Here's Everything We Know About The New Tesla Model X

FREMONT, Calif. -- Amid great fanfare and expectations, Tesla Motors unveiled the Model X, its all-electric SUV, at an event Tuesday night at its Bay Area factory. 

The Model X is the second car available for sale from the electric automaker, which introduced the Model S sedan three years ago. The high-speed Roadster, its first car, was discontinued in 2012.

The all-wheel-drive, seven-passenger X could help Tesla crack into the SUV market. The vehicles experienced a surge in sales over the past year and are popular with female drivers. 

Shoppers can put down $5,000 on Tesla's website to reserve an X when they start rolling out. The base price actually runs up to $132,000 for the Signature Series, which includes add-ons like an autopilot mode and heated steering wheel and seats. 

A less expensive version, the $35,000 Model 3 sedan, is expected to come out in 2017. 

The X boasts a lot of power. It goes from o to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds, and has a range of about 250 miles before the battery needs a recharge.  

Plus, it's stylish. A new feature, the "falcon wing doors," swoop out and up. (It's easy to picture "Silicon Valley" character Russ Hanneman approving of the design.) There are three rows of seats, but the second row holds just two passengers.

The X features a windshield that extends above the driver's head, offering panoramic views and the feel of a helicopter cockpit, Musk said.

Most importantly, though, Musk said that the Model X is safe.

"We've made the safest SUV ever," he said. Sensors can automatically apply the brakes or steer away from cars and dangerous objects, he said during the debut, which was webcast from Tesla's Fremont, California, factory. "There's really nothing that's more important" than safety.

Eyes might be fixed on those back seats, because CEO Elon Musk said in August that they had become a problem during production.  

Tesla experienced success in the luxury market with the Model S, which was the second-highest selling luxury model last year. With the Model X, Tesla is introducing an electric SUV at least a few years before competitors like Mercedes, Porsche and General Motors crack into the field. 

For now, Tesla is niche player. It is forecast to sell almost 29,000 cars this year, according to LMC Automotive. Ford, in contrast, is predicted to move almost 2.5 million vehicles. Analysts see the Model X as a step toward somewhat wider appeal. 

 

“Tesla wants to be a mainstream automaker,” said Doug Gilman, an industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan. “To be a competitive automaker you have to have a whole host of vehicles. You can’t just have one super.”

An SUVs safety and size might attract female drivers with families, analysts said. If the X outsells the S, experts will probably deem the new line a success. 

“The big potential for the Model X is that it’s going to open up a whole new market that they had to fight a little harder for with the Model S. That’s the female market,” said Karl Brauer, a senior director at Kelley Blue Book. “There’s a huge market out there.”

The Fremont factory looked more like a nightclub on Tuesday night as thousands of attendees who had paid at least $5,000 to reserve a Model X sipped wine while listening to remixed versions of hits from Dolly Parton and the Rolling Stones.

Though attendees had yet to see the Model X in person, some people said they had faith in Tesla based on the quality of the Model S.

"I love my Range Rover, but I can't stand going to the gas station," Dana Cappiello, 55, a realtor from San Francisco, told The Huffington Post."It was as simple as that." 

She was peeved by the late start. CEO Elon Musk took the stage in a dark jacket and jeans just before 9 p.m. PST, nearly an hour behind schedule.

The audience erupted with laughter as he touted the environmental benefits of his all-electric vehicles while alluding to Volkswagen's ongoing scandal over software that helped its cars outrageously cheat on diesel emissions tests. Volkswagen is the biggest automaker in the world by sales.

"We designed this car well before recent events," Musk said.

Long lines formed for test rides in the factory parking lot after the presentation ended. 

For the company to become profitable, Tesla needs to increase sales by hundreds of thousands of cars per year, according to John Humphrey, a senior vice president at J.D. Power and Associates. 

“These customers are evangelical about the brand,” Humphrey said. “Going downmarket and not losing the allure of the brand is the challenge. Each rung you go down, you lose a little shine on it.”

Tesla stock was up nearly 2 percent in pre-market trading on Wednesday morning. 

This story has been updated to include additional comments from analysts.

A previous version of this article stated that the Model X is Tesla's second car. It's actually the second model currently available, because the company had discontinued the Roadster in 2012.

Tax Havens Are Turning The U.S. Into An Unequal Aristocracy

To Gabriel Zucman, protégé of rock star French economist Thomas Piketty, the United States is starting to look a lot like Europe in the late 1800s.

