EVERY SPOKEN WORD
60 min read · 11,899 words- 0:00 – 0:53
Intro
- SPSpeaker
The most important skill in this industry, or perhaps in the world, is your ability to identify things before the market.
- ETErik Torenberg
There are so many people in the world who we wanna meet who also wanna meet us, and it's just an information problem. What's more impressive to you, someone who went to Stanford or someone who is followed by Patrick Collison, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen?
- SPSpeaker
A lot of people in Silicon Valley have a pretty high bar for who they're willing to publicly endorse. A lot of what we do is finding awesome people and connecting them to our companies, otherwise kind of getting them in the a16z network.
- JEJosh Elman
And it allows us to really extend all that network and all that value and all that trust, and really that reputation that transfers and builds over time.
- SPSpeaker
There's this Naval quote I love, "Be so good that people do business through you." In fact, if I cosign two people, they might be able to, you know, meet and otherwise build something in a way that I enabled without even having to know about it.
- JEJosh Elman
But it's always hard to match the needs and the skills at exactly the right time.
- ETErik Torenberg
What we've enabled is this...
- 0:53 – 7:24
What Cosign Is & Why It Exists
- ETErik Torenberg
We're super excited to announce Cosign, a product that is around professional reputation for the startup community, and really just trying to be the most comprehensive directory of, of companies and people. And I wanna start with a story, um, which is my friend David Perell, uh, told me, he said, "My Twitter account is more valuable to me than my college education." Uh, you know-
- JEJosh Elman
Wow
- ETErik Torenberg
... even though I paid, you know, a quarter mil," whatever it is, you know, "I would have... My Twitter has given me more value to my career, and also personally." Now, we, of course, just launched our own school, so we, you know, are big fans of, uh, of higher education, but I, I thought the story was profound because, of course, you know, Twitter's been free for so long, you know, um, and, um, this idea... What he got behind it is, of course, college is a bundle of, you know, education, network and credential. And I think-
- JEJosh Elman
And social life.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yes. [laughs]
- JEJosh Elman
[laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
Yes, of course. [laughs] Uh, yeah, some of that is hard to recreate on, on, on Twitter, but yeah, exactly. Um, and so the education, you know, you learn from having conversations. The, the network, of course, you, you meet people, um, you discover people. Um, people kind of... It's proof of work of, like, if they're interesting, if they're funny, et cetera. If they build something cool, you can discover them. But I think the credential thing is really interesting because here's a thought experiment. What's more impressive to you, someone who went to Stanford or someone who is followed by Patrick Collison, Elon Musk, you know, M- Marc Andreessen, et cetera? Pe- people would say... I, I think most people would say the latter, right? And so this kind of, like, peer-to-peer credential, and so what that is, but, you know, im- im- implicitly, although people also, also do this explicitly, is a cosign. It's a, it's an endorsement that this person is worth tracking. It's a public signal that this person is worth following, and we think there are lots of other ways to express that, that signal, that, that, um, and create this kind of, like, reputational, um, you know, benefit that these people get, which is really the exhaust of... This person's not even trying to give them r- reputational benefit. They're just trying to read what they write, and the exhaust is this endorsement. And this endorsement, if you're followed by these people, now your doors are open. People wanna re- also read what you say. They wanna work with you. They wanna invest in you. They, they wanna f- you know, um, have you part of their team. And also there's benefit... So there's benefit to the receiver, but there's also benefit to the giver, too, because if you're the first person to discover someone, well, it's kinda how Silicon Valley operates. Like, you're more, you know, you're gonna be able to hire them quicker. You'll be able to fund them quicker, and the cool thing about Silicon Valley is you don't know who the next big person is gonna be always, and sometimes they're 18 or, you know, or come from... Don't come from a name brand school. And so we're kind of all, all, all in this, you know, a little bit of a race to discover talent, um, before anybody else and get... The more that we get cr- Like, Zach Frankel's done an amazing job, right? Of bui- So many people have done amazing... Of building a reputation for discovering people. And so talent, the benefit they get is talent thinks, "Oh, I can get king made by them." Like, if Josh Elman or Olivia in- invest in my company, that's a signal to the market. And angel investing or, or just investing by, by, uh, from venture firm, that's one way to express an, a cosign or a signal. But a lot of people aren't founders, and a lot of people aren't investors, and so we think there are lots of other ways to express this, this signal.
- JEJosh Elman
Really curious, as you've been building Cosign, like, what are the kinds of endorsements you hope to get from the platform?
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. So we want on every profile to have at least the, uh, three. One is who shaped your career? Um-
- JEJosh Elman
Wow
- ETErik Torenberg
... because we, we think this sort of, like, mentor, uh, economy, th- this is what Silicon Valley runs on, and it also just... It helps both the, you know... If I was shaped, if my, you know, if Josh Elman's my mentor, that means that he is putting... Which is true, actually. [laughs]
- JEJosh Elman
[laughs] Thank you.
