It’s always all about the people.
Our fundamental belief, our north star, is that companies succeed because of the people who build them. It’s why we’ve mobilized more than 200 of tech’s most sought-after operators from diverse backgrounds to help accelerate our founders, from day one to IPO and beyond. It’s why we’ve brought together an incredible Board of Advisors (Leyla Seka, Claire Hughes Johnson, Elena Gomez, Erica Ruliffson Schultz, Stacy Brown-Philpot, and Tekedra Mawakana) and Investment Advisory Committee (Dan Scheinman and Magdalena Yesil).
It’s also how we build our own core team and active contributors. Today, we’re delighted to welcome Haley Daiber Brannan as an investing partner. I first got to know Haley five years ago as an investor at Unusual Ventures, where she sourced and supported enterprise investments like CoScreen (ACQ: DDOG), Verta.ai, and Vivun. Since then, she’s been focused on revenue ops & intelligence, go-to-market strategy, and product education & customer training as VP of Business Operations at data.world during a critical growth period. She was a key leader as the company scaled to new heights - tripling ARR, the team, and the customer base, leading up to a $50M Series C last year. Her operating and venture experience make her uniquely suited to join us at OpCo. And, importantly, she deeply understands the fundamental impact that community and networking can have, being a Co-Founder and CEO of a networking startup herself. She’ll be working closely with our core team Anna Jacobson, operations & data partner, Caroline Caswell, marketing partner, Angie Coleman, community director, and Erika McLoughlin, finance manager.
Pam Kostka, former All Raise CEO, is wrapping up her year as operator-in-residence focused on scaling up platform and community (thank you, Pam!), and turning her focus to the critical area of working with a handful of our portfolio CEOs to navigate through inflection points, including finding product-market-fit, developing GTM motions, and driving efficiency. We’re fortunate our portfolio founders will also continue to be supported by our stellar operating partners Dini Mehta, former Lattice Chief Revenue Officer who scaled revenue from $5M to $100M+ and 8 people to 200+, and Ambrosia Vertesi, Ironclad Chief People Officer, who has grown a number of startups including Duo Security from their early days to 800+ people.
Active contributors are essential to the Collective Venture Model®. We designed OpCo to serve as a way for operators at the top of their game to engage in venture flexibly and collaboratively. A place where they can deepen their venture acumen and put their substantial skills and networks to work for our founders, while continuing to operate or ponder their next big job. Our part-time functional experts are often the most-requested introductions we receive from our founders. Having them on tap to dedicate time each week to advise and make the right connections at the right time is exactly the kind of virtuous cycle we had in mind when starting Operator Collective. They’re invested, literally, in our founders’ success.
2023 will have vast challenges - and opportunities - ahead. It’s hard to be a founder under any circumstance, let alone these market conditions, but having a Collective at one’s back can make all the difference. We remain focused, as operators do, on the fundamentals and strengthening the key to it all - the people.
We’re all aligned to support our founders and pave the way for the next generation of enterprise and B2B companies to take shape and succeed. We’ve reinforced our foundation - our people - and are ready and engaged for what’s next. If you’re an active or between-things senior operator who has built and grown a functional area in a venture-backed startup and are interested in joining us for a bit as a part-time operator-in-residence to change the face of tech from the ground up, let us know! If you’re an early-stage enterprise/B2B founder, please get in touch – we’d love to put our Collective to work for you.
Happy New Year,
Mallun + the OpCo team