“There’s been this great reversal where, in the 19th century, the U.S. was much more equal than Europe, and thought of Europe as being way too unequal,” Zucman, a native Parisian, told The Huffington Post in an interview on Tuesday. “Now, the U.S. is unequal and many people think Europe is too equal.”

The gaping chasm between the super-rich and the rest keeps widening. Now, the 28-year-old assistant professor at University of California, Berkeley hopes his newly-published 116-page book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, will jolt lawmakers into tackling a key agent of income inequality: tax havens.

Thanks to a confluence of regulatory and geographic advantages, Switzerland positioned itself as the first major tax haven just after World War I, providing shelter to the wealth of European nobles as France and other allies levied heavy taxes to pay off public debt and compensate war victims. Until then, European governments had hardly taxed income generated from stocks and property.

By the outbreak of World War II, the tiny alpine nation made itself even more attractive by passing bank secrecy laws. The legislation purportedly protected the wealth of persecuted Jews. Instead, according to Zucman, Jews made up just 1.5 percent of those with assets in Swiss banks. 

That set the standard for Bermuda, the Virgin Islands and other secretive wealth refuges.

“The substantial revenue that’s lost has to be made up for by taxing middle class people,” Zucman said. 

But the problem isn’t just about rich individuals stashing their assets in offshore accounts.

Despite increased financial scrutiny following the Great Recession, corporate behemoths such as Apple, Starbucks and Microsoft continue to funnel their profits through subsidiaries in countries with favorable tax policies, outrageously slashing their U.S. tax bills. The result, Zucman argues, is that 8 percent of the world's financial wealth is held offshore, resulting in a tax revenue loss of at least $200 billion.

That, Zucman says, is a problem. But he has solutions.

First, he believes the U.S. and other large economies should impose economic sanctions on tax havens, forcing them to make up the difference in lost revenue through trade tariffs.

“The idea is that we need to change the incentives [that enable] tax havens to facilitate tax avoidance and tax evasion,” Zucman said.

Then, countries such as the U.S. should reform their corporate tax policies to geographically bind taxable profits to the location of the sales that generated them. For example, he said that if Microsoft theoretically makes 50 percent of its sales in the U.S., then 50 percent of its global profits should be taxed in the U.S.

“It’s very easy for firms to move profits to Bermuda,” Zucman said. “But they cannot move their customers to Bermuda.”

Still, Zucman said he recognizes that the political appetite for curbing tax havens is weak. None of the current crop of presidential candidates -- ranging from populists (albeit of opposite political ilks) like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump to establishment candidates like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush -- has produced any concrete plan to overhaul the tax system, he said.

Zucman fears the risk of inaction.

“There is a tipping point above which inequality becomes detrimental to growth and dangerous to society,” he said. “Nobody knows whether we are far or close from this tipping point, but it is there and it is coming.”

Also on HuffPost:

Elites Don't Favor Income Equality When It Costs Them Too Much

A new behavioral economics study shows that elites don't favor a level economic playing field when it's expensive for them to do so, regardless of where they position themselves on the political spectrum.

The report, which a group of economists published in the journal Science, shows that the uber-priviledged are more likely to choose an efficient solution over an equal one when it comes to redistributing wealth -- and it doesn't matter whether they're Republicans or Democrats.

The authors recapped their findings over at Slate:

Our results thus shine a revealing light on American politics and policy. They suggest that the policy response to rising economic inequality lags so far behind the preferences of ordinary Americans for the simple reason that the elites who make policy—regardless of political party—just don’t care much about equality. Hemingway’s illusory but widely shared view that the only thing that separates the rich from the rest is their money thus disguises a central pathology of American public life. When American government undemocratically underdelivers economic equality, the cause is less party than caste.

The researchers examined three groups for the study: One represented Americans across the income spectrum and was selected to represent the country's population at large; a second contained Berkeley grads with bachelor's degrees (the "intermediary elite"); and the third consisted of Yale Law School students (the "extreme elite"). The people in these groups took part in a game set up by the researchers where they were told they had a certain amount of money each and could redistribute some of it to an anonymous person if they wanted. 

Here's the game in more detail, from Slate:

Each subject could keep or redistribute as much of her budget as she liked, but with a twist. Whereas the standard version of this experiment—known to economists as a “dictator game”—asks subjects to split a fixed pie, we varied the “price” of redistribution. In some cases, giving was expensive: Every dollar of her own that a subject sacrificed bought her anonymous beneficiary as little as a dime. In other cases, giving was “cheap”: Every dollar sacrificed contributed as much as $10 to her beneficiary. Most cases fell between these extremes. 