- ETErik Torenberg
Um, you know, just happens to be true. You know, said you I was a y- young person. Josh spent a bunch of time with me, and that's a signal to other people that I'm, you know, I'm worth sp- other people spending time with, too, 'cause if you respect Josh, you respect me by association. And it's also, again, the benefit to you to discover talent early, um, to be known. People wanna work with you if you help them. So one is shaped my career. Two is would work with anywhere or in the trenches with.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Um, because, you know, it's hard to tell from existing platforms, like, you know, as you were saying the other night, who are you really in the trenches with? Like, who have you really built, uh, you know, uh, bonds with? Who would you, you know, go to war with? Who would you... Like, no matter what you're doing, you'd wanna work with them. That's a much more granular signal than do I follow them, which could be any number of things. Um, and then third is, uh, person to watch. Like, who do you think is going to, um, really be emergent, like ascended? Um, and we rank order these, too. So, you know, platform's just started. Um, you know, most of it's fair game, but if, if you just, you know... In, in the same way, like, you know, on a, to build a great investor profile, it takes, like, uh, you know, many years, but then you've got the credit for doing so. We, we think you can do that around people, too. So you can say, "Hey, I think... Like, I think Olivia's gonna be one of the greats. I'm gonna, like... You know, I think she's a person to watch." It's actually funny. I did this experiment seven years ago where I emailed a few hundred people. You were definitely one of them, and I asked them for their person, person to watch. I was just checking today. One of them was Russell Kaplan, who's now the president at Cognition, and he was, like, a 22-year-old just engineer at Tesla. And so there's actually signal in that, too. Um, so those are some of the ones. We're also excited for people to do it for companies, too. Like, what are the companies that you think, right, you know, at seed, but, you know, are, you know, going to be great? Because, of course, if you're able to, you can express your conviction with, uh, your, you know, money, but not everyone's an investor. This is almost like fantasy investing or social capital investing.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I love this idea. I feel like I have long felt this, but as I have invested now for almost a decade, I believe it more and more every week, every day, every month, is, like, the most valuable data in all of Silicon Valley is, like, who has conviction in who, uh, and who can give you kind of a re- a real read on a person for so many decisions. Like, who do you invest in? Who do you hire? What company do you join? Uh, and there's such information asymmetry right now. Like, our job, investing every day, we are pinging people saying, "Hey, you know, do you know anyone who worked with this person?" And we do it every day, and we still, I would say, like, have to work really hard to find that signal.
- ETErik Torenberg
Absolutely.
- SPSpeaker
And so how can someone who is maybe evaluating between five startup job offers, um, get that level of... You just can't, especially if you're, like, an entry-level engineer, and yet that could be the difference between joining, like, a complete rocket ship and, like, a company that isn't doing as well. Um, and I know the data has to be handled carefully around who says what about who, but I, I think it, it will be, and there's, like, a massive, massive
- 7:24 – 10:27
The Three Signals: Mentors, Investors & Cosigns
- SPSpeaker
opportunity to add so much value to people's lives and careers.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. T- talk a bit about, um... 'Cause you think a lot about talent discovery.
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- ETErik Torenberg
Um, talk about the newsletter you do, 'cause I think it's an interesting-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- ETErik Torenberg
... incredible stuff.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. So, um, my twin sister Justine also works here at Andreessen on our infrastructure team. Um, we have both been in venture for basically a decade now, and at our very first venture role, we started a newsletter that we ran every Sunday for, I think, like, six and a half or seven years. Um, which-
- ETErik Torenberg
I was a subscriber.
- SPSpeaker
Thank you so much.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] Um, it was basically just aggregating startup job postings, and the, the thesis was, like, we both went to Stanford. We ran a startup incubator at Stanford, and still, before we were working at a venture firm, we had n- no way to differentiate between all these startups and founders of, like, who is legitimate, who's not, who's the most exciting. And so we were like, "Okay, we have some inside information now. Let's, like, curate a list of, like, the companies that, that we think are worth joining for young people." Um, and it really... it built up a real community because I think people appreciated it because you can't get that information outside of Silicon Valley.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Like, we had a, a network of, like, scouts on campuses that read it, and some of those people are now founders that Andreessen has invested in. They're off running, like, fantastic companies and in fantastic places. So, um, that was, like, the less scalable version [laughs] of this-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... kind of network, and I'm, I'm excited for more people to have the ability to kind of put their name behind ideas. David Booth: And one thing I'd have is that as it gets easier and easier to start companies, as it gets noisier and noisier out there, um, it's actually getting harder for people to do what you're describing exactly. So this kind of signal is more important than ever. Um, if you think about, uh, the average student graduating out of Stanford today, they're looking at the startup market, and they have to rely on the signals that are given by firms who are investing, but even before that, that are given by people like you and, like, hundreds of others we hope to empower here. Um, an example I love to, to point to on the site when people go, and you've got people like Packy McCormick, who I think has, has always had a lot of very good signal around the deep tech and the, the vertical integrators in particular. And Packy's got 37 companies that he's chosen. He says, "These are the companies if you want to get into one, into this space." Um, and there's, you know, many, many more behind them, self included. Uh, so there was, like... You're... In a way, he's co-signing some of his reputation against that company. He's saying, like, "I trust this company. I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I'm writing about them, and I think that if you wanted to start your career off there..." Um, so it becomes a sort of living directory of companies and of people that are worth paying attention to.
