A venture capital firm started by Alexis Ohanian has hired away Reddit's head of HR to bring culture to startups
- Initialized Capital has announced Katelin Holloway is joining the early-stage venture firm as a partner.
- Holloway was the vice president of people and culture at Reddit, where she helped grow the company from 70 employees to 650 in four years.
- Her hire marks a fundamental shift in how venture funds utilize partners with a background in human resources.
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A venture capital firm started by Alexis Ohanian, a cofounder of Reddit, has hired away the website's head of human resources to bring culture to the cap table.
At Initialized Capital, Katelin Holloway is more than a talent partner overseeing recruiting across a fund's portfolio. She joins the early-stage firm as a full partner with check-writing ability.
Many firms have a talent partner - or an entire team of talent partners if the firm has $10 billion under management - to help place job candidates at companies they've invested in. It's considered one of the many ways an investor adds value.
Holloway said she interviewed with several institutional investors who tried to sideline her to the back office, but she wasn't interested in those roles. She said the talent partners she knows are "understaffed and underresourced."
"Founders are asking them for the sun, the moon, and the stars, and they're trying to service the entire portfolio," she said on a call.
There's a chronic shortage of engineers and product managers in the valley, and they want to go to work in an environment where their input is valued. In recent years, the tech industry has been barraged by controversy on issues ranging from climate change to data privacy to sexual misconduct allegations. The demand for their skills means tech workers don't necessarily have to stick it out at a job where they're not happy.
The tight labor market puts a premium on Holloway's skills.
Holloway said she's going to Initialized Capital because the firm is stacked with operators whose skills are necessary to build a high-growth startup. The firm, which was cofounded by Holloway's old boss, Alexis Ohanian, has partners who come from engineering, design, product, and communications. With this latest hire, Initialized Capital is making clear that it recognizes the importance culture plays at startups from an early stage.
A culture guru for startups
Her mark on Reddit has made Holloway one of the valley's most sought-after experts on "people and culture," as human resources has been rebranded in recent years. She's a formal adviser to Lattice, a startup that makes software for performance reviews, and companies like Helpr and Refresh Body, which deal in corporate benefits. And many more founders slide into her inbox for advice on hiring and compensation, she said.
Holloway said she wanted to get into investing so she could serve many more startups as their culture guru. In addition to sourcing deals, she will mentor founders across the portfolio on questions they have, like when to hire a head of people, why they need structured compensation, and how to handle on-boarding, reviews, and exit interviews.
She hasn't made her first deal yet, but said she's particularly excited about cutting checks to female founders and companies building tools for women's health, human resources, and distributed workforces.
Before investing, Holloway was the first human resources hire at Reddit. She joined the company in 2016 after its reputation in Silicon Valley had been shredded by a series of crises, including a user revolt and high-profile ousting of its female chief executive. Holloway's job was to create an environment where people would want to work. Reddit grew from 70 employees to 650 people when she left in December.
Holloway was the architect of the company's family policy, one of the most expansive in the industry. Reddit offers four months parental leave for male and female employees, and gives them a $18,000 stipend for expenses related to family-planning, including egg-freezing, in vitro fertilization, and adoption. The policy also gives paid time off to any employee who has a miscarriage, or whose partner suffers a pregnancy loss.