Everyone tends to agree that venture capitalists make a lot of money. But exactly how much? That’s a harder question to answer.
Jobs in venture capital are often shared privately between friends or among alumni networks, which has made the industry tricky to break into for anyone whose social circles lie outside of Silicon Valley and whose networks aren’t white, male, or Stanford University–educated. It’s also made it hard for the uninitiated to know how much money to ask for.
That’s part of the reason why Initialized Capital, an early-stage VC firm with $3.2 billion in assets under management, first posted a public job listing in 2021 when looking to hire a principal and a partner—to help them get outside their current networks and provide a more transparent and even playing field for suitable candidates. Now, the firm is starting to search for a new investing partner, and its management team is taking things a step further: Initialized is showing prospective applicants how much they can make.
The firm will be offering a base salary between $400,000 and $650,000 per year for the position, not including bonuses or carry—what partners get as a percentage of the profits from a fund—managing partner Jen Wolf told Fortune.
Wolf, who also oversees operations at Initialized, says that in order to build a team with diverse perspectives and backgrounds, the firm needs to look for candidates from any source—not just through its networks or recruiters. “Venture is a great job, and there's very few of them,” she says. But if it's “always the same type of person that's doing that job, the same type of companies and the same type of founders are always getting funded.”
Actually hearing about a new job is only part of the equation. Pay transparency continues to be an issue, even though laws passed in several states and cities require employers to share salary ranges for positions. (Wolf added that where she is based in New York City, it’s legally required to include a salary range. The new partner position will be remote, although the firm has a preference for San Francisco or New York.) That lack of transparency—both with how much money VCs make and with open roles—can make it more difficult for underrepresented groups, including women and people of color, to break into the white- and male-dominated industry and earn what they’re worth. Wolf says Initialized uses a form of the Rooney Rule: "At each stage of the process, we try to have 50% women or underrepresented minorities in the funnel.” She claims the approach has worked: Among Initialized's 33 team members, nearly 25% identify as BIPOC and almost 60% are women. Wolf adds that people within existing networks are still considered, though the aim is to alert as many candidates as possible.
Compared with the open search in 2021, Wolf says, Initialized has some additional criteria this time around: The candidate should have an entrepreneurial background and perhaps have been a founder before—and raised funding, “maybe a Series B or later”—who understands the process of building an early-stage company and can help guide founders through it. Wolf said they would also like a candidate to have some experience with investing—be it as a venture scout or angel investor.
The early-stage focus is key for Initialized, which was founded by investors including Garry Tan, who left Initialized at the end of last year to head up famed startup accelerator Y Combinator. Initialized is a generalist firm, with bets in sectors ranging from crypto to health care. Wolf says the hope is to find a partner that has expertise in a particular area, which could be a sector or a functional area like product. And though they're expanding their ranks, they're not expanding their coffers just yet: Initialized is still working through investing its $530 million sixth core fund announced in late 2021, and Wolf said they are not fundraising right now. The firm told Fortune they’ve closed just under 10 deals since December.
To be sure, it’s a rocky time to enter the venture capital industry. Funding levels have plummeted and fundraising for VC firms themselves has grown increasingly challenging in 2023. “Founders are going through difficult times now, and a lot of the job is supporting them and still believing in them,” Wolf notes, adding that you “have to be a resilient person yourself to do that.”
But, she adds, it’s working with founders through those hard times that can be the most rewarding.
