I’m proud to announce the promotion of Zoe Perret from head of strategic operations to the role of principal on our growing investment team. Zoe will be focusing on climate deals with our partner Kim-Mai Cutler who has already led several investments in the space, including Pano and Culdesac. 

Zoe’s passion for working on climate is deeply personal. Her family is from the swamps of Louisiana, and growing up, she experienced her family’s rebuilding efforts in the aftermath of numerous hurricanes.

“I want to help find ways to make the Gulf South habitable for future generations,” she said. “I think climate is the greatest challenge to be tackled in present day.”

Zoe was one of the first operations hire at Initialized, and since joining us three years ago, she has always worked closely with me on some of the firm’s key initiatives. 

Last year, I launched our open hiring program to open up investment and operation roles to people outside of traditional VC backgrounds. Zoe was integral in helping me source, interview, and develop 13 hires across the firm in 12 months, almost doubling the size of our team at Initialized. Fun fact: she has done close to 150 interviews with candidates in the past year.

Zoe also created and runs Initialized’s follow-on fundraising program, which includes a team of experts to support founders when fundraising for their series A or beyond. Zoe’s program is one of the reasons founders continue to choose Initialized for their seed round. 

In particular, she helps founders with their pitches, helps them create data rooms, and along with the team, introduces them to amazing partners at later stage VCs. Aylon Steinhart, the CEO of Eclipse Foods, said Zoe not only helped him with key introductions when he was fundraising, but her team also helped build the playbook and model for him to present to later-stage funds.

“Real talk, when we presented it to Series A funds, they said, ‘wow, this is one of the best models that we’ve seen from a company at your stage,'” said Aylon. 

So far, Zoe has ran over 60 fundraises that have led to additional funding for our portfolio companies since January 2021. She’s also worked with our engineering team to develop proprietary automation tools to use in our portfolio company’s fundraising process. 

We look forward to seeing Zoe thrive in our new role as principal on the investment team. 

Welcome Tiffany Foo As Our New Head of Talent

We’re also excited to announce we are growing the talent side of the house here at Initialized. This week, we welcomed Tiffany Foo as our new head of talent. A big part of early stage success is dependent on the founder’s ability to hire and retain the best people, which is difficult when you are small, not well known yet, and can’t pay top cash comp.

Tiffany is uniquely qualified to help our founders at the stage where they need talent support the most. She was most recently at Kapor Capital, where she supported over 100 companies on talent, people ops, culture, and DE&I initiatives. Most impressively, she launched a portfolio-wide talent network that facilitated 150+ introductions a year between candidates & hiring companies.

Prior to Kapor, Tiffany worked in similar roles guiding equity-informed HR & talent initiatives at early stage startups such as ClearCare, Lendstreet Financial, and Gliffy.

At Initialized, Tiffany will join our principals, Kat Steinmetz and Scott Moss, to build out a robust talent services function for founders during their most formative early growth stages. In particular, she will be developing programs to help our founders excel at sourcing, hiring, brand building, and managing both technical and non-technical teams. Her passion is to help founders level up their skills to build strong teams where everyone can thrive and belong.

“My role as head of talent at Initialized enables me to support companies during their most formative early growth stages,” she said. “We’re here to help our companies navigate the ever evolving talent & workplace culture landscape.”

Join me in congratulating Zoe and welcoming Tiffany into their new roles at Initialized.