- ETErik Torenberg
And free.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
You know, Crunch- Crunchbase, PitchBook, you know, cost money, et cetera.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
They, they're great products. They have to be businesses. But we have the luxury of being able to just really offer this for the startup community. And so we, we want it to be the most valuable place where people can see, you know, who invested in what. You know, w- w- what is, uh, you know, Olivia's, uh, tr- you know, uh, set of deals that she's done? Um, you know, what is the sort of most reliable, you know, company information on, like, who are the co-founders? Who are employees? What are the products they shipped? And one thing we've decided is that, you know, no product can be all things to all people, and there are trade-offs, and we're... This is just gonna be p- positive.
- 10:27 – 16:36
Building the Anti-LinkedIn: Talent Discovery Redesigned
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- ETErik Torenberg
So this is gonna be a place where people brag. It's gonna be accurate, but, um, you know, y- So how often do you go to, uh, you know, someone's, uh, LinkedIn and... or text someone and be like, "Hey, you're connected to someone on LinkedIn."
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
"Like, can you tell me about them?" You're like, "Ah, I don't really know them." You're like... We're gonna have a much more granular information to make sure that it's, um, you, there's real signal there. Um, but, uh, that is, you know, one product decision that we've, we've made. David, I'm, I'm... This is something that we experimented with seven years ago and decided not to pursue 'cause we got busy with other stuff, but I'm curious what has always struck you about this idea in terms of the, the need for it or, you know, what we're really trying to do here. David Booth: One thing I've always believed is, um, the most important skill in this town or in this industry or perhaps in the world is your ability to identify things before the market. And those things in- if you're an investor, it's companies. If you're a hiring manager, if you're a founder, it's people. Um, sometimes it's products. If you are, you know, in charge of procurement for, you know, a, a growing company, maybe you need to identify which product is better before the market. Um, but there's no way of recording that. There's no, there's no hipster leaderboard that says, "This person found this coffee shop first." Um, for angel investors, of, of course, um, they wanna be non-consensus and right, and they're rewarded for doing so because I can invest in your pre-seed round. If I'm right, then it's lucrative for me. Um, one of the things that's always drawn me back was the idea that I can't invest in my, my personal social capital in you. I am very willing to make an introduction for you. Like, if I really, really believe in someone and no one else has, has heard of them, I can make an introduction to them, you know, Josh Elman, for example. Um, and he will hopefully take that introduction because he's see, sees me putting my reputation against that introduction. He has no idea who this person is, but he knows that David thinks highly enough of this person to take a chance on them.
- JEJosh Elman
To me, the, the thing that stood out the first time around and the thing that we're trying to really lean on coming back is, um, like when I cosign someone, I take it seriously. I want that person to be able to take the cosign I've giving- given them, and they might be able to go straight to Josh and they say, "Hey, David cosigned me." And Josh might see that. He might reply to that cold DM. Um, and in fact, that, uh, sort of lubricates the, the wheels of social capital that should, you know, could empower a lot more people to achieve a lot more. Uh, there's this Naval quote I love from a long time ago, "It's so good that people do business through you." In fact, if I cosign two people, they might be able to, y- you know, meet and, and otherwise build something or otherwise hire each other, invest in each other in a way that I, I enabled without even having to, to know about it, [chuckles] which is very exciting.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. Yeah. I, um... It's really interesting. Re- related to that, I want to talk about more features of the product. W- I was talking about sort of the more granular ways of expressing reputation. One of the best events I ever went to, uh, was this SV Angel conference in like 2018. They, they, I think they do it o- once a year or something like that. And bef- every event should do this, but before I, I went to the event, they had this list of 150 people that they sent out and it was all, you know, all of it was, uh, you know, everybody was a, you know, baller and, um, they said, "Swipe who you want to meet, uh, who you want an intro to." And I swiped on almost everybody.
- JEJosh Elman
[laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
Um, you know, it was, you know, I was up and coming. You remember Josh. Um, and eager to, eager to meet great people. And basically if they swiped right on me, then we would get an automatic intro and it would be like, "You guys have full context, you know, you should chat." And, um, I then ended up meeting with most of those people and they became like really... Like so that event, of course I couldn't have m- met, you know, 40 people at an e- at an event and had deep conversations with them, but that event provided the context for us to, you know, become friends and collaborators. And I say that to say that there's, there are so many people in the world who we want to meet who also want to meet us.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
And it's just an information problem, and if you can reduce the friction to make that introduction... 'Cause right now it's like I have to DM them, but I, I have to think about something to say. Are they interested? I don't know. But this is just sort of passive, like, yeah, here are people I would meet. Now what we've enabled is this privately signal that's actually a bit more, uh, granular. So it's not just I want to meet them, though there is that, but it's also I would fund them if they start a company.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Or I would hire them if they consider leaving. I, I can't... There's a lot of people who I would hire, but I can't like reach out to all of them, and also it might be inappropriate and what- like, I'm too busy and I would only want to talk to them if they want to join me or whatever. And so, um, having more granular, granularity around professional intent, um, passively, there's no lo- no risk of s- uh, like... 'Cause there's some cost in sending a DM. I don't know. You might feel rejected or it's time or whatever it is. And if they also express interest, then it's an introduction with high intent I think can unlock just a lot of, uh, you know, good stuff.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. That conference example is so interesting 'cause I feel like the other takeaway for me is like we can all be people matchers now-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... with a product like Cosign.
