HR Opportunities + Challenges at High-Growth Companies

Every day HR challenges have an extra layer of complexity for high-growth companies. From scaling culture to always being on the lookout for mergers and acquisitions, onboarding hundreds of people at a time, change management and more, high-growth companies have specialized needs.

This session looks at some of the biggest challenges facing rapidly scaling companies today and is tailored to HR and business leaders at high-growth companies, startups, private equity, and venture capital firms.

Highlights from the discussion

• Onboarding. We heard about this one several times. The key takeaway: even when you’re moving fast and need someone in their new role yesterday, onboarding is critical to employee engagement and performance.
• PE and VC firms: think about a portfolio wide talent strategy. Conferences and training across the portfolio give leaders the chance to learn from one another. Plus, leaders at one company who recently wrapped up an acquisition, could be perfect for your other company about to enter into that phase.
• For companies in growth mode, an economic slowdown presents lots of opportunities to attract valuable talent. You know your goals and outlook, and they aren’t necessarily grim just because the overall economy is slow. If you can afford an aggressive talent strategy while others are more conservative, you’re in a great position.
• Following a merger, acquisition, or other major phase of development, take the time to debrief and record your lessons learned. You will want to put these lessons to use in a future point of your company’s life cycle. It’s a tiring process, but push it a bit further to include this post M+A step.
• As you’re building up HR, connect with the people who have been bootstrapping various functions before you got there. Ask them about their goals and experiences to position HR as a support to everyone in the company.

About the panelists

Krupa Vankayala, VP of People and HR, Sapphire Ventures
Krupa Vankayala is VP of People and HR at Sapphire Ventures. Before joining Sapphire, Krupa spent four years at PointState Capital as Managing Director and Head of Human Capital, where she built out the firm’s Human Capital function. Prior to that, Krupa spent several years as a Senior HR Business Partner at BlueMountain Capital Management (now Assured Investment Management), whose staffing needs grew from 100 to 225 employees during her tenure with the company.

Nettie Nitzburg, Managing Partner and Chief Learning and Leadership Officer, Saterman Connect
Nettie Nitzburg is Managing Partner and Chief Learning and Leadership Officer at Saterman Connect where she brings a creative approach and demonstrated experience in building teams and organizational culture. She creates learning and leadership programs, and other talent development solutions that are engaging, innovative, and scalable. Nettie began her corporate career working as a change management consultant for Accenture, a top-five consulting firm. She then held leadership positions in two rapidly scaling start-ups before launching her consulting firm focused on talent development.

Sean Wright Inspire Expert, HR leadership
Sean Wright is an Inspire HR Expert and experienced HR executive. Most recently serving as interim CHRO for Slickdeals, a rapidly scaling ecommerce company, Sean’s experience includes global HRBP roles at American Express, Bristol-Myers Squibb and AlliedSignal. Sean has significant experience in organizational design, talent assessment and management, organizational change management, leadership development programs, executive coaching, and HR team leadership.