How to Spot Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else

Guest 0:00 The most important skill in this industry, or perhaps in the world, is your ability to identify things before the market.

Erik Torenberg 0:05 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?

Speaker 0:17 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.

Josh Elman 0:29 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.

Guest 0:37 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.

Josh Elman 0:47 But it's always hard to match the needs and the skills at exactly the right time.

Erik Torenberg 0:51 What we've enabled is this...

Erik Torenberg 0:55 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-

Josh Elman 1:18 Wow

Erik Torenberg 1:18 ... 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-

Josh Elman 1:45 And social life.

Erik Torenberg 1:46 Yes. [laughs]

Josh Elman 1:47 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 1:47 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.

Josh Elman 4:06 Really curious, as you've been building Cosign, like, what are the kinds of endorsements you hope to get from the platform?

Erik Torenberg 4:12 Yeah. So we want on every profile to have at least the, uh, three. One is who shaped your career? Um-

Josh Elman 4:19 Wow

Erik Torenberg 4:19 ... 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]

Josh Elman 4:33 [laughs] Thank you.

Erik Torenberg 4:34 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.

Josh Elman 4:57 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 4:57 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.

Speaker 6:18 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.

Erik Torenberg 6:59 Absolutely.

Speaker 6:59 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

Speaker 7:24 opportunity to add so much value to people's lives and careers.

Erik Torenberg 7:28 Yeah. T- talk a bit about, um... 'Cause you think a lot about talent discovery.

Speaker 7:32 Yes.

Erik Torenberg 7:32 Um, talk about the newsletter you do, 'cause I think it's an interesting-

Speaker 7:34 Yeah

Erik Torenberg 7:34 ... incredible stuff.

Speaker 7:35 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-

Erik Torenberg 7:53 I was a subscriber.

Speaker 7:54 Thank you so much.

Erik Torenberg 7:55 Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 7:55 [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.

Erik Torenberg 8:32 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 8:32 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-

Erik Torenberg 8:49 Yeah

Speaker 8:49 ... 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.

Erik Torenberg 9:54 And free.

Speaker 9:55 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 9:55 You know, Crunch- Crunchbase, PitchBook, you know, cost money, et cetera.

Speaker 9:57 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 9:58 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.

Erik Torenberg 10:27 [laughs]

Speaker 10:27 Mm-hmm.

Erik Torenberg 10:27 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."

Speaker 10:39 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 10:39 "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.

Josh Elman 12:10 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.

Erik Torenberg 12:52 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.

Josh Elman 13:24 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 13:24 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.

Josh Elman 13:57 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 13:57 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.

Josh Elman 14:20 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 14:20 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.

Speaker 14:53 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-

Erik Torenberg 15:00 Yeah

Speaker 15:00 ... with a product like Cosign.

Erik Torenberg 15:01 Totally.

Speaker 15:01 Like I think about in, in all of our jobs-

Josh Elman 15:04 Mm

Speaker 15:04 ... 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-

Erik Torenberg 15:15 Yes

Speaker 15:15 ... 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.

Josh Elman 15:27 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-

Erik Torenberg 15:38 Yeah

Josh Elman 15:38 ... 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-

Erik Torenberg 15:55 Yeah

Josh Elman 15:55 ... that I go to. Being able to actually endorse that now has it available so that when you're looking for that-

Erik Torenberg 16:01 Yeah

Josh Elman 16:01 ... 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."

Erik Torenberg 16:17 Yeah.

Josh Elman 16:17 Like do you think they'd be open to helping me? And it allows us to really extend all that network and all that value and all that trust, and yet still is a way that you're trusting me to try to make that introduction. Like it's not that any of us want to just say, "Hey, you know, everything's open to everybody." It's really still part of the trusted community-

Erik Torenberg 16:36 Yeah

Josh Elman 16:36 ... and really that, that reputation that transfers and builds over time.

Erik Torenberg 16:39 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.

Speaker 17:40 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.

Erik Torenberg 18:23 Totally. Yeah, that's so fascinating. The company to company, I didn't even think about.

