Headline (formerly e.ventures)

Headline is a Venture Capital firm actively on the ground in seven cities worldwide. Headline invests across geographies, leading rounds at every stage. Once it commits to a team, Headline goes to the ends of the earth to make their success global.

  • Industry: Venture Capital
  • Size: 18 executives supported
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Core Processes We Started With

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Email and Schedule Management
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Expense Accounts
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Research and Data Entry
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Creating New Processes

The Problem

In-house assistants were not working

In 2016, Headline used in-house assistants for its executives, and the model was not working. Most executives did not need full-time support, and the turnover rate was high. The time spent recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding new admins made it an unsustainable approach.

The founding partner decided to outsource the executive admin role and evaluated the options for virtual assistants. Headline turned to Prialto to offload the admin work and management to remote assistants. Prialto hires, trains, and manages the virtual assistants and has experience supporting executive teams all over the U.S. After piloting Prialto's managed virtual assistant service, Headline has scaled to provide remote assistants for 18 executives.

The Goal

Providing exceptional administrative assistants efficiently and cost-effectively, with minimal hiring, onboarding, and management resources.

Our Solution

The projects that Prialto Productivity Assistants (PAs) take on for Headline vary from executive to executive—email management and scheduling, expenses, research and data entry, and new processes, to name a few.

"These are truly standout assistants," Doro Poetter, Senior Director of Finance said. "They adapt to each executive's needs and preferences. Our engagement manager is super responsive and proactive about helping us optimize our service."

For partner Jett Fein, managing email and scheduling were overwhelming. "I get hundreds of emails every day, and a lot of them are high priority," he said. "Getting back to the right people at the right time is critical in our business, and it was a struggle and a huge distraction from more important work."

Jett's PA came to him with a solution—create a tagging system to sort emails by category and priority and define the appropriate response for each type. "It has been a game-changer," Jett said. "I trust my PA completely with my email and calendar—he knows how to respond on my behalf, and I don't have to worry about it."

"We trust our PAs to represent us, and that says a lot about the quality of the service," Doro said. "They are professional, responsible, and we consider them teammates."

 

Email and Schedule Management

PAs like Jett's do an exceptional job learning executives' preferences and priorities and organizing their inboxes and calendars to focus on what matters most.

"We now have a playbook. My PA responds for me—he knows what needs my attention, what to schedule and what to delete," Jett said. "The peace of mind is invaluable because I can focus on higher
priorities."

Expenses

"Because Prialto works with so many systems, they bring a lot of expertise and knowledge we don't have," Doro said. "We were looking for a better way to manage expense accounts and leveraged Prialto's experience to launch Expensify.”

"The PAs and Engagement Manager knew what to do and took care of it."

Research and Data Entry

"Our executives are constantly researching and tracking companies—ones we invest in and ones we might invest in," Doro said. "Then that data has to be entered into a document template."

"Research and data entry is incredibly time-consuming and not the most productive use of executives' time, and the PAs excel at it."

New Processes

Headline also had projects in need of workflows that were either new or happened irregularly, so there was no process in place.

"One of our partners finds a book he likes and sends it to all of his contacts, and his PA took over that project," Doro said. "Another PA took over the logistics for an office offsite."

Results

"Prialto has grown with us and has delivered everything we were looking for when we started. We have built a great relationship and have a trust factor that is hard to quantify.

The PAs and managers bring a lot to the table to help us be more productive as a team. I have not heard any complaints, and, at this point, it would be hard to replace them!"      - Doro Poetter, Senior Director of Finance

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