- As you've probably heard by now,
I'm coming back as the president and CEO
of Y Combinator next year.
It's a true honor and I'm excited.
YC made me, but I made Initialized.
And so today, I want to introduce you
to the new managing partners of Initialized Capital,
Jen Wolf and Brett Gibson.
We built a $3 billion venture capital fund
that we started in 2012,
and 10 years later, I'm passing the torch.
After I left YC as a partner,
I set out to work with the smartest people
who I knew were great designers,
PMs, managers and engineers,
and that's Jen and Brett in a nutshell.
Jen was actually my boss in 2008, but we first met
when we were first starting our careers in 1997.
That's us right there.
Oh, the '90s.
Brett and I co-founded Posterous, Posthaven,
and wrote software together at YC.
He actually rewrote Paul Graham's code
for applications and recommendation systems.
So if you've ever applied to YC, you probably used his code.
He also worked with me as I created Bookface,
the social network that everyone uses over there.
That's us working on our startup in 2008.
All day, we were either coding
or meeting up with our batchmates that summer in Cambridge.
Jen, I've known for more than 25 years,
and Brett, I've worked together on multiple startups
and software for over 14 years.
They are truly the best leaders, engineers, designers,
PMs and pure organizational managers I know.
Today, I want you to hear about Initialized
and their plans from them.
Let's get started.
Initialized has always tried to do venture capital
in a different way.
When choosing who to work with in investors,
you can always count on fellow founders
and builders to be great sounding boards.
I think that's Brett in a nutshell.
Who better to be your guide in building things from nothing
than someone who I've been there doing exactly that with
for more than a decade?
- We understand what it means to have been a founder,
like what it's like to go get told no a bunch of times,
to how people tell you you're fucking up your business
and that you need to do something else,
you know, to be ghosted.
And so like our behavior is informed
by like that scar tissue on the other side.
And also like I think we all now understand
being on the other side in venture
how easy it is to do those things to founders, right?
And so like, you know, there's just this imperative
of vigilance to match our behavior
to like the experience we want to be giving people.
- [Garry] And here's Ethan Feldman,
co-founder of Talos, on what it's like to work with Brett.
- The thing that we loved about Brett is
that he's a builder at heart,
and a lot of venture capitalists you go to,
they'll be great with fundraising.
They'll be great with introducing you to other VCs.
And what we really liked about Brett is
that he's also in the weeds
on how we can operate and scale the business.
- Managing partner, Jen Wolf,
has been president of Initialized for many years,
which was always a continuation of what I saw in 2008
when I worked on her design and product team.
I was one of 20 PMs and designers doing wire frames and PRDs
and she was the best manager I ever worked for.
Rain or shine, no matter if it was good news or bad news,
she steered that ship and could build organizations
like I had never seen another person do.
And that happens to be really helpful
when you are a founder trying to do the same.
- I tried to give them more of the tools
to solve the problems themselves.
For example, if they have difficulties
with how to make a product roadmap,
instead of just saying do this exact thing,
and this should be your product roadmap, it is more about,
well, you know, what are you trying to optimize for?
You know, how does your team work together culturally?
Which is the best approach
for how you guys like to make decisions?
Here's three or four options
in how to decide which roadmap approach is best for you.
You know, here's some resources you can read about it.
And, you know, I kind of let them think through
and decide for themselves.
I think that's what founders appreciate
because it gives them the skills to solve their own problems
and it builds that relationship where they sort of trust
that you have their best interests at heart
and, you know, sort of trust
that they know how to do their job.
- Jen's leadership really showed through
as she built teams and helped founders build diverse teams.
Because why are we here
if we're not trying to build the world
we all truly want to live in,
a diverse team of people who can help founders that scales?
Initialized is not one person. It's a team.
- Almost 70% of our, you know,
core investment team is women.
Overall, when you think about our extended investment team,
it's, you know, 50% women.
Our leadership team is also 50% women.
You know, these like stats make sense statistically,
but they're very unusual in the venture world, and you know,
it really helps us hire some of the best people.
One of the programs that I'm most proud of
is our open VC hiring process.
It's very difficult to know when there are jobs in VC,
and you know, we've done a lot of work
to post our roles at any level, you know, publicly,
because, you know, that's the way people
who wouldn't have considered VC find out
that it's even a possibility for them.
- [Garry] The way Jen thinks about leadership and diversity
really shines through when you have office hours with her.
Here's Alexander Kates, CEO of Vetcove.
- So Jen has been really great in our office hours
because not only do we check in,
and you make sure that, you know,
she's kind of identifying challenges that we might have.
But Jen has been really helpful in kind of helping us
think through a lot of the complicated things
that we may go be going through on the team side,
on the hiring side, on the product side.
So when we ask for help or we have specific challenges,
Jen is always really there to help us
and to think through it.
And if she doesn't have the answer,
somebody at Initialized does
or somebody else within their network,
which has always been really helpful.
- Initialized remains a seed fund
for pre-product market fit set apart.
And when you're ready, the team here is ready to meet you.
They are the smartest, high integrity,
most helpful investors I know.
And while I might be biased,
I also have the strength of decades of experience
with these folks and the whole team at Initialized.
So that's it for this week.
I am so excited for Jen, Brett,
and the future of Initialized.
If you're worried about this channel, don't be.
I'll keep bringing new videos here regularly.
To catch the full interview with Jen and Brett,
head over to the Initialized Capital channel,
link in the description below.
More for me soon,
and thank you again for all your support.
I'll see you next week.