Josh Elman 18:27 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 18:27 Like, I would buy this company.

Speaker 18:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 18:29 [laughs] Yeah, the-

Josh Elman 18:30 We'll, uh, we'll get the product features shipped tomorrow.

Erik Torenberg 18:32 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 18:32 [laughs]

Josh Elman 18:33 I think we just extended the roadmap.

Speaker 18:34 Yes.

Erik Torenberg 18:35 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.

Josh Elman 20:11 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.

Speaker 20:55 Mm-hmm.

Josh Elman 20:56 And, and I think this idea of tracking those cosigns and really making it feel-

Erik Torenberg 21:00 Totally

Josh Elman 21:00 ... like this fundamental network of the, the web that we are of Silicon Valley, of the tech industry-

Erik Torenberg 21:05 Yeah.

Josh Elman 21:06 Uh, is-

Erik Torenberg 21:06 I'll give you an example

Josh Elman 21:07 ... is really powerful.

Erik Torenberg 21:07 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.

Josh Elman 21:21 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 21:22 Like, that's pretty dope. [laughs]

Speaker 21:23 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 21:24 Like, I want that on my li- like I want-

Josh Elman 21:25 Yes

Erik Torenberg 21:25 ... just the first thing when you think about me is to like think about Mark Andreessen introducing me.

Speaker 21:28 [laughs] Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 21:29 Professionally it is.

Josh Elman 21:29 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 21:30 And so yeah, there's just all these moments that happen if we can make them more legible-

Speaker 21:35 Yeah

Erik Torenberg 21:35 ... uh, you know, you can more accurately represent someone's, yeah.

Josh Elman 21:38 Honestly, it wasn't until we actually hooked up the internet fire hose to this product that I realized how many of those moments there are. I mean, you, you look at the, the main feed, and every day there is fundraising announcements, there's talent transitions.

Erik Torenberg 21:48 Yeah.

Josh Elman 21:48 Uh, thanks to our good friends at X, we're, we're plugged into a lot of those, and we're, we're taking like whenever someone in q- quote tweets an announcement or, uh, replies and it's a, it's a g- we, you're filtering them, it's a genuinely thoughtful, positive comment, your point earlier about positivity.

Erik Torenberg 22:00 Yeah.

Josh Elman 22:00 Um, those are pulled through, and it's, and it's, yeah, it's really coming from a person, and it's on the p-

Erik Torenberg 22:05 Yeah

Josh Elman 22:05 ... profile the person comes from, and it goes to a person.

Erik Torenberg 22:07 To... And, and the reason why it's all positive is because, uh, uh, you know, products have to win on some dimension, and this product is gonna win on people, um, using it to show off. Like, to, uh, show off in a good way. Like, "Hey, this is what I'm proud of." Like, this represents the, like the full manifestation of w- what I'm capable of on a person level and on a company level.

Speaker 22:26 Yeah.

Josh Elman 22:27 And, and I really think it's about, it's about celebration.

Erik Torenberg 22:29 Yes.

Josh Elman 22:29 I mean, like so much of what we do, there's so much hard work that goes on-

Erik Torenberg 22:32 Yes

Josh Elman 22:32 ... into making every single product that happens.

Erik Torenberg 22:35 Yeah.

Josh Elman 22:35 Like, uh, it's a toil of somebody's love, their idea, the coding they wrote or maybe that they worked on with their agent now.

Erik Torenberg 22:41 Yeah.

Josh Elman 22:41 But like, putting that out in the world, it's, it's, it's a very vulnerable moment.

Erik Torenberg 22:45 Yeah.

Josh Elman 22:45 And it's very like, "Do you like what I've tried to make? Do you-"

Erik Torenberg 22:49 Yeah.

Josh Elman 22:49 You know, "Are you gonna use it?" And I think, you know,

Josh Elman 22:52 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.

Erik Torenberg 23:03 Yeah.

Josh Elman 23:03 But I think that doesn't need to be recorded for posterity in the same way.