- ETErik Torenberg
Totally.
- SPSpeaker
Like I think about in, in all of our jobs-
- JEJosh Elman
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... we meet so many people every day. I often meet someone, I'm like, "They are awesome. They have this really specific skill set." Then I meet someone else three months later who's looking for that skill set and I have to figure out like-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yes
- SPSpeaker
... remember this person, check if they still want the intro, make the intro and so like s- it's that store of information and somewhere that's more persistent is, and can kind of work across time is really, really interesting.
- JEJosh Elman
I mean, I agree with that completely. You know, so much of what we like to do both as investors and in people around Silicon Valley is make these connections, but it's always hard to match the needs and the skills at exactly-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... the right time and remember that and being able to codify this. Here's the people I think are truly great designers, or here's the people I think are truly great PR people who can help you through a crisis, or here's the people that have really helped me through, you know, a career decision that I was making and are the mentors-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... that I go to. Being able to actually endorse that now has it available so that when you're looking for that-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... you don't just have to go, "Josh, who can help me think through this decision?" I have to go through and see who have I recently talked to, who's fresh top of mind that I can think of, but I can really go back and be able to say, "Hey, Josh, I'm looking through those cosigns and you said that this person really helped you in this one situation."
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- 16:36 – 22:52
Why Reputation Should Be Granular, Not Generic
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... and really that, that reputation that transfers and builds over time.
- ETErik Torenberg
So building on something Erik said, the, the private signal, um, is one core piece of it, and I think what we're talking about here is in a way the public signal. So we've built the two of them. The private signal, um, I mean honestly the, the product is so fun you can go rabbit holing around. It's a bit like Wikipedia clicking from link to link to person to profile to company to investor and back again, and as you go you're collecting. Um, maybe it's, it's Pinterest and I'm gonna put this person on my personal private list of people that I, I want to, you know, work with in the future and, and I'm gonna put this person on my public list of designers that I, I rate. And every time a founder comes to me and they say, "David who... I need a, I need a new designer, I need a, a, a growth guy, I need a, an engineer," um, I can say, "Well do I consult my private signals or do I send them my public list?" And hopefully everyone has this sort of habit of if I really believe in someone, I'm putting them on my private list. It's actually utility both ways. It's telling them that I believe in them. It's telling their network that I believe in them. It's also something I can use, I can turn around, I can give to a founder or someone I respect and I can kind of shortcut that work that you're saying you, you, you do. You have to do it every time someone asks a question.
- SPSpeaker
What's so interesting about that to me as well is like there's this often timing discrepancy that happens in networks where I'm like, "Oh my gosh. You know, I know this person has been trying to get their startup off the ground. This other startup would like love to, you know, merge with them or welcome them to the team," something like if the timing is right. But if I go to that founder and I'm like, "Hey, you know, are you thinking about exiting your company?" That's like a big risk. It could be like offensive or insulting or maybe the company is working and they want to keep going on it. And so the idea of just like having- This two-sided network where there's information on both sides and they can match when the time is right, when they indicate, I think is like really, really, really great. On both hires, acquisitions, like job changes, tons of things.
- ETErik Torenberg
Totally. Yeah, that's so fascinating. The company to company, I didn't even think about.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Like, I would buy this company.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. [laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs] Yeah, the-
- JEJosh Elman
We'll, uh, we'll get the product features shipped tomorrow.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah, exactly.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- JEJosh Elman
I think we just extended the roadmap.
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah, yeah, that happens. The, there are a couple things I wanna add to that. So, you know, it's interesting. You know, we thought a lot about, you know, should there be a feed? You know, if so, what is on the feed? Is it free-form, et cetera. And Josh helped us really nail down sort of the focus of the feed to be around questions and announcements. And you know, announcements is so interesting because, um, we think a way to differentiate theirs to basically make reputation durable. A lot of reputation is, uh, built on social media, but it's, um, it's ephemeral. So when Josh joined the firm, uh, you know, he wanted me to focus on other people, but you're such a good example. Uh, a lot of people came out of the woodwork, um, who've been working with him for a long time, um, but who maybe haven't, you know, publicly said anything recently 'cause they didn't need to, and said, "Wow, you know, I really endorse Josh. You should work with Josh. Josh helped me in my career." You know, I said that. Nikita said that. A bu- a bunch of other people said that. And then, you know, the next day just happened. And s- and some people saw that, some people didn't see it. But that type of stuff is so valuable and should exist on someone's profile, like the first time you're looking them up. And so for us, any an- uh, announcement is gonna be tied to their sort of, you know, durable reputation. Um, and so when companies fundraise, when people switch jobs, these are opportunities for, for cosigns, for, for endorsements, et cetera. And then on the question side, it's really this, you know... This is what we were talking about earlier, is like who's the best comms person for this, or who's the best angel investor in fintech or, or you know, who are people I should work with for this or this kind of like, um, you know, very specific, uh, you know, question of, of some sort of person or company or product you're looking to either surface to you or l- or learn more about. And, um, in that way, it will also build durable reputation 'cause you get added to a list through that.
