Katelin Holloway – Human Side of Venture Investing at 776 (EP.490)
Episode publishedPodcast: Capital Allocators – Inside th...Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Transcript preview
Preview only
Here's my secret, Ted. Early stage investing is fundamentally about people and systems under conditions of extreme uncertainty and distress. After a decade of operating as an HR executive and helping companies from inception to hyper growth and blitzscaling through eventual exit, that pattern alignment of playbooks I was using to support organizations turns out it was an exact match to growing and supporting a portfolio of organizations. I developed this thesis that if early stage investing is akin to every HR process that I was the godmother of in this new world of people and culture, why are
I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators. My guest on today's show is Caitlin Holloway, founding partner at seven seventy six, technology focused venture firm backing great early stage entrepreneurs that she started with Alexis Ohanian in 2020. Alexis was a past guest on the show, and that conversation is replayed in the feed. Caitlin and I explore the intersection of human capital and venture capital. We cover her upbringing, work alongside Steve Jobs at Pixar, and turnaround of Reddit with Alexis. We then turn to the application of her operational experience to venture investing. We di
Thank you so much for having me, Ted. I'm really excited to chat. I'd love
to go back to your early career.
I'm gonna take you back to the very beginning. I was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, raised in Stockton, California. If you know anything about either of these great American cities, you'll know well enough that I can fend for myself out there. I'm pretty sure that our main export was grit for both of those towns. I wasn't born into a world where I had a ton of opportunity. My resume looks wildly non linear. In my early part of my career, I worked so many different jobs out of necessity. Retail, hospitality, I worked out in the fields picking cucumbers and green beans, eventually made my way into t
What were some of those early patterns that you drew?
I got good at reading people, understanding power dynamic, that it didn't always match an org chart. Didn't matter whether I was out picking green beans or if I was booking someone at the PD up in Arcata. There was a cultural framework that was established within not just each of the industries, but within each of those companies or groups of humans coming together to do something that didn't always read in sequential order. I learned how to navigate quickly. Keep your head down and make sure you make good with the right people. Make sure that people know your name that you want and don't that
And then what'd you do after undergrad?
Teaching was the first job that really shaped me. This was back in 2001. I taught first and second grade, and then I moved up to teaching high school. Working in a classroom with thirty three first and second graders, all of them with severe learning disabilities. Most of the students were English as a second language. This was in Stockton. I learned a lot about the consequences of bad systems on real people. That easily was the hardest job of my career to date. So I quit. I love teaching. I was raised by a teacher. My mom taught third grade her entire life. I deeply understood why it was the
Keep exploring with a free account.
A free account preserves the short preview. Upgrade to Pro for the full transcript and episode chat.