Erik Torenberg 23:06 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.

Josh Elman 23:13 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 23:13 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.

Josh Elman 23:19 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 23:19 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.

Speaker 23:26 Totally. I think even just positive signal is going to be incredibly informative-

Erik Torenberg 23:32 Yeah

Speaker 23:32 ... 'cause I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley have a pretty high bar for who they're willing to publicly endorse-

Erik Torenberg 23:37 Yeah

Speaker 23:37 ... 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-

Erik Torenberg 23:44 Yeah

Speaker 23:44 ... I think it's great.

Erik Torenberg 23:45 'Cause if you, yeah, if you endorse someone who's not great, that reflects poorly on you.

Speaker 23:48 Exactly, yeah.

Erik Torenberg 23:48 So there's a natural, like, reputation incentive mechanism.

Speaker 23:50 Yeah.

Josh Elman 23:51 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-

Erik Torenberg 23:54 Yeah

Josh Elman 23:55 ... you know, have you even read the article before you-

Erik Torenberg 23:56 [laughs]

Josh Elman 23:56 ... retweet it? And, and I think, I think the key is, like, you'll get to know pretty quickly who's just-

Erik Torenberg 24:02 Yeah

Josh Elman 24:02 ... 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."

Erik Torenberg 24:11 Yeah.

Josh Elman 24:11 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.

Guest 24:51 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

Erik Torenberg 25:00 Mm-hmm

Guest 25:00 ... '16, thereabouts.

Erik Torenberg 25:01 Yeah, yeah.

Guest 25:01 So over a decade ago now. And it was around this thesis that, um, you know, founders get a lot of publicity, a lot of credit, but it's actually the people who are the operators behind the scenes. And so the principle... Do you wanna tell the story? What, what were the Rise Awards? [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 25:12 Yeah, so the, the Rise Awards were this, uh, series of awards meant to be for everybody else.

Guest 25:17 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 25:17 Uh, for the engineers, the designers, the product... I believe Josh was a judge. Uh-

Guest 25:20 Yeah

Erik Torenberg 25:20 ... you know, many others, and we had thousands of, of submissions and, um, you know, discovered and selected some great people because of it, and we're gonna bring that back to some capacity. You know, there's this, what's the phrase? "Fear not the guy who has a thousand moves, but the guy who does one move a thousand times."

Guest 25:34 [laughs]

Josh Elman 25:34 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 25:34 There's the samurai or whatever that's, you know-

Guest 25:36 Yeah. [laughs]

Josh Elman 25:36 Yeah

Erik Torenberg 25:37 ... uh, you, you kick a thousand times. So Ri- you know, Rise Awards, Cosign, a lot of these ideas have been in the ether for us for-

Guest 25:42 And in fact-

Erik Torenberg 25:43 Yeah

Guest 25:43 ... the thing that stands out of it i- is a lot of the people who were the Rise Award recipients got to know each other and built-

Erik Torenberg 25:48 Yeah

Guest 25:48 ... lifelong relationships through the retreats they attended, through the groups that you added them to and things. So there's something around that-

Erik Torenberg 25:53 Yeah

Guest 25:53 ... the connection too.

Speaker 25:54 It's, it's really interesting 'cause, um, I feel like we often meet people who are spinning out of great companies to start their own companies. And often, if you get really deep-

Guest 26:03 Mm

Speaker 26:03 ... like, if you call everyone they've ever worked with, it's like, wow, this person who was like, I don't know, engineer number four, actually was a huge determinant in this company being successful or not. But that, to your point earlier about legibility, that's not something that they can, like, publicize. They're not gonna be, like, the face of every article about the company.

Erik Torenberg 26:23 Yeah.

Speaker 26:23 And, and yet there's, like, so many of these people who I think I would love to see them get to leave that company if they go start a new company, if they go to another one and carry-

Erik Torenberg 26:32 Yeah

Speaker 26:32 ... that accomplishment with them.

Erik Torenberg 26:34 Totally.

Speaker 26:34 And they can't really do that right now.

