Portfolio News
Recruiting has always been a paradox, a series of tedious tasks in pursuit of what matters most: the people who define an organization’s future. Hiring managers sift through dozens of candidates to find “the one,” spending countless hours on activities that, by definition, mostly lead nowhere. It’s an inefficient process everyone tolerates because the outcome is too important to ignore.
For years, the software industry’s response was predictable: more siloed tools. Point solutions for sourcing, scheduling, coordination, and research emerged to address individual steps of the hiring process. While each tool improved a narrow task, together they created fragmented workflows that still required human orchestration. Hiring managers became operators of disconnected systems, rather than strategic leaders focused on building great teams.
But that model is broken.
We believe we’re witnessing a fundamental shift in how organizations find, hire, and retain talent. The arrival of sophisticated AI hasn’t just improved existing tools, it’s enabled an entirely new category: platforms that don’t assist with hiring tasks but execute them autonomously. We’re proud to invest in Elly as they build this new paradigm in talent management.
The AI Inflection Point
What’s changed is not incremental automation, but capability. AI can now perform the work previously reserved for knowledge workers while coordinating the systems required to complete it. This reframes hiring from task management to end-to-end workflow execution across the entire employee lifecycle.
This continuity is powerful. A platform that understands every step of a candidate’s journey (from first contact through years of employment) can deliver insights impossible with fragmented point solutions. It knows what worked in sourcing. It remembers the interview signals that predicted success. It tracks the development path that led to promotion. This institutional memory, applied intelligently, is the foundation for truly strategic talent management.
Why Elly, Why Now
The HR technology landscape has long been characterized by high budgets and low tool retention. Organizations invest heavily in recruiting solutions only to abandon them out of dissatisfaction. This isn’t a failure of need, it’s a failure of product vision. Legacy tools were designed for a world where humans had to manage every step manually. Elly is designed for a world where AI handles the busywork so teams can focus on the people.
Where others offer task-oriented point solutions, Elly delivers comprehensive AI-native workflow automation, from candidate sourcing through hiring, retention, and performance management. Not a collection of tools for hiring managers to use, but an intelligent system that operates as a true companion throughout the entire employee lifecycle.
The vision is bold, and the enabling technology has only recently matured enough to make it possible. This is Elly’s moment.
The Team Behind the Vision
Our conviction in Elly begins with founder and CEO Kristen Habacht. Kristen brings senior executive experience from Typeform, Shogun, Atlassian, and Trello: companies that understand both product excellence and go-to-market execution. I’ve had the privilege of serving alongside Kristen on the GuideCX board, where she’s been instrumental in driving strategic value. Her deep understanding of this problem space, combined with proven leadership capabilities, gives Elly a rare advantage.
Her co-founder Nic Mahaney leads product development and has demonstrated exceptional agility in creating and rolling out high-quality solutions. Together, they’ve assembled a team uniquely positioned to execute on this ambitious vision. They combine the product sophistication needed to build AI-native workflows with the go-to-market expertise required to win in enterprise software.
The Path Forward
This investment enables Elly to build their complete platform and bring it to market quickly. For organizations still managing talent through manual workflows and disconnected tools, the competitive gap is widening. Elly compresses hiring timelines, allowing organizations to identify and secure the right candidates while others are still coordinating their initial screens.
For executives seeking competitive advantage in talent acquisition, operators frustrated by tool sprawl, and professionals inspired by reimagining how we build teams, Elly is building the solution.
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