Arlan 👊🏾

This month I’m celebrating 7 full years of alcohol sobriety🥹 I spoke a little bit about how I quit after 15 years of addiction in my new video. I hope it helps someone today. youtu.be/6hJxkxPNfW0?si…

How to Pitch to an Investor: youtube.com/watch?v=hPyu9P… How to Invest in Startups: youtu.be/GYoD8OsSGzY

@JoshuaOgundu I honestly didn't know you were not shown the episode by the producers. If I had known, I would have made sure you saw it. I'm sorry you didn't see it this whole time. @gefensk You weren't shown it either?

@ArlanWasHere It shouldn’t have taken all this

@ArlanWasHere What happened to the footage of the BBC show we shot? Never received it

@todd_x_y @anothercohen Hi, Todd, We send updates about Backstage quite often to our Reg CF investors. You can reach out to Ops@BackstageCapital.com and they’ll help. With so many emails, some are bound to get lost or bounce back. But the team will help.

@ArlanWasHere @anothercohen I’m a backstage investor via the crowdfund on Republic and I’ve only received a single update, on 3/25/2024. Any and all correspondence has been related to investment finalization and required K1 docs. Maybe your retail investors somehow got left in the dark?

Do you all remember when Backstage Capital raised like $5m on Republic from retail investors a few years back and in return essentially agreed to getting $.12 for every dollar in profit the fund returned? I wonder what happens to them now 🤔

@ArlanWasHere A true fan!!

@AnkoFelici @anothercohen This actually made me laugh out loud. Thank you.

@anothercohen She had no relevant skills in tech or investing. People invested in her just because she was a fat black alcoholic homeless lesbian. The outcomes were predictable.

@iamjakestream @anothercohen I know of dozens of busy investors and fund managers who don’t answer all of their emails. I can name dozens.

@ArlanWasHere @anothercohen If you want to help, you can tell your "operations team" to follow up on the email I sent a few days ago. And are you saying that while you are ostensibly taking money from people and being paid to invest it, you don't answer your emails?

@kitun @iamjakestream Scott, why is that?

@iamjakestream Not surprising at all

I can’t believe this shit is still going on. What a clown show.

I don’t doubt that. I have had my away message up for quite a long time. I don’t read most of my emails. I’m trying to help resolve your grievance now. I can’t change what happened in the past, but we can work to answer now. If you want. If you don’t want that, I’m not sure what you’re saying/asking.

@ArlanWasHere @anothercohen I've also cc'ed you on all of these emails.

@iamjakestream @anothercohen I’m not familiar with the conversation so cannot speak to this directly. But you can reach out to the email address I mentioned and someone will reply during business hours.

@ArlanWasHere @anothercohen For any real business, if you believed the value of it was >$0, you would take that deal in a heartbeat.

@iamjakestream @anothercohen We haven’t raised more operating expense dollars than deployable investment capital. Your investment is not worth $0. However, you can connect in the same thread about the $1 proposal and ask them if it’s possible to do this.

@ArlanWasHere @anothercohen Since it seems you've raised more money for "operating expenses" than you have for the actual funds you manage, my assumption is that investment is worth $0. I've reached out to your team also to get them to buy my position for $1 so that I can take the tax loss.

@iamjakestream @anothercohen Ok the same email address and mention Studio rather than Reg CF.

@ArlanWasHere @anothercohen I wasn't part of the Reg CF, I invested in Backstage Studio years ago. I've never received an update or financials. I got emails about some sort of restructuring years ago, but never got any executed docs or any confirmation of what I'm actually invested in.

@anothercohen Oh ok, thanks for letting me know.

Just to clear the record ** I am not an investor **

@iamjakestream @anothercohen Ok, if you email Ops@BackstageCapital.com and let them know, they’ll check to see why you haven’t and they’ll make sure you receive them in the future. As the subject, mention “missing Reg CF email updates”.

@ArlanWasHere @anothercohen @ArlanWasHere I am an investor and I have received no emails from you or your team

@anothercohen In case you don’t check your X messages (I miss some of mine), I’ve dm’d you so we can have a call. I think it’ll be better to discuss by phone or zoom. Up for it?

I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to raise and run a venture firm from scratch, and one with the number of portfolio companies we have, or as trailblazing as ours has been in the venture ecosystem, but it’s not a standard 2-person operation using Carta on the back end. This is sincerely the case. We hired several people after the raise because we were told that we could raise each year as needed. The idea was to raise $1M - $2M every year or two. Then a few months later, we were told they got it wrong and we couldn’t. We adapted, had two rounds of layoffs, survived covid as a company, and invested in several companies. We could have gone under, but we kept adapting and I kept pouring my personal money into the company to keep us afloat. None of this has been easy. I don’t know what you think is going on here but there’s no big secret or scam.

@ArlanWasHere I don't know how much you raised since it's not public but assuming you hit your pubic $30m fundraise goal (which I heard did not happen), you're telling me a $30m fund has $1.7m/year in expenses?? Even a standard 2/20 fund would only take $600k a year in fees

@obsidianbank @anothercohen 👆🏾You = up. And I can’t edit it. But I meant “I gave up half my equity.”

@obsidianbank @anothercohen I gave you half my equity. Meaning I am diluted by half. Not in exchange for money. Anyone who wants to do that is welcomed to.

We’ve been investors in and advisors to Akash Systems since 2017! Proud to see them shine. Huge thanks to Sarah Guo for hosting Felix Ejeckam & Ty Mitchell on No Priors. Watch the full compelling interview: youtu.be/xypuFnbudzI?si…. + Shoutout to @mcuban & our Backstage syndicate for backing!

We have sent more than a dozen detailed updates since the raise in Q1 2021. They (and the details in the documents you signed) mention that the funding went mainly to operations, which is why we raised. We grew our team and processes. It covered approx 3 years of expenses. We did raise capital like we said and deployed it across several companies, including OpenAI, BoldHue, Akash, and others. We raised from individuals, and Bank of America, Comcast, and others.

@ArlanWasHere Ok - questions: Where did the $5m raised from retail investors to fund management company operations go over the last 3 years? Did you subsequently raise the fund you told retail you were going to after that raise and if so, how large was it?