The study found that pretty much everyone believed in redistribution, but elites became less okay with it when they had to offer more to make a greater impact. When the cost of giving away money went up (for example, when giving a dollar only gave 10 cents to the other person), Yale Law students -- almost all of whom identified themselves as Democrats -- were much less likely to want to give their money away than the group of regular people. In the economists' parlance, the elites "favored efficiency over equality."

About half of regular people preferred efficiency over equality. Berkeley grads favored efficiency by a factor of 3-to-2, and Yale students favored the efficient outcome by 4-to-1.

This outcome has some major policy implications, as indicated by the researchers. The top levels of government are full of elites. And even those who say they believe in redistribution and equality might not be willing to spend what it takes to actually achieve that. 

Here's The Joke Of A Sustainability Report That VW Put Out Last Year

Now that we know Volkswagen purposefully rigged 11 million vehicles to circumvent environmental rules, releasing an enormous amount of pollutants into the atmosphere, the company’s Sustainability Report from 2014 comes off as a horrible joke.

"It's a jaw-dropper. So unbelievable," Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council told The Huffington Post.

In the report, which was reviewed by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the automaker details its commitment to the customer, its employees and, of course, to the environment. “Environment” is mentioned 335 times over 156-pages -- an average of twice per page. 

“The Volkswagen Group has a long tradition of resolute commitment to environmental protection.” -- page 86.

“We intend to put our creative powers to good use for the benefit of people and the environment." -- page 14.

As we now know, Volkswagen put its creative powers to use in a far less noble way, devising software to purposefully cheat on emissions tests and secretly installing it its diesel vehicles. On Wednesday, chief executive Martin Winterkorn was forced to quit his job at the world’s largest automaker in the wake of the growing scandal and in anticipation of billions in fines, lawsuits and increasing customer rage. More firings are on deck.

VW’s report follows a long tradition of companies using self-reported data -- sometimes certified by well-paid consulting firms -- to make broad declarations of ethical commitment, used to reassure the public that companies aren't just profit-seeking monsters. These are called “corporate social responsibility” reports, "CSR" is the biz lingo. This is a huge movement; most corporations produce these things. Here’s Coca-Cola’s. And Ikea’s. And Exxon-Mobil’s.

And, of course, not all of these efforts are mere publicity ploys. Some companies take this stuff very seriously, even tying environmental goals to executive pay -- an extremely sigficant matter. But in the wake of the VW scandal, it’s going to be harder for anyone to believe a word in these reports.

“[Volkswagen] will probably severely tarnish this entire movement,” writes Greer in a blog post. She’s written before about the key danger of CSR programs: that they end up as merely shiny promotional efforts that allow businesses to sidestep true responsibility for their endeavors.

"There are some companies doing good things," Greer told HuffPost. "Oftentimes they're just doing it and not necessarily putting it in a report."

Yet many efforts are sideshows. Companies give money to philanthropies, for example, but fail to examine the core parts of their businesses that need attention.

Volkswagen will probably severely tarnish this entire movement. Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Greer is working with Target now on cleaning up environmental issues in the retailer's supply chain. She also commends Apple for dealing with pollution issues overseas. "They have a CSR report, but I think they are walking the walk more than just talking the talk," she said of Apple.

VW’s absurd document follows a long tradition. BP is also notorious for the false promise of its environmental slogans. The oil company won plaudits for acknowledging the reality of global warming and for the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” back in 2000. Then, in 2010, BP caused one of the worst oil spills in history. 

By contrast, Exxon Mobil after the Exxon Valdez disaster became “religious about safety standards,” writes Chrystia Freeland for the Washington Post in 2010. Getting the oil out of the ground and moving it around the world without killing anyone or destroying the ocean is a core social responsibility.

So is adhering to environmental regulations, which VW brazenly decided to forgo.

Companies need to start with those simple goals before moving on to marketing materials.

5 Questions For Business Leaders Who Believe In A Sustainable Revolution

What do a prominent Californian Internet entrepreneur, an international trade union boss and an African business leader have in common?

They have come together to join The B Team, a business-led movement aiming to redefine the role of business in society.

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, and Bob Collymore, CEO of Kenyan-based mobile operator Safaricom, have made a commitment to showcase how business can lead in areas ranging from climate change and corruption, to workplace well-being and meeting the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations.

Benioff will work with other B Team members, such as Sir Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington, on developing the organization's "100% Human at Work" initiative, which is focusing on employee wellness, increasing diversity and ensuring equality and fair pay.

