The Grand Time with Christie Pitts
An interview with Christie Pitts, General Partner at Backstage Capital
Hi everyone,
I'm excited to share an excerpt of an interview we had last week during The Grand Time with Christie Pitts. Christie is a General Partner at Backstage Capital, a VC fund that invests in companies led by underestimated founders. She’s had a fascinating career and is one of the most inspiring voices in venture capital. We're honored to have her as a member of The Grand community.
Tell us about your career journey.
I started my career at Verizon at 19 as a retail customer associate. Verizon had incredible benefits including tuition assistance. I was paying my way through school and I worked really hard because I knew this was my meal ticket. I enjoyed the work because I was passionate about mobile, I was addicted to my phone. I loved all the features, I was that girl with the polyphonic ringtone.
Mobile as an industry was exploding and I was able to work my way up, and eventually, I was promoted into an executive role within the Verizon Ventures team.
When I moved into venture capital, I was like, "What is going on? Why is venture is all male, pale, and stale?" So I started seeking out diverse voices.
I found Arlan on Twitter and she had just started Backstage. I followed her and liked every single one of her tweets, then she DMed me and we met up. When I heard Arlan's vision to invest in 100 companies by 2020, I had chills. I realized Arlan is working on creating structural change that directly addresses the issues of systemic racism and sexism. At that moment, I knew I needed to be a part of Backstage. So I started working with Arlan part-time, and then transitioned to full-time after a year. We've now invested in 140 companies together.
What was it like to transition from Verizon to Backstage?
Going from Verizon to Backstage was very challenging because I had been at Verizon for so long it was part of my identity. Moving from a corporation where I had grown up and I had strong networks and job security to something that was new and unproven was scary. I was fortunate to be able to lean on my husband and my coach for support.
My coach helped me understand where I wanted to grow and how being in a smaller organization could help me flex those muscles and learn new skills.
My husband helped me realize I was stressing out, when I didn't necessarily need to be. He pointed out that I was in a good position with two strong options in front of me.
What advice do you have on finding your dream role?
8 years ago, I started making a list on paper of all the things I enjoy doing in my role and all the things I didn't enjoy doing. I would then stack rank them from what I love the most to what I like the least. Then when I was looking at new roles, I would try to optimize that list so there would be more things I love doing and less things I hated doing.
I try to stick to things that I know are going to be natural extensions of things I'm already excited about doing because then I want to give it my full attention. Whereas if it's something I feel is a chore it uses so much mental energy and bandwidth and the output is often not good.
Also be patient with yourself even when you land your dream job, no matter what you're doing, there's always gonna be something shitty about your job.
What was the moment when you realized it was time to make a change?
When I was a retail store manager I hated my life. I was working 15-hour days directly with customers and it was so rough that I wanted to quit. But I hadn't fully vested my 401k yet, there was another 3 months to go. I was talking to my Dad and he said "What if I told you that you only had to do this job for 90 more days, and then you would have a new job? If you knew there was an end date to when this would be over, could you do it?" I said, "Yes, I could do anything for 90 days." My Dad told me to put that deadline in my mind, and then after the deadline, I'll either have a new job or I'll go find a new job.
I had that timeline in mind, and on Day 77 I got promoted. What that taught me was if you can give yourself a deadline to take action, then that will propel you forward to the next step of your career.
Thank you Christie for sharing your career journey and advice with us!
We hope this conversation provided some career inspiration for you. As always, we're here to help you navigate your career. Join our upcoming Grand Quests on Becoming an Effective Manager or Making a Career Transition, and be part of The Grand community.
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Rei