Carter's journey began as a cryptographic engineer. One of his first major roles was at Cryptography Research, Inc. where he co-invented the security features which became part of the Blu-Ray disc format. He led the sale of his division of CRI to Macrovision (now Rovi) for $70M (and CRI eventually sold to Rambus for $350M).

Since then, Carter has launched his own angel fund, Inara Ventures, which invests in ventures that promote the self-expression and compensation of artists, designers and musicians and other creatives, and which give consumers access to creative minds. He is also an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Director at The Founder Institute. 

Carter is a long-time fan of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, featuring Francisco's "Money Speech" on Inara's website and acting as writer and editor for Capitalism magazine.