Initialized Capital is restructuring its team “to fit the moment” in the venture market, according to a blog post by Brett Gibson, the firm’s managing partner.
The San Francisco-based venture capital firm, originally founded by Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan and Harjeet Taggar, announced yesterday that it had let go of several people and had specially appointed managing director Jennifer Wolf, who had been with the company in a variety of roles since 2016. , most recently as president of the company.
Cyndi Reseburg, Intialized’s director of communications, declined to say how many people were laid off, adding that the company would not comment on specific departures.
The company also appears to have parted ways with Rent the Runway’s former co-founder Jenny Fleiss, who just joined as a partner last fall. The company declined to confirm Fleiss’ departure, but she was removed from the website. SF Standard also reported that she was among those reset.
The company does not confirm the exact number of layoffs, but it appears it has reduced its workforce from 33 to 21, according to changes made to the team page on its website between Oct. 1 and today. This corresponds to 36%. Reduction in headcount. Other roles seen to be affected include Init’s head of talent, head of capital and partner solutions, and head of product.
The role of Parul Singh, who was appointed partner of the firm in 2021, has been restructured from partner to board partner on the website.
Not everything is scaled back. Amid the departures, Reset announced the promotion of three principals to partner: Abdul Ly, Andrew Sather and Zoe Perret. Interestingly, Wolf previously worked at Adjacency, a company co-founded by Sather in the ’90s.
According to Gibson’s notes, the company started out like a startup but expanded over time as it found investment success. In the process, he wrote, he had added “too many layers” and was now trying to get rid of them.
“It’s time to get back to basics,” his note reads. “Now more than ever, we need to track talent not just by subject matter, but by adopting their practices. “The faster the world moves, the faster we must move.”
Initialized Capital isn’t the only company to have restructured over the past few years to better respond to current market conditions. Last fall, Greycroft dropped five investors after failing to meet its funding goals. Sequoia also cut a third of its talent team last year.
Initialized was founded in 2012. The company focuses on seed trading across a variety of sectors and has over $3 billion in assets under management. Reset has supported popular companies such as Coinbase, Rippling, and Flexport.