- JEJosh Elman
No, and I, I think this idea of bringing those ephemeral moments and those ephemeral conversations that happen on Twitter and other social, or X, and other social media forums all the time are like, there's so much that just happens, and it's wonderful in the moment, and then it gets lost. And I think this idea of, of building a profile, not a profile that is just what you say about yourself, but really that lets other people, you know, be positive and help, you know, shine on your strengths, I think is really, really powerful. And, and you know, I, I see a lot of these for you and the great work you're doing here. I see a lot of these for Olivia and, you know, David. Like, we get these comments and, and it's just so special, and you feel so lucky to have people, you know, that you've helped in the past be able to say those things about you now. But then again, it just gets lost.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- JEJosh Elman
And, and I think this idea of tracking those cosigns and really making it feel-
- ETErik Torenberg
Totally
- JEJosh Elman
... like this fundamental network of the, the web that we are of Silicon Valley, of the tech industry-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- JEJosh Elman
Uh, is-
- ETErik Torenberg
I'll give you an example
- JEJosh Elman
... is really powerful.
- ETErik Torenberg
You, do you know the meme where the guy's like walking into a party, stick figures, and he's like, "They don't even know that..." Um, [laughs] like, uh, that, that's something... You get like a baller cosign or whatever, and you're like, "Eh, it's not pu-" Like, like, um, you know, Mark Andreessen wrote a blog post about me joining the firm.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Like, that's pretty dope. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
Like, I want that on my li- like I want-
- JEJosh Elman
Yes
- 22:52 – 28:41
The Feed: Questions, Announcements & Signal Density
- JEJosh Elman
we need to celebrate that effort and what goes into those moments and what goes into all the hard work that we do, as opposed to, you know, there's, there's plenty of places for critique, and we see all that all the time too.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- JEJosh Elman
But I think that doesn't need to be recorded for posterity in the same way.
- ETErik Torenberg
And one thing we were talking offline that's interesting is a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, um, awards and a lot of shine on founders.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Uh, and you know, justifiably so, obviously. Um, and also there's a lot, you know, a lot of other people build the companies too.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Um, and a lot more people are critical to those companies, and they're, you know, unknown, uh, or, or not celebrated to the same degree, and this is an opportunity to, to do that as well.
- SPSpeaker
Totally. I think even just positive signal is going to be incredibly informative-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... 'cause I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley have a pretty high bar for who they're willing to publicly endorse-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... in, in any way. Like, when I think about like the number of intro requests that come in and how many of those do I actually bridge, like I-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... I think it's great.
- ETErik Torenberg
'Cause if you, yeah, if you endorse someone who's not great, that reflects poorly on you.
- SPSpeaker
Exactly, yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
So there's a natural, like, reputation incentive mechanism.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JEJosh Elman
And it's a whole thing about, you know, do you share something that you haven't even played with? You know, there's a whole-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... you know, have you even read the article before you-
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- JEJosh Elman
... retweet it? And, and I think, I think the key is, like, you'll get to know pretty quickly who's just-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... spouting things and is, you know, celebrating everything that could be celebrated versus, "You know what? I've actually played with this. I've spent time with it. I've heard the backstory. I've thought about the backstory."
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- JEJosh Elman
And I just wanna double down on one comment you said about this going beyond the founders. Like, I, I, I think, you know, the, the founders who take that risk to start a company from nothing, that's such an incredible thing. But it takes a village to build every one of these companies. It takes so many great designers and engineers and marketers and product managers, and we all, um, you know, uh, finance. And, like, there's so many parts of every single company that have to get built, and celebrating that work, and when that happens from a specific team or a specific individual, and be able to have that be part of this kind of endorsement and cosigning, I think is gonna be incredibly powerful beyond just, you know, the people that we talk about most of the time.