Erik Torenberg 26:36 Yeah. We're making the reputation market more, like, efficient, basically, or more, more liquid in the sense of, well, both efficient and liquid. So for example, there's some people who have an amazing reputation, but there's not awareness. Not a lot of people know that they have a great reputation. Um, and then more liquid in the sense of if it was known that they had a reput- great reputation, a lot of people would wanna hire them or fund them, and they should, you know, get those opportunities as a, as a result. And so it's basically, like, trying to fix that information asymmetry. Um, I wanna return to what you were saying earlier, though, because it's really interesting. It's like, you know, a bunch of times a c- a candidate will, you know, or, or someone looking for a new job will, you know, sit you down and say, "Hey, what company should I join?" And so, uh, and there's a lot of people who wish they could do that. But if you, you know, if you've got your list of, of companies they, they should join, it's kinda the do business through you. They can... It's like Olivia stamped these companies. They can, uh, you know, re- reach out. And similarly, um, the, the, t- uh... And it'd be cool also, like, for the ones you do meet with, um, that you could just, like, press a button, and it would go to all, all, all your companies instead of having to, you know-

Guest 27:34 Mm

Erik Torenberg 27:34 ... think through. 'Cause there's, there's some that you might wanna, you know, share private just to keep to your companies or, or whatever it is. Um, but then also there are companies who wanna, who are like, "Hey, I want a head of comms. Who in my network knows a head of comm- Who should I even talk to?" And to the extent that, you know, people are cosigning heads of comms or, or, or this kind of thing, it can just, like, facilitate much more, you know, matching.

Speaker 27:55 Yeah, totally. I feel like even for investors, like, the most up-to-date profile of the companies they care about is maybe if they tag them all in their X bio, and maybe if they put them on their LinkedIn, otherwise you have to go to the firm's page and see if they connect them to investments. And, like, I... If, if I could and not ruin kinda the reach in the audience, I would be tweeting about all my companies all day, every day. [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 28:19 Yeah.

Speaker 28:19 Like promoting them.

Erik Torenberg 28:20 Yeah.

Speaker 28:20 "Go work for them. They just did this amazing thing." But you can't do that.

Erik Torenberg 28:23 Yeah.

Speaker 28:23 And I love the idea of a place where, like, that kind of lives-

Erik Torenberg 28:27 Yeah, totally

Speaker 28:27 ... uh, to see at any time.

Erik Torenberg 28:29 Yeah. Be shameless. Um-

Speaker 28:30 Yes. [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 28:31 It is interesting. I mean, so, um, let's talk about existing platforms for a second. Like, you know, X obviously, you know, such a great platform, and the exhaust of it is so valuable to so many people. But there's also times

Erik Torenberg 28:41 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]

Speaker 29:12 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 29:12 Obviously, it's-

Guest 29:13 Aw.

Erik Torenberg 29:13 We, we, we, we love, uh-

Guest 29:14 We, we love LinkedIn.

Erik Torenberg 29:14 Yeah, yeah. We love LinkedIn.

Guest 29:15 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 29:15 And Josh used to work there.

Speaker 29:16 Yeah. [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 29:17 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?

Josh Elman 29:41 Yeah, look, I, I worked at LinkedIn back in 2004 and '05 when we were just-

Guest 29:45 Yeah

Josh Elman 29:45 ... 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.

Guest 33:16 Yeah.

Josh Elman 33:17 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.

Speaker 33:30 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.

Josh Elman 33:40 [laughs]

Speaker 33:41 Making a ton of revenue.

Guest 33:42 Yeah.

Speaker 33:42 They're clearly doing fine.

Josh Elman 33:43 They're doing great.

Speaker 33:43 But LinkedIn treats almost every kind of type of connection the same-

Josh Elman 33:47 Yeah

Speaker 33:47 ... 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.

Guest 34:25 Seems like the greatest time in history to be building products generally that can accumulate context that was otherwise unavailable.

Josh Elman 34:31 Yeah.

