The a16z Show
00:09:32 · S2
[00:09:32] S2: Yeah. It's pretty interesting because it feels like the legacy systems for maybe how you would traditionally get a job are outdated. Just the idea... Even just going to college, a lot of young people are like, do I need a degree to get my dream job? And you hear this in Silicon Valley, especially in San Francisco, where you have young ambitious people who just show up with a big dream. And for a lot of people, social media is that outlet that allows them to actually get an opportunity, land them their first job, open up doors. But it's not that clear of a path. It's really hard to build up a social media following and try to create those opportunities for yourself. So it feels like Cosign is almost this shortcut. You know, if you already have some of these people, you can get some of those opportunities that maybe social media traditionally could give you, but just get them through people you already know who can vouch for you.
00:10:23 · Dhruv Gupta
[00:10:23] S3: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I'm a senior at Penn right now. In my career, in my summer internship, sophomore and junior year, I went down the, like, very traditional path of like Morgan Stanley and Jane Street finance stuff. And to get those jobs, I was just like cold applying on Handshake every day checking new jobs. It was like horrible. It was not a fun experience at all. My first, like, experience in tech, as I mentioned earlier, was through Brent. Seeing like some of the work I'd done at Polymarket before and recognizing that I would be able to contribute at MTS. And him taking that chance on me really allowed me to get into this tech world. I think that everyone will have someone like that who can take that chance on them. And we want Cosign to be the place where that happens. And you can find the people who the people you trust are cosigning and like, think about giving them jobs. I think if we move more and more towards that as a means for hiring instead of like cold apply button mashing on LinkedIn or Handshake, it'll be like a better world for everyone.
00:11:31 · S2, Dhruv Gupta
[00:11:31] S2: I completely agree. I think there's one piece that you just alluded to, which is the person piece where now you can actually find people and opportunities because there's a person that vouched for you. But on the other end, there's also this company piece. I see it here, David, that you're pulling up. One thing I think that's interesting here is if you can get all the people who maybe have a traditional job that they don't love, maybe some people love their traditional jobs, so keep them wherever if you're excited there. But there's a lot of amazing talent stuck with golden handcuffs [00:12:02] S3: Yeah. [00:12:03] S2: Who, for whatever reason, don't know what else exist. And I have a fundamental belief that if you get all of these people to genuinely do genuinely do what they're passionate about and what they're exceptional and one of one in in an industry or solving a problem that a specific company is working towards. Yeah. That's how you change the world. Just get everyone to work on the thing that they were meant to be doing.
00:12:03 · S2, David Booth
[00:12:03] S2: Who, for whatever reason, don't know what else exist. And I have a fundamental belief that if you get all of these people to genuinely do genuinely do what they're passionate about and what they're exceptional and one of one in in an industry or solving a problem that a specific company is working towards. Yeah. That's how you change the world. Just get everyone to work on the thing that they were meant to be doing. [00:12:27] S0: It's... Yes. And it's not even that company which needs to change the world. It's a fact that a lot of people who think that way go work there together, and they build their own relationships, and they meet their own And future it's kind of it's an extension of the idea that you are the average of the five people you spend the time with. So if you want to you desperately want to help, you know, re industrialize America or, you know, uncover new sources of essential minerals or, you know, whichever one of a thousand missions that people are working on out there, If you self select into a culture of people who are working on that mission Yeah. Then you will find that it's not even just the... There's a line of careers along, you know, roles are short, but you... It's the people you you may have made along the way that you can build the next thing with. And Cosign when you're there with them so that you can keep tabs on them.
00:13:17 · S2
[00:13:17] S2: Yeah. Completely agree. I would say for a lot of this young talent too, or talent that just... Exceptional talent that maybe wants to make a career change, it can be really hard to find what are those companies that they should go towards. You hear about the big companies and the big companies have a monopoly around attention because you consistently hear their names again and again, but you don't hear about some of these smaller startups. And so I know that's something that you guys have been very focused on. I know famously Katie Kirsch with her LinkedIn posts is one of the best ways to find out about new types of jobs within the a16z Portco world. But tell me what Cosign's role is here.
00:13:55 · David Booth
[00:13:55] S0: There's... I mean, if you think, again, Awards Live Now, they're kind of community generated lists. They're lists that anybody can nominate to. There are lists all across... I mean, it's one of the core things that we're playing with. I think of Cosign in sort of these three layers. One is it's almost like Wikipedia style. You've scaffolded out profiles, but 40, 50,000 people across the site now, you can just... You can click through. You can rabbit hole up and down the companies or investors back to people. The next layer up is list. It's a way of doing a lightweight curation. So you can go to many... I think about 400 people at this point have made lists of companies. Packy McCormick, Not Boring, is one of my favorite examples. I'll go and, you know, Packing's got 36 companies listed there, which he and his time that he takes to write and research thinks are really interesting, vertically integrated, you know, companies that somebody who reads Not Boring might be interested in going to work at. But then that equivalent across of however many, like, angel investors and GPs at great funds, These are the companies that if you're looking for something, you should go and join one of these. If you go and sort of dig into, there's there's this tabcosign.co/lists. You can scroll down. It's a... It's an infinite scroll, and you go through all of these different subsets of of the company ones, but also people. Yeah. What if you could look at every, you know, different individual list? There's sort of the Interact fellows, the Thiel fellows, the different lists that are being created over time, and see where they intersect. See where the, you know, the Interact fellows of 2014 are now is the one that has to be on my screen