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Shannon Callahan

Operating Partner, Andreessen Horowitz · 1 appearance on the record.

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operatorexecutivea16z.com ↗

Shannon Callahan (Shannon Schiltz) leads the People Practices team and HR operations at Andreessen Horowitz, counseling founders on compensation and organizational scaling. Prior to a16z, she led human resources at Opsware.

11statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.91/5average certainty → 2.18/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 assertions · 3 opinions · 6 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Shannon argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Callahan: California startups face additional regulatory rules at 25 employees
“In the state of California, once you hit 25 employees, there's a lot of rules and regulations you need to follow.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:24 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR

How they sound: speaking style how? →

256 words/min while actually speaking · 26.8 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Shannon Callahan: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 2,908 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Shannon Callahan said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Callahan: Silicon Valley has a lot of "crappy" HR professionals
“There are a lot of really crappy HR people in the Valley, and there's some great ones too.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:11 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Insight
Callahan: Large-company HR business partners fail in early-stage startups
“Business partners in large organizations tend to, they don't fit well in, in, in growing an organization from the ground up”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 16:47 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Opinion
Callahan: Many Silicon Valley HR professionals lack compensation and benefits knowledge
“Ironically, I think there's many, many HR people in the Valley don't have a lot of knowledge in that area.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:24 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Callahan: Employee handbooks are the top legal defense against termination lawsuits
“Getting an employee handbook in place. That is like the number one thing that will protect every company from any type of termination and any type of lawsuit.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 22:37 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Opinion
Callahan: Startups wait too long to hire HR, confusing recruiters with HR
“I would say the biggest mistake I am seeing is that they're not bringing it on soon enough. They, a lot of our CEOs and founders feel that once they've hired the recruiter they've kind of covered themselves on the HR front.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:20 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Insight
Callahan: HR's true value is executing the founder's vision
“So when I talk to our founders, I always talk to them about you know, the true, the worth of HR is, is that they are an extension of the founder in their vision, in the way that they want to build the company, in how they bring people on board, and how they ac…”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:58 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Insight
Callahan: Strategic HR acts as quality assurance against poor management
“If you hire the right HR person, as I said, they're an extension of the CEO. HR comes in to kind of, you know, I think you said this before in one of your blog posts, kind of quality assurance against management.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:53 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Insight
Callahan: Startups must design onboarding plans before making new hires
“Having the onboarding plan designed and ready to implement before you even make the hire.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:14 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Insight
Callahan: Surprising a fired employee signals a complete failure of management feedback
“I always start a conversation with a CEO asking, is the employee going to be surprised? And when the answer is yes, it means that there's been no feedback.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:51 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Insight
Callahan: CEOs cannot maintain individual connections as companies grow
“A CEO can't stay connected with every person in an organization, and so they're really, they should be that, you know, a confidant to the CEO, but also the person who can roll up themes and issues that need, need to be addressed in an organization.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:32 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR
Assertion Supported
Callahan: California startups face additional regulatory rules at 25 employees
“In the state of California, once you hit 25 employees, there's a lot of rules and regulations you need to follow.”
Shannon Callahan Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:24 a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | Protecting Your Company from Itself: Why You Need HR Jan 2, 2019 14m
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