- SPSpeaker
Wanna tell a story or perhaps nudge Erik to tell a story. One of the first times I ac- actually heard of Erik, uh, and then went on to meet Erik was the Rise Awards, at the Rise Awards 2015
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- 28:41 – 36:50
The Meme Dynamic: Public Cosigns as Social Capital
- ETErik Torenberg
where, like, I'm like, "Man, I wish I could just download my follower gr- Like, I wish I could just, like... [laughs] Where, like, you know, a few thousand people liked this thing about joining my company. I wish I could just, like, see this and... I, why is it so difficult?" [laughs] Like, or it- it's not built for th- this use case of, like, you know, discovering people to work for or just get more signal. Like, okay, you follow me, but, like, you know, do you wanna work for me? Do you wanna, you know, invest in me? I don't know. Like, what do you wanna, what do we wanna do here? [laughs] Um, and so I, um... And then LinkedIn, you know, it's such a valuable utility. We're on it all the time, and yet everyone hates it. I'm, I'm just kidding. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
Obviously, it's-
- SPSpeaker
Aw.
- ETErik Torenberg
We, we, we, we love, uh-
- SPSpeaker
We, we love LinkedIn.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah, yeah. We love LinkedIn.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
And Josh used to work there.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. [laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
Uh, LinkedIn, you know, one of the most iconic products of a- of all time. What Mark famously defended, I remember when they, when they got acquired, uh, 'cause people were like, "What? Only 26 billion?" It was like, you know, that's a b- that's a great outcome. And it was iconic product and, and yet, um, you know, people have frustrations with it. So I'm, um, um... Well, maybe let's... Even, and even before the Feed, I see people say the Feed is cringe or whatever, but even before the Feed, I feel like people were like, "Ah, I wish there was just more, more that we could do here." So why don't you talk about that?
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah, look, I, I worked at LinkedIn back in 2004 and '05 when we were just-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... starting to form the network, and, and Reid Hoffman, the founder, used to talk about it very much as, like, we have three stages of the company. Like, first is growth. We really have to figure out how to make sure we have the largest professional network and give everybody value of just being part of their network, even if they have nothing to do. And actually, for a lot of users, sign up, make your profile, don't do anything else for a while unless something comes to you, was a perfectly good usage. Then, then we talked about usage. We really have to start to build products on top of the network. The, the real thing was the network is just the substrate. We need to go build a real job service. I helped launch the first LinkedIn jobs. We had to go build services, find the best PR professional, find those things, um, and, and then we'll build revenue. So first we re- so it was kind of the, the... I called it GRR, growth usage revenue. And, and we really had to figure out what those platforms and products were gonna be on top of the network. Now, the challenge is, was you built the network, it was very single signal. Are we connected? And at the early days, the beauty of that was the idea that we really know each other. I'll vouch for Olivia, and if David is asking for an intro to, um, to me, and Olivia says, "David's really good," um, will you take this intro? That's great. And it was even better if you imagine this whole table. David would ask Olivia for an intro to say, "Hey, can you introduce, um, me to Eric?" And then Olivia would say, "Josh, David's my really good friend. It looks like you know Eric. Would you be willing to pass him on?" And this idea of this trusted graph, I'm so happy to connect with you, and I'll pass you on to somebody else, was the important condition. But over time, it started to fade from that, that strength of connection to like, "Yeah, we met once at a party. We high-fived. We had a good email exchange." And all of a sudden then you, you know, everybody kind of got into a collecting. And the challenge with collecting that network is it makes it much harder to figure out where the real signal is. Now, on the other side, it still is the iconic representation of who each of us is, the professional profile. But when we think about how to use that professional profile, it's only really good if it adds value. Um, one of the things I remember when we were first building LinkedIn Jobs was the goal was to take a current job service where someone just applies and gets a resume, and you see a job listing and go, "How do we use the power of your professional network to make it better?" My very favorite, like Reid would push us a lot, and he'd say, "What is a social resume?" When a job application comes in, and it wasn't just, "Here's who this person is," it was, "Here's who this person is, and here's who else in your company might also know more about who the person is. Here's who else might have worked at similar companies they've worked at in the past," or, "Here's who knows people really well who also worked at those companies." So you wouldn't just get this flat resume, you'd get a resume annotated by who else can help you reach that person. So that was, like, this big change to make job applications socially enhanced. And then when you're looking at jobs, you might just see a flat job and like, "Ooh, that job looks really interesting at that company." We said, "No, we're gonna put the hiring manager on... Their profile's gonna be on the job." All of a sudden, instead of a faceless job that you're just applying and throwing your resume over the wall, hey, you're gonna get hired by this person. And then, by the way, here's the ways that you might have connections to that person, or you might have connections to other people who work at that company. So it's, again, how do you use your network to do those things? And so those were these, like, beginning epiphanies of how to really rethink just something as simple as a job application and job site with this social network. And I think, again, what has been missing, though, is the set of things that happens ephemerally through X, like you were talking about, the set of things that, that we all have, but we don't figure out how to strengthen and put into LinkedIn anymore. The true connection, the reason that we were in the trenches together. We worked on this thing. You bailed me out of a crisis.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JEJosh Elman
And when we can have that, that information in the network is gonna allow all these use cases to happen so much better. And when you get to focus just on kind of making sure the network's right and getting all that usage, I think Cosign can really open up so many opportunities.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. It feels like there's kind of like a hierarchy almost of connections, and LinkedIn, for good reason, again, I feel like we're all saying iconic product. I'm an hourly active user.