Burrow, who represents around 180 million workers in 162 countries, will join forces with Collymore as well as Paul Polman, CEO of the consumer products multinational Unilever, on a new initiative to galvanize business action to achieve the 17 SDGs outlined by the U.N.

Polman, a founding member of the B Team, on Thursday described the SDGs as providing "us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fight poverty, preserve our ecosystems and alleviate human suffering. These issues are inextricably linked. While the moral case for action is clear -- so, too, is the business case. We need more business leaders to champion the global goals, and the hard work must begin now.” 

The Huffington Post sent all three new B Team members a questionnaire to find out why they have decided to stand up and be counted on the issue of sustainability and how they plan to embed change.

You can read the responses from Collymore and Burrow below. While Benioff declined to take part, he did say in a statement that “every company must serve the interests of all stakeholders, not just shareholders, but also their customers, employees, communities and the environment. We have an obligation to make the world a better place for generations to come." 

1) As a leader, what can you contribute to solving the sustainability challenges of our age?

Bob Collymore: I have discovered that to actually drive change, you must be the one who is not afraid to lead where no one else has gone -- not necessarily because you have a better understanding of what needs to be done, but because it can be harder for others to take the same step. So I have committed myself to being ready to be the first one to take that step. 

I also believe that trying to resolve all of the sustainability challenges of our age is unrealistic. Pinpointing focus on a small number of the most pressing challenges that will influence the way we live and do business in our region is more effective. Only then can we work together to create workable and sustainable solutions to those challenges.

Sharan Burrow: Climate action to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees or less is an imperative, just as it is to ensure we live within planetary boundaries. Equally, the social base of a just world needs to be renovated to ensure both zero carbon and zero poverty. With 180 million members worldwide, my work as the general secretary of the ITUC is to work to ensure that governments act and that there is the social dialogue between employers and workers that is essential to realize this transformation of our economies is a just transition.

2) What are you personally committed to doing in your own life to showcase what is possible?

BC: By demanding responsibility from myself, from my team, from my company, from my peers. That means working more transparently, making everyone accountable and demanding responsibility from our entire supply chain so that we all share the same commitment to sustainability.

I am committed to creating the foundations for a sustainability movement among African corporates that will catapult this discussion to the forefront of their awareness. This is not an individual effort. Strength is gained by gathering support from like-minded individuals to be part of a wide community who are united by a common goal to work toward a sustainable future.

SB: The focus of my professional life is dedicated to sustainability, equality and decent work. The ITUC frontlines are eliminating slavery; realizing rights, just wages and safe and secure work in supply chains; and fighting for a zero-carbon, zero-poverty world. Our core values are peace, democracy and social justice.

3) How will you embed change within your own organization and how will you measure success?

BC: Safaricom is making some progress toward embedding sustainability into its day-to-day operations. We are about to publish our third annual sustainability report, where we examine every facet of our business and track how we perform against globally recognized standards for accountability. So far, we have found that our willingness to be open and transparent about our operations and our proactive approach to sustainability reporting is an additional assurance to our shareholders and our wider business ecosystem beyond the more traditional business reporting.

SB: When the rule of law demands corporations respect workers' rights, when all governments and employers have a business plan for decarbonisation, jobs, skills and related investment for a just transition, and when all migrants have the right to work with other vital economic and social rights, we will see a pathway to success.

4) How will you leverage your influence within your own networks to create a movement of change?

BC: As we address some of the biggest sustainability issues that we face in Africa, I believe the business community can accomplish the most significant results. As a member of the U.N. Global Compact Africa strategy team, I have worked to embed the concept of corporate sustainability in Africa in order to promote more responsible business practices across the continent. Alongside a growing cohort of like-minded peers, we are already seeding the concept of sustainable business practices amongst our partners in corporate Kenya, and we are seeing traction among some of the more forward-thinking organizations who have put in place tangible milestones such as annual sustainability reporting or who have made commitments to long-term interventions.

SB: The recent trade union climate summit saw 250 leaders from 60 nations commit to fight for decarbonisation of our economies and a just transition in the quest for climate justice. Workers and their unions know there are "no jobs on a dead planet."

5) What has made you want to stand up and publicly be seen to care about issues of sustainability?

BC: Working in Africa -- which is very rich in resources but at same time can be quite poor in their management -- has definitely catalyzed my belief that there can be no future for any business if it does not move beyond immediate outputs to long-term outcomes. Businesses need to create a long-term view that shifts how we view success from immediate profits to becoming agents of change that can both manage the growing needs of an increasing number of stakeholders while providing sustainable solutions to big issues like food security or water scarcity.