Guest 34:31 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-

Speaker 34:47 Totally

Guest 34:47 ... what does the future hold?

Speaker 34:48 So a lot of what we do, it's both actually our investing teams and our operating teams, is just finding awesome people and investing in them, connecting them to our companies, otherwise kind of getting them in the a16z network. And so right now a lot of this is scraping these existing, [laughs] you know, profiles and networks, and then doing a lot of manual work of going to see who actually is the best strength of connection, how can we make this happen? I think that that kind of manual work that's truly external signal based, and it's, um, kind of binary signal versus really granular signal, that's only gonna get harder. Because, for example, recently I posted on LinkedIn, I was like, "Hey, I'd love to help my portfolio companies hire. Um, if you wanna work at a startup, fill out this Google form." When it works, it's almost harder because I get 2,000-

Erik Torenberg 35:39 [laughs]

Speaker 35:39 ... I get 2,000 results, right?

Erik Torenberg 35:41 It's incredible.

Speaker 35:41 And, and that's gonna happen to every person who posts a job or who posts any kind of opportunity. And, and it's gonna be 2,000 now, and it's gonna be 10,000, you know, a month from now as browser usage gets better and m- more people use browsers, it's gonna be 100,000. And so it's like, how do you, even me using Astra at like maximum strength, like how do you sift and sort? And so in an age, I think of like endless, uh, kind of outreach and interest with AI, like the scarce thing is like the human endorsement or the human conviction or the human knowledge. And so that's where I get especially excited because I think Cosign is gonna be valuable to hopefully so many people in the community, and also very valuable [laughs] to the work that we do and what we try to do.

Erik Torenberg 36:25 And yeah, it's interesting. You know, we've sort of gotten to a place where there's only like broadcasting networks to the whole world, or like group chats with like 50 people. There's not really this like, you know, 10,000 per- or like a much more vetted, you know, community, and that's where we are to start. Um, and grow- you know, growing slowly and basically where you put out a post and you'll just be more confident in the signal that, that, that comes in. Um, it's, going back, going back to LinkedIn for a second. On so- some things that I, you know,

Erik Torenberg 36:50 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.

Josh Elman 36:56 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 36:56 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.

Josh Elman 37:34 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 37:35 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.

Josh Elman 38:14 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.

Erik Torenberg 38:31 Yeah.

Josh Elman 38:32 And when you think about it, all of us would love to be found for the right opportunity-

Erik Torenberg 38:36 Yeah

Josh Elman 38:36 ... 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.

Erik Torenberg 38:42 Yeah.

Josh Elman 38:42 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.

Erik Torenberg 39:00 Yeah.

Josh Elman 39:01 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-

Erik Torenberg 39:29 Yeah

Josh Elman 39:29 ... 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.

Speaker 39:48 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]

Josh Elman 40:00 [laughs] That too.

Speaker 40:00 So you can't really scrape it in real time. There's whole businesses that are built off-

Josh Elman 40:04 Yeah. Yeah

Speaker 40:04 ... 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-

Josh Elman 40:23 Yeah

Speaker 40:23 ... to be kind of gleaned or shared, which is like very much high-quality endorsements and high-conviction people.

Erik Torenberg 40:29 It's generational shifts, uh, and also, uh, niche. The, the hyper niche that-

Speaker 40:34 Yes

Erik Torenberg 40:34 ... 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-

Josh Elman 40:56 And what gets me excited about Cosign isn't that it has to even be a better LinkedIn.

Erik Torenberg 40:59 Yeah, 100%.

Josh Elman 40:59 It's that, it's that it really pulls together all this information that's already latently happening in our industry.

Erik Torenberg 41:04 Yeah.

Josh Elman 41:05 And, and look, Silicon Valley and the tech industry is so special for this kind of pay it forward, for this belief in somebody, the stuff we talked about at the very beginning. The belief in this person who may not have had a previously strong reputation, but has an insight, an idea, and that alone can gather a bunch of people and a bunch of momentum and change the world. And, and that's what makes this so special. And that's what I think, you know, these platforms like LinkedIn, you know, serving so many people now across so many industries and so many domains, and I think there's room for something that's really special for the, the community that we have and that, you know, combines the things that are happening ephemerally with the things that are happening professionally-

Erik Torenberg 41:43 Yeah

Josh Elman 41:43 ... with the depth that, that is gonna be great. And if Cosign works great, and it still only serves the tech community, that's a huge win.