- JEJosh Elman
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Making a ton of revenue.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
They're clearly doing fine.
- JEJosh Elman
They're doing great.
- SPSpeaker
But LinkedIn treats almost every kind of type of connection the same-
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... especially as products like endorsements on LinkedIn haven't really taken off. So, like, for example, 90% of the time when I say to someone, "Hey, I saw you're connected to this person on LinkedIn, can you intro me?" I will get the, "Hmm, I don't think I know them. Maybe I met them at a party. I'm not sure." So there's like, do you actually know the person? Did you work at the same company? Did you work at the same company at the same time? Were you on the same team or adjacent teams that worked together? Did you manage them? And, like, all of those are treated as one, like, connection or not connection now, and I love the idea for Cosign of being able to, like, break that into the granularity that it deserves, 'cause it's so much more useful.
- SPSpeaker
Seems like the greatest time in history to be building products generally that can accumulate context that was otherwise unavailable.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
You say the social CV, I love that idea. I think, Olivia, in particular, you at the firm have been thinking a lot about, like, the talent and the social space, and agents are an interesting way to accumulate a lot of context around a person. Uh, I think a lot of the things that we're building here. Could you talk more about that? There's, there's a lot of-
- SPSpeaker
Totally
- SPSpeaker
... what does the future hold?
- 36:50 – 44:03
Existing Platforms: Why LinkedIn & X Fall Short
- ETErik Torenberg
I w- wish it had is like, you know, sort of like, um, remember like the MySpace top eight? Like I want that for business.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Like who, who are you in trenches with? Who do you talk to regularly? Like who, who are our mutuals? H- how do you know them? How'd you meet them? Um, you know, what do they think about you? There's more sort of, as you said, it treats connections all, all, all, all, all, all the same. Um, and you don't really get context on the relationship or context on, you know, people's reputation. It's like LinkedIn is about personal identity. We hope that Cosign is about, you know, or sorry, professional identity. We hope Cosign is about professional reputation. You know, Link- LinkedIn is about, they say it's like people you know. Twitter is like, uh, people who, who are interested in knowing you, and we hope that Cosign delivers both in a more granular way. And at the same time, you know, to give props to LinkedIn, it's like it started 20-plus years ago.
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
And no one's even come close to competing with it in any capacity. I remember Charles Hudson, uh, you know, great, great investor, like, you know, 12 years ago was a blog post like, "Where are the LinkedIn competitors? It's time to disrupt. Like, I don't like the product for X, Y, Z reasons. It doesn't do this." And we've seen tons of them. You know, we backed them, you know, at the firm individually and, uh, you know, people have joined crypto. Like all sorts of like different incentives to, to break LinkedIn. And it, it's just fascinating. I, you know, I was joking when I said everyone hates it, but people do have like l... They use it obsessively, and yet they have like low NPS, uh, uh, on, on it or, or, or something. Uh, and they know that a better version can exist, and yet, you know, it's been impossible to, to disrupt.
- JEJosh Elman
But, but I think the real thing with LinkedIn is I actually think the NPS is really high for the people who aren't actively in the flow and in the searching and in the community. LinkedIn's always served two audiences. One is, I call it the people who wanna find people, and the other one is people who wanna maybe be found at some point in their lives.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- JEJosh Elman
And when you think about it, all of us would love to be found for the right opportunity-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... that comes to us. We aren't, no, not, a lot of us might be happy. We used to talk about the, like, mildly happily employed.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- JEJosh Elman
Because there's a lot of people who like, they like what they're doing. They're not in any urgent need to go do something else. But if the right thing popped, whether it was from, you know, someone you know or someone you don't know, but it matched all your interests, you might be like, "Hmm, should I actually think about that?" And I might consider it. It still may not be right for you in life at the time.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- JEJosh Elman
But for those mildly happily employed people, they aren't constantly... You know, if they're an engineer, they're not checking LinkedIn every day for like new people or new things. If, if you're in sales, if you're in BD, if you're in venture and investor, you're using it all the time. But, but that was what was really special. And, and I think moving tens and tens and tens or hundreds of millions, I think there are over a billion people now, of people who are happily employed, who are maybe open to the right opportunity, like that's the kind of network effect-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- JEJosh Elman
... that really sticks. And, and you think a lot about what is a 20-year network effect? Like look at LinkedIn, and as you're building... And, and I say this a lot to, to new companies, as you're thinking about something new, how do you think about that kind of network effect that could be so powerful for 20 years? And even if some people wish there was a better product, you can't move the masses over.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. We have looked at and invested in some attempted LinkedIn killers, and I think what they've done a remarkable job with is the switching costs are just very high, both because they are famously good at bot detection. [laughs]
- JEJosh Elman
[laughs] That too.
- SPSpeaker
So you can't really scrape it in real time. There's whole businesses that are built off-
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah. Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... of scraping LinkedIn and selling that data. Um, but also because it's just such a tight and dense network that like, ultimately, if it's something as important as your career, you're gonna wanna be on the platform where everyone else is. That being said, I think there's a massive opportunity for a new platform when there is new information or new value-
- JEJosh Elman
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... to be kind of gleaned or shared, which is like very much high-quality endorsements and high-conviction people.