CB: As a teacher by trade and a trade union leader for more than 30 years, change has been a constant feature of our lives. The science tells us the future we face without climate action -- so no one has a choice to ignore the fact that humanity has a rendezvous with itself.

Why Business Needs To Learn The Language Of Love

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi - 13th century 

 

Why is it that business finds it so hard to speak the language of love?

This is a question we should all be asking ourselves as Pope Francis tours America to spread his message of our shared humanity.

Many of us are so lost in our hectic work schedules, set within the broader frame of a world moving ever faster, that we can easily forget the purpose of our lives.

This is a terrible shame. The core of the problem is that we have developed a corporate culture that is based largely on fear -- that unless we are number one, then we are failing, and that at any moment defeat can be snatched from the jaws of victory.

No wonder then that business is dominated by the language of war: wiping out the opposition, fighting for market share and so on.

Warfare, as we know, carries a terrible toll. Striving to be at the top of the pile can often lead to a loss of values. Volkswagen is learning this to its great cost. Just two months after it overtook Toyota to become the world’s biggest automaker, it finds it has lost its way.

Its U.S. chief executive, Michael Horn, said as much yesterday when admitting the company had illegally rigged emissions tests. “Our company was dishonest,” he said. “This kind of behavior is totally inconsistent with our qualities.”

What Pope Francis is offering us is the opportunity to come back to ourselves and recognize that the damage we are wreaking on society and the environment is the result of seeing ourselves as isolated individuals rather than as members of a common shared global society.

He reminds us that our fixation with winning leads, on the opposite side of the equation, to others losing. Just look at the chasm between the rich and poor, between the developed and the developing nations.

Speaking earlier this summer, he warned that “behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called ‘the dung of the devil.’ An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.”

The Pope's message is starting to resonate in business circles. Unilever CEO Paul Polman, for example, points out repeatedly that a business cannot succeed in a society that is failing.

To go beyond the duality of what the poet Rumi describes as wrongdoing and rightdoing, we need to come back to what is most important in our lives, which is what it means to love and be loved.

As my colleague Arianna Huffington pointed out at a gathering of business leaders yesterday, eulogies at funerals never talk about whether someone increased market share or raised profits. They talk about care and compassion, being a good friend and making a positive difference in the world.

Rather than focus solely on the negative news of Volkswagen’s unravelling, we should also look with gratitude to companies that are resisting the trap of putting profit maximization above all else.

One example is Kickstarter, which has transformed the way creative projects are financed. It this week announced it has chosen to protect itself from the temptation of ever greater wealth by dropping the "Inc." from its name and reincorporating as a public benefit corporation.

Many people falsely judge love as having no place at work, that it represents weakness. But love is the strongest power we can muster. It means we will produce goods and services that make the world a better place; it means that our businesses will be managed in a responsible way for the long term; it means treating people and the planet with respect; it means that we will be able to look our children in the eye without feeling the need to look away.

Of course it is true that business is tough and it is competitive and it is getting ever more complex. But we should remember that when everything seems to be changing, it is even more important to know what needs to remain steady.

We have created an economic system that can seem like an impregnable fortress against which we appear to be powerless. But every thought we have and every action we take either reinforces it or helps to start breaking down its high walls.

Love has been and will always be at the root of all the joy in our lives. For the sake of everyone, don’t leave it at home when you set off for work tomorrow morning.

This Black Woman Is Turning The White Investing World On Its Head

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Try to picture a prototypical tech investor. If you’re in the tech world already or if you watch “Silicon Valley” or read the business pages, you’re likely envisioning a genial-looking white guy. Maybe a little nerdy, Bill Gates-y. He probably has a degree from Stanford or maybe Harvard, possibly MIT.

Arlan Hamilton is nothing like that.

“I’m black, female and gay,” she told The Huffington Post by phone recently. “I am a triple threat to a lot of people, but not in a Beyoncé way.”

Still, on Thursday, Hamilton officially became a tech investor.  After years of trying to break into the venture capital world, the 34-year-old Dallas native launched her own “syndicate” -- an early-stage investing fund on AngelList, a website for angel investors and startup founders.

Her fund’s goal: early-stage investing in underrepresented founders. Hamilton is looking for entrepreneurs who are black, Latino, gay or female -- the kind of people who typically miss out on the money sloshing around Silicon Valley these days. Hamilton believes she’s the first black woman to lead a syndicate on the startup site.

