Holly Rose Faith

Finding Extraordinary Potential

From early on, I knew I had an innate interest in people. I wanted to know what motivates them, what their interests are, and what drives them to succeed. I majored in sociology at UC Santa Cruz and started gravitating toward professions that involved working with other humans. Recruitment was a natural fit — I started out at Bain and then moved into talent in the venture capital world.

When the chance to join Greylock came up, I was intrigued. I had always admired how much time they invest in their portfolio companies, which obviously affects the way they approach executive talent. As Greylock’s Executive Talent Partner, I have one goal: to help our portfolio companies connect with our network of senior executives to build world-class leadership teams and boards.

Know thy founder

There’s a misconception that executive talent is a client services role. I do my best work when I can go deep with founders, build trust with them, and understand the intricacies of the business, which allows me to be a thoughtful partner. That means taking time to understand them as people, and to coach them to make effective leadership hiring decisions on their own.

We don’t just find executive or board candidates and sit them down for interviews with portfolio companies. For many founders, this may be the first time hiring an executive. We go that extra mile and work with founders to ensure they know what to look for in potential executive hires and how to identify candidates for skills and fit by providing guidance on scorecards and questions to ask throughout the interview process. We make introductions to leaders with whom we think they can form a long-term relationship – for either a current executive need or one later down the road. I’m always focused on the quality of those intros rather than just cycling through people in a transactional way. And it goes beyond introductions – we help with debriefs, references, compensation, and closing. This continual process happens throughout all the stages of the company journey.

That’s exactly what we did when recruiting the Chief Revenue Officer at Abnormal AI. I spent a lot of time with the candidate to understand how he operated and his overall working experience. Then, before we introduced the candidate to Abnormal’s co-founder Evan Reiser, we gave Evan guidance on what questions to ask and which areas to focus on in the interview so that the two of them could build a meaningful rapport. I stayed close to the executive and Evan throughout the entire process (references, closing) and served as a trusted partner to both parties. The match was successful: Evan now has a tight partnership with his CRO that’s helped Abnormal get to $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just four years.