Katelin Holloway – Human Side of Venture Investing at 776 (EP.490)
•March 9, 2026
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Why It Matters
By treating venture investing as a human‑capital discipline, firms can unlock superior returns and reduce failure risk, reshaping how capital is allocated to early‑stage startups.
Key Takeaways
- •Early-stage investing mirrors HR: people, culture, systems at scale
- •Sourcing founders is equivalent to recruiting top talent
- •Intentional culture design drives outsized financial returns for companies
- •Restoring trust and social contracts fixes crisis startups
- •Human‑capital focus differentiates 776’s venture approach and adds value
Summary
The episode centers on Katelin Holloway, founding partner of 776, a technology‑focused venture firm she launched with Alexis Ohanian in 2020. Drawing on a decade of HR leadership at Pixar, Clout and Reddit, Holloway argues that early‑stage investing is fundamentally a people problem, not just a financial one.
Holloway breaks venture work into three buckets—sourcing, underwriting and servicing—mirroring recruiting, due‑diligence and portfolio support. She stresses that sourcing founders is identical to recruiting top talent, and that intentional culture design, frequent feedback loops, and psychological safety generate outsized returns. At Reddit, she demonstrated that scaling trust precedes scaling product.
Memorable anecdotes include her time at Pixar, where Steve Jobs insisted leaders “look out the windows” to see the people their decisions affect, and her Reddit turnaround, where she met individually with all 75 employees to rebuild the social contract. These stories illustrate how human‑centric systems can revive faltering companies.
The takeaway for investors is clear: embed HR rigor into deal sourcing and portfolio management, prioritize diversity on boards, and treat human capital as a strategic asset. Firms that institutionalize these practices can differentiate themselves, mitigate risk, and capture higher upside in an uncertain startup landscape.
Original Description
Katelin Holloway is a Founding Partner at Seven Seven Six, a 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.
Katelin 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 discuss 776’s sourcing and underwriting of founders, interviewing approach, investment selection, and scaling the highly personal approach it takes to add value to portfolio companies.
Learn more about our Strategic Investments: Old Well Labs (https://www.oldwell-labs.com/ted).
Subscribe on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/capital-allocators-inside-the-institutional/id1223764016
Original Publish Date: 03/09/2026
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