested in our 100th portfolio company, and celebrated with a fun campaign the following month. We reached the milestone a year and a half ahead of our expectations — a testament to the talent and hustle of our growing Crew — and we took time to strategize what our next move would be. We had invested in more underrepresented founders than any other venture capital firm, grown our team larger by starting an operational arm, Backstage Studio, and travelled and met great founders and allies around the world.
COO
We announced our next chapter, Backstage Accelerator, in September of 2018. We would launch four 3-month startup accelerator programs (3 US and 1 UK) in Q1 of 2019. To pull off this audacious goal, we needed to recruit amazing teams in each city and support them through our global team. As we scaled to about 40 team members (some full-time, others part-time), it became clear our flat organizational hierarchy was not going to suffice. I stepped up as COO to create a management layer, implement reporting and one-on-one meetings for team members, and help keep our team aligned during the aggressive project timeline.
By June 2019, I’m proud to say that we had crafted the programming, completed a huge application process to select the inaugural participants, ran all 4 Accelerator programs, invested in 24 new companies, and reached countless new people through IRL events and social media and other online channels. It was exhausting, exhilarating, and deeply rewarding. We took giant leaps inline with our mission, made mistakes and learned along the way, and achieved what we set out to do.
Following Accelerator Cohort 1, we decided to retool our business model and learn more about new cities to bring Backstage to. The time was right to push ahead with something we had talked about since the beginning of Backstage — a multi-city tour. Previously in her career, Arlan was a tour manager and Backstage’s brand and project names are rooted in that music business history. Additionally, we believe that great founders are everywhere, not just in the Bay Area or other large startup cities. We want to not only invest in these founders, but also the ecosystems that foster them to grow. We’ll have more to share about Backstage Tour 2020 soon, but it’s going to be an amazing event series with dedicated partners and leaders coming together to support underestimated founders.
General Partner
Throughout my Backstage journey, I’ve watched Arlan grow from someone deathly afraid to speak in front of even 10 people to keynoting at major conferences. I’ve watched her personal story, which inspires so many, get shared by top podcasts, magazines, and soon in her own words in a new book. I’ve watched our founders achieve great milestones and I’ve watched our Crew stay strong through the peaks and valleys of living a worthy mission.
And I can see that I, too, have grown as a leader, a champion for diversity, and as a human being. Thank you to the people who don’t identify as I do for showing me the world through your eyes, the strength you’ve learned to navigate a world that is not a meritocracy, and for inspiring me to use my privilege and talents to lift us all up.
As we approach our 5-year anniversary in September 2020, the time is right for me to take on more responsibility in Backstage’s quest towards a sustainable business model aligned with our strengths and goals. I am honored and thrilled to be joining Arlan and Christie Pitts as a Partner at Backstage, to make Tour 2020 a success, leverage our community to help more underestimated founders, and continue to help Backstage turn the impossible into our story.
Get Involved
In 2020, I’m going to be putting a lot of energy and focus into growing our platform to serve not only our portfolio founders, but all founders. It’s the work we’ve done since day 1, and it’s the most important work we do. If you’re an investor, expert or mentor, or have opportunities or resources to share with underrepresented founders, please get in touch and we can explore working together to eliminate underrepresentation in tech. Founders can go to our website to see funding opportunities.