- ETErik Torenberg
It's generational shifts, uh, and also, uh, niche. The, the hyper niche that-
- SPSpeaker
Yes
- ETErik Torenberg
... needs its own LinkedIn. For example, GitHub is arguably a better LinkedIn for engineers than, than LinkedIn itself. And I'd say, is there an opportunity to say, like what is the emergent niche here? Is it the, um, the individual who's trying to build their reputation as a talent scout? They're trying to be a founder who wants to break through. Could this... You know, is there a world for a better LinkedIn that represents their i- yeah, their taste in people? The-
- JEJosh Elman
And what gets me excited about Cosign isn't that it has to even be a better LinkedIn.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah, 100%.
- JEJosh Elman
It's that, it's that it really pulls together all this information that's already latently happening in our industry.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- 44:03 – 49:33
Silicon Valley as Meritocracy & the Power of Being First
- ETErik Torenberg
Often people say like, "What's the daily behavior?" Well, we're, you know, brute forcing it by, by covering every sort of, you know, transition, so we'll also have reliable profiles with, uh, you know, more reputation and benefits to it.
- SPSpeaker
Totally. I feel like the best... I'm curious if you agree, but for consumer products-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... like the easiest way to acquire users is to tell them that someone else is saying something about them on the product. [laughs]
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Especially if it's somebody, it's the Nikita Bier and like your friends just answered this question about you strategy, which worked so well three times. Um, and, and it wasn't possible before AI for, for a network, I think, as big as Silicon Valley, and now it is, which is awesome.
- ETErik Torenberg
Someone called me today the Nikita Bier of founder communities.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
It's a real compliment.
- ETErik Torenberg
That's-
- SPSpeaker
That's, that's a true compliment.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, so it's worth pointing out, um, everything that is being pulled in is coming from public sources, so it's what people have posted on their, uh, you know, a variety of different places. Um, it's being aggregated. Uh, there's a lot of like the funding announcements, they're the ones that are being announced. Um, so there's a lot of really, really high quality information that is spread across the public available internet, and it's, it's uniquely, uh, compiled and structured, we think, in one place. And Erik talks about the AngelList example. I recall very early in my career, AngelList was probably the first... It was like the wedge that I took into Silicon Valley at all. It was the, it was the, um, ability to see which companies and which geographies, which people at those companies, which, um... You know, for, for a, uh, for a long time, it, it felt like it could be the LinkedIn for the sort of little niche of people who were ambitious in technology. And then as Erik said, it sort of moved away from that for a number of reasons. But that's been missing. It's a place that you can go as a founder who's like, "Uh, which angel investors do I wanna get to know over the next six months before my round?" It's a public utility. It's something that's worth pointing out here. You know, we, we're putting this out into the world. It's, it's like a, um, a, a thing we'd like to build with people. It's not something that's being presented as a, a fully finished, perfect product. You know, we... It's an invitation. It's an invitation to everybody who wants to come in and, you know, edit and, you know, submit a, a, a, uh, an update to, to their own or someone else's profile. Uh, so a real ask, like let's build this thing together for, for everyone. Yeah. And, and submit things to people's profiles. Cosign the things you endorse on people. And then even if somebody has feedback, cosign that feedback so that it gets back to-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... David and the team in order to, to, to im- keep improving things.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah, and so just sort of to end on that sort of, uh, higher level note, uh, a lot of the industry, but also other industries sort of, um, run on cosigns. Instead... You know, uh, Paul Graham cosigned Sam Altman famously, uh, I feel like 2009 or something. He said like the five best entrepreneurs, like, you know, Steve Jobs, you know, three other people, and Sam Altman. And at the time Sam Altman hadn't, like, had a huge exit yet, but that really just like gave him such a reputational boost, him running YC, et- et cetera, you know, is critical to him then building, going on to build one of the most important companies o- of all time. And, and so many, you know, uh, Ben Horowitz and A- Ali from Databricks, I mean, so many examples of people who got their cosign from someone older and more senior in the industry and were able to ri- rise up because of it.
- SPSpeaker
Ryan Hoover, who was the founder of Product Hunt, cosigned Erik-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yes
- SPSpeaker
... and brought Erik on-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yes
- SPSpeaker
... to become one of the leaders of building the community for everything, and it was such-
- ETErik Torenberg
Totally
- SPSpeaker
... a great endorsement of you, uh, early in your career-
- ETErik Torenberg
Totally
- SPSpeaker
... and your potential.
- ETErik Torenberg
100%.
- SPSpeaker
I mean, look at what you've become since.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. No, I-
- SPSpeaker
It's amazing
- 49:33 – 49:37
Closing Thoughts
- ETErik Torenberg
so excited. Let's wrap on that. Thank you so much.
- SPSpeaker
Thank you.
- SPSpeaker
Thank you.
Episode duration: 49:51
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