Scott Kupor was a16z's first employee and helped build its CAA-inspired services model and open-for-business marketing in 2009.
At OPM, Kupor caps top ratings at 40%, eliminates time-in-grade, and launches Tech Force to hire 1,000 engineers.
OPM is digitizing 400m retirement files from a Pennsylvania mine and promises full checks within 15 days.
Disaggregating the venture job, then rebuilding federal hiring
The episode follows one operator through two institutions he rebuilt. Andreessen Horowitz worked because Kupor disaggregated the general partner job, using Michael Ovitz's Creative Artists Agency as the template and selling services to founders when marketing was taboo . OPM is the harder problem. Its rules reward tenure over performance, and its retirement system still runs on paper, so Kupor is rewriting how federal employees are rated and promoted, and how their files are processed .
Takeaways
a16z disaggregated the general partner job. Michael Ovitz had disaggregated the agent's job at Creative Artists Agency, and Marc Andreessen adopted the model. The one-to-one GP structure did not scale, so a16z built services around founders instead .
a16z marketed and recruited in the crash. Bear Stearns fell in March 2008 and Lehman Brothers in September. While rivals hunkered down with portfolio companies, a16z said it was open for business, and without a track record like Sequoia's it sold its services openly .
a16z later decentralized into domain teams. After about ten years and 500 people the firm split into domain teams, including Chris Dixon's crypto fund and a later-stage fund started in 2019 with David George. Legal and finance stayed central .
Federal ratings hide poor performance. Kupor calls the incentive structure completely screwed up. 99.7% of employees are rated at or above expectations and 90% of roughly 7,000 senior executives are rated four or five, with promotions gated by tenure .
OPM caps top ratings and drops tenure. Top ratings are capped at 40% of staff, who take more than 60% of the compensation pool, and time-in-grade is gone. Tech Force hires engineers on two-year terms, and Ed, who joined DOGE at 19, would have been excluded by degree rules .
Retirement files sit in a limestone mine. 100,000 to 200,000 retirements a year are processed from paper mailed to a former mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania, some dating to the 1950s, by 800 staff doing manual calculations. Two room-sized machines will digitize 400m files, with a fifteen-day commitment .
Musk cut the workforce in one push. Kupor says Elon Musk had to take a big bang approach because a 2.3m-person organization cannot be turned gradually, though the tactics are fair to debate. He calls government risk permissioned, sized to the organization .
Starting a16z during the crash
Kupor's last company sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2007, tying him to HP for twelve to eighteen months .
Andreessen and Horowitz institutionalized their angel investing in 2008, as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed .
Living in North Carolina, Kupor took months to decide, betting the firm would raise a first fund and that he could find another job if it did not .
His title was first employee, not co-founder. With no job description he bought furniture at Costco and opened bank accounts, and sent the first capital call from his personal Gmail to about 50 LPs .
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