Tech companies and venture capitalists are talking a lot these days about getting more women and minorities into the tech pipeline, sponsoring programs to teach girls to code or making sure to interview more women and minorities for jobs, like Facebook is now doing. But a fund like Hamilton’s is another piece of the puzzle. The diverse startup founders she backs can turn into the big-tech CEOs of tomorrow -- and they’ll have diversity baked into their DNA. Meanwhile, Hamilton serves as inspiration for anyone looking to break into the ultra-exclusive investing world.

"Anytime you have a visible example, someone you can point to and say here’s someone unusual doing something different, it opens up opportunities for others," Susan Kimberlin, a former Salesforce product manager who is now an early-stage investor and startup adviser, told HuffPost. "It’s like, 'Oh look, if that person can do it, so can I.'"

I’m black, female and gay. I am a triple threat to a lot of people, but not in a Beyoncé way.

Hamilton’s fund is relatively small. She plans to take investments as low as $1,000, with the end goal of rolling those up into a VC-sized fund of between $100,000 and $250,000 per company. She'll help entrepreneurs who are just starting out and need that little bit to keep going, as well as more seasoned founders. Major VCs don’t typically work in such tiny sums.

"A lot [of companies] aren’t ready for $1.5 million, but they may be dead in the water if they don’t get something," Hamilton said, explaining that not all founders can just raise cash from friends and family. That's not a possibility" for a lot of people who didn't just graduate from an Ivy League school, she points out. Those people don't have as much luck with venture capitalists or angel investors, but they have just as many good ideas.

“Black founders do not get money compared to white founders. The fact that she’s directing attention and making a material difference to these companies is huge,”  said Kimberlin, who met Hamilton at a course for new investors given by 500 Startups, a well-known incubator, and has been helping her launch the fund.

...and let me reiterate: investing in underrepresented founders is not charity. It shouldn't make you feel warm & fuzzy. It's GOOD BUSINESS.

— Arlan (@ArlanWasHere) August 4, 2015

A band tour manager who’s worked on shows with stars like Pharrell and Justin Timberlake, Hamilton started thinking a few years ago about the venture capital industry after reading interviews given by Troy Carter (Lady Gaga's former manager), Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber's manager), Guy Oseary (Madonna and U2's manager), and Ashton Kutcher. 

She also saw that Ellen Degeneres was doing investing and was inspired. (Hamilton simply calls her Ellen -- "I'm a lesbian and we don't need her last name. She's like Madonna. Or Mothership," she told HuffPost.)

Intrigued by how VCs invest in entrepreneurs and help them grow, she wanted in.

Hamilton, who was voted most likely to succeed in her Dallas high school but didn’t make it to college, started cold-calling bigshot VCs, eventually signing up for a class at 500 Startups.

.@sacca contributed $500 to help me attend @500Startups emerging investor program at @StanfordCPD in May. He doesn't know me. That's action.

— Arlan (@ArlanWasHere) August 4, 2015

Inspired by the class, she wrote a blog post on Medium about the lack of diversity in the venture world. It was blisteringly honest: The VC world was too white and missing out on huge opportunities from entrepreneurs of color, who were having a harder time raising funds.

“DEAR WHITE VENTURE CAPITALISTS: DO NOT PITY BLACK FOUNDERS!” she wrote. “Do the same thing you do with white and Asian founders and invest in them because you want to make money. Do not think of this as a social mission.”

The responses from VCs rolled in. There were some quasi-job offers from firms, she said, but nothing that paid very much or put her at the heart of the deal-making universe. Hamilton had made a hobby out of reaching out to small business owners and connecting them with investors she had met, but it wasn’t paying off. “The investors would go for it and I’d get a pat on the head,” she said. “I didn’t want to be on the sidelines.”

She’s not on the sidelines anymore. By Thursday night, Hamilton already pulled in $19,500 from five investors -- including a partner at 500 Startups, a former Googler and a designer from Adobe. Investors pay Hamilton 15 percent and AngelList 5 percent of any profits they make.

"Using AngelList is also a brilliant way for Arlan to start making an impact right away," Sean Percival, the 500 Startups partner who's investing in Hamilton's fund, told HuffPost. "It challenges the traditional path one might become a venture capitalist, and that’s something we support."

Hamilton wasn’t ready to name the companies she plans on backing, but she’s excited about the possibilities. “There’s such potential in tech. We’re just scraping the surface."

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