Erik Torenberg 41:50 Oh, 100%.

Josh Elman 41:50 And, and, and, and if it then-

Guest 41:52 Other communities and other industries figure out they should figure out how to take part in this too and-

Erik Torenberg 41:57 Yeah

Guest 41:57 ... and bring some of that Silicon Valley energy to more places, that's even better. But the, the pay it forward and the every great idea can just come from somebody who wasn't previously known but truly has a unique insight, like that's what I hope this captures too.

Erik Torenberg 42:11 E- Erik, uh, from Benchmark had this comment in the Patrick O'Shaughnessy podcast where Patrick was asking him sort of like, you know, "What do you think about every category?" And he's like, "It's all gonna work." Like-

Guest 42:20 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 42:21 ... every- everything is gonna be, be huge. Not every company, but just as an index, like every, every cat-... And I think we've come to s- a similar conclusion. Um, and e- and I think, and I think similarly, like when people say like, uh, you know, "Do, does the world need another podcast?" Like, there's too many podcasts, uh, and yet another great podcast comes in and it doesn't kill the other. It, it, it just all works. Uh, everything that's great works. And, and similarly like, you know, we just launched a school, like Stanford's gonna be fine, you know?

Speaker 42:43 Yeah. [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 42:44 Our, Harvard's gonna be fine, and our thing's gonna be great. And then similarly like, yeah, L- uh, LinkedIn's gonna be great, like it's gonna keep doing its thing. And you know, we're inspired by them in so many ways. We're also inspired by AngelList, like 10 years ago when they owned the investor graph and really, really ju- it was for the startup community, and it was really focused around, you know, companies, investors, and talent. And you know, they made a series of other bets that then sort of, um, made them focus on other parts of that or, or, uh, deprecate the, the, the, you know, free public social network that used to exist and we think is an opportunity to bring back. And then we're also inspired, in terms of like how we're gonna do this, we're also inspired by Wikipedia, um, one in terms of, you know, people want Wikipedia profiles, they're aspirational, but two, in that we're creating profiles for people. Um, so that, that's where we're starting, and we think people are gonna be excited about it because we're bragging for them on their behalf in a exclusive, you know, way. And you know, if they don't want it, we'll, we'll take it off. But you're gonna see your profile, it's gonna be fleshed out with all, all, you know, people giving you compliments and also pe- people expressing their interest in funding you or working with you or like even before you go to the profile. Like [laughs] you know, uh, before... You know, and so that's one of the ways in which we're differentiating. And only, you know, because of AI can we generate all of this information on people and like recreate, you know, a professional graph. Um, but if we didn't go that third-party route, then we would have to get people to sign... It's a cold start problem. It's the place where people go to update their, you know, profiles that's the most reliable.

Erik Torenberg 44:03 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.

Speaker 44:16 Totally. I feel like the best... I'm curious if you agree, but for consumer products-

Erik Torenberg 44:20 Yeah

Speaker 44:20 ... like the easiest way to acquire users is to tell them that someone else is saying something about them on the product. [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 44:25 [laughs]

Speaker 44:26 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.

Erik Torenberg 44:40 Someone called me today the Nikita Bier of founder communities.

Guest 44:43 [laughs]

Speaker 44:43 It's a real compliment.

Erik Torenberg 44:44 That's-

Guest 44:45 That's, that's a true compliment.

Speaker 44:46 Yeah, yeah.

Erik Torenberg 44:46 [laughs]

Guest 44:47 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-

Speaker 46:14 [laughs]

Guest 46:14 ... David and the team in order to, to, to im- keep improving things.

Erik Torenberg 46:18 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.

