Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry Katelin Holloway – Human Side of Venture Investing at 776 (EP.490)
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Mar 9, 2026 Katelin Holloway, founding partner at Seven Seven Six and former operator who led HR and culture work at Pixar and Reddit, discusses the human side of venture. She talks about building culture as infrastructure and restoring trust in teams. She explains 776’s sourcing, behavioral interviewing, Cerebro OS for scaling introductions, and hands-on but non-directive post-investment support.
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Culture As Infrastructure Drives Returns
- Intentional culture functions as infrastructure that yields durable, outsized business returns.
- At Pixar Katelin saw structured feedback, psychological safety, and accountability convert passion into box-office and financial success.
Restore Shared Purpose Before Adding Process
- Find a unifying motive to restore morale before adding process in a broken culture.
- At Reddit Katelin translated employees' love of online communities into shared offline identity, norms, and rules to rebuild trust.
Investing Is People And Systems Under Stress
- Early-stage investing is chiefly about people and systems operating under extreme uncertainty rather than purely financial metrics.
- Katelin maps her decade as an HR/operator to sourcing, selecting, and servicing founders as the core VC functions.