Navigating a New Economy With PeopleTech Partners Co-Founders Cara Brennan Allamano and Robby Peters
This week, I sat down with PeopleTech Partners co-founders Cara Brennan Allamno and Robby Peters. In this episode, we discuss how they came together to create PTP, how they support the people leader community and work tech ecosystem, and what is next for PTP.
Cara has been a part of the HR world for more than 20 years. The first half of her career was spent in the corporate HR space, but about 12 years ago, that changed. A friend asked whether Cara could come on board to help build out an HR function for his tech company. Having prior experience in building out these functions in other companies before, she said yes. That led to the start of her journey in high-growth technology. "It's been a wild ride since then. I've been acquired probably five or six times," shared Cara. Since then, she has founded the people function at Pinterest and most recently helped take Udemy public.
Robby did not start his career on the HR side. His background is much more on the sales and business development side of the industry. For the last 10 years, Robby has run the sales and development department for Sequoia Consulting Group. When Robby started with Sequoia, he met with HR leaders from fast-growth tech companies and asked each the same questions. These conversations led to him connecting HR leaders with other people who could help these leaders succeed. Robby wondered at the time whether there was a community focused on HR in high-growth technology companies.
Soon after his realization, Robby co-founded an event series called HR 2.0 that brought together a community of progressive HR leaders. While these events were a success, many people realized that, when they implemented new strategies and technologies, the systems they needed were not there, or their roles were changing. There was no technology to support these new parts.
This presented Robby with an opportunity to bridge that gap, and that’s when Robby and Cara decided to team up. "It's just been a fun journey, obviously, to see the growth," he says, "and we probably didn't anticipate quite the level of a growth in the space when we started this."
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Ep 110 Navigating a New Economy With PeopleTech Partners Co-Founders Cara Brennan Allamano and Robby
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Who are PeopleTech Partners?
PeopleTech Partners is a community for people leaders to connect with other forward-thinking people leaders who believe that technology will better enable what they are doing now. "I think the biggest thing is we've set this up for HR leaders first," shared Robby.
Their core principle has been creating an open channel to listen to the challenges that leaders in the community are going through and to see whether technology can help. They also can search for new companies in different areas through an application process and discover which ones would best resonate with the community through their diligence team. The PeopleTech Partners team brings on about four companies that resonate with their community and works closely with them as they go through the program meeting people leaders.
Both founders want people in the community that will be involved in networking, sharing and understanding how to be more strategic when utilizing the technology. The problem before was that people leaders were asking for a seat at the table, Cara said. Now that they have that seat, they are being asked to do all of the things at the table, but they lack the tools necessary to execute at scale.
HR leaders won't buy these tools from just anybody. Many HR people know they will buy the tools they need from other HR people's referrals and through the advice of thought leaders. However, there aren't enough of these referrals and voices out there telling the community how to build these tools — so Cara and Robby created the space themselves. "We are investing significantly our time and our effort and making sure these companies are successful," explains Cara.
Overall Goals For the Community
Having access to the right technology is important for HR leaders, and having a sense of community in HR and people operations is also necessary. What sets PTP apart is that they are particular about who can be a part of the community — “it takes a time commitment, and it's a commitment to furthering the profession," says Cara.
Building relationships across the HR spectrum will help make HR leaders better. And with HR jobs becoming more complex and intense, it's vital to have a community to rely on, especially when navigating the new normal of the workforce. This leads to the community's goal of accelerating their knowledge to match the challenges that they face as leaders.
The community is also about HR leaders giving each other support and knowing their roles as the people who will help others navigate this new economy. Cara shares, "So it's a really empowering time as a people leader. It's also an exhausting time as a people leader." People leaders need to continue to advocate for themselves and ensure that they are a part of the conversations within their organizations about tools and the new economy.
Future Plans for PeopleTech Partners
Early this year, PTP launched PeopleTech Angels, which enables people leaders to become investors and get involved in the early stages of some of the companies that PTP supports.
It has always been important to Cara and Robby for companies in their community to spend time with other people leaders during their three-month program, as well as to eventually bring on advisers from the community to move forward. They saw that PTP was having a significant impact on these technologies and that people were interested in investing. It was tough to navigate in the beginning, but that's when they developed PeopleTech Angels. This way, instead of having only two to three advisers, companies could have anywhere from 15 to 20 people who are ingrained in their company and want to ensure its success.
Robbie and Cara's company has become a significant source of knowledge, leading them to question whether they should create learning and development programs or thought leadership content. However, they are sticking with what they do best, which is bringing these HR leaders together. "We're really good at bringing together a referral-driven network where there's a lot of trust, high-level, super-senior strategic people and tying in technology," Robby says.