Guest 46:59 Ryan Hoover, who was the founder of Product Hunt, cosigned Erik-

Erik Torenberg 47:02 Yes

Guest 47:02 ... and brought Erik on-

Erik Torenberg 47:03 Yes

Guest 47:04 ... to become one of the leaders of building the community for everything, and it was such-

Erik Torenberg 47:06 Totally

Guest 47:07 ... a great endorsement of you, uh, early in your career-

Erik Torenberg 47:09 Totally

Guest 47:09 ... and your potential.

Erik Torenberg 47:10 100%.

Guest 47:10 I mean, look at what you've become since.

Erik Torenberg 47:11 Yeah. No, I-

Guest 47:11 It's amazing

Erik Torenberg 47:12 ... I'm massively grateful for him.

Guest 47:13 [laughs]

Erik Torenberg 47:13 And, um, it, it's, it's so fascinating because, I mean, one of the things that makes Silicon Valley so special is how much of a meritocracy it is, and how you don't have to like, you know, necessarily just, you know, pay your dues for 20 years before, or be taken seriously. Like, one of the most important intellectuals right now is Durkheim. He's 25 years old. He's never had a job as far as I'm aware. He just, you know, came to San Francisco, started podcasting and, you know, someone was, if, I don't know if it's Patrick Collison or Marc Andreessen also went on ear- Like, a number of people, by going on his podcast early, cosigned him and then said, "Hey, this is a place where then Zuck and others can go on." You know, the, one of the most important founders is Michael Trul, you know, a, a, a young guy in his, you know, mid to late 20s, et cetera. One of the most important, uh, you know, people, uh, Le- Leopold Aschenbrenner is like, I think like 24 or 25 as well. And so it just, like if you're talented, if you're smart in this industry, um, someone will discover you, cosign you, and make your career.

Guest 48:07 Mm.

Erik Torenberg 48:08 And so we hope that happens on our platform.

Guest 48:09 While we're talking about social capital and positive sum mindsets, I think it's really important, um, there's a critique of, of this I, I wanted to, to talk about where someone might rightfully say, "Well, why would I share this, this cosign? This is my alpha. This is like I know that person's good. Like, why would I tell you you're the good?" And I think actually something, um, if you, if you take a very long-term view at this, you can say, um, sure, if that person's raising, raising a pre-seed round right now and you wanna do it, don't cosign them right now, but you, the person you want to, to cosign is the one that's raising a pre-seed round two years from now, five years from now. And when they do, they remember you. They say, "Yeah, the reason I'm able to raise this pre-seed round is Olivia cosigned me two years ago, and in doing so, she helped me meet my co-founder and she helped me meet the five people who were my early believers in my product, and that's why I'm here today. And of course I'm gonna call her first my pre-seed round." And if you turn it around that way and you take a very long-term mindset, like this is such a, such a long-term place.

Erik Torenberg 48:58 100%.

Guest 48:59 Right?

Erik Torenberg 48:59 And the, the benefits just accrue to you in the sense of people always remember, like by order of magnitude more, the people who believed in them first.

Guest 49:05 Mm.

Erik Torenberg 49:06 Right?

Guest 49:06 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 49:06 You know, Paul, uh, uh, Brian Chesky, when he, uh, you know, goes public with Airbnb, who does he write in the, in the blog post? He writes, uh, YC, you know, Paul Gra- his first investor.

Guest 49:15 Mm.

Erik Torenberg 49:15 He's had, you know, so much investment all, all throughout.

Guest 49:17 [laughs] Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 49:17 So much more money.

Guest 49:18 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 49:18 So much more time, uh, into this company, but the, you remember the first person or the fir- So and so if you build a, uh, if you are the first person, especially publicly, 'cause that's where the value is, uh, because they will remember you for it and, and then more people will come to you.

Speaker 49:32 Yeah.

Erik Torenberg 49:32 I'm so,

Erik Torenberg 49:33 so excited. Let's wrap on that. Thank you so much.

Guest 49:36 Thank you.

Speaker 49:36 Thank you.