Torenberg, Elman Launch Cosign to Index Silicon Valley Endorsements

Torenberg与Elman推出Cosign，构建硅谷背书索引 随着人工智能生成的求职信息让传统简历逐渐失效，可验证的人类确信将取代机构文凭，成为最关键的人才筛选标准。 Erik Torenberg与联合创作者Josh Elman、Olivia Moore及David Booth阐述了Cosign背后的核心逻辑：即谁对你抱有信心，远比传统的机构文凭重要得多。他们剖析了LinkedIn等老牌平台如何将高信任度信号稀释为扁平、二元的好友数量，以及即将到来的AI智能体如何让自动化垃圾信息淹没传统招聘渠道。为解决这一问题，Cosign引入了高信号基语——记录塑造职业生涯的导师、“并肩作战”的合作者，以及对潜力新星的押注——同时构建了被动的双向确认意向机制，从而在消除社交摩擦的同时精准匹配机会。他们最终认为，公开的社交资本构成了现代的“造王者”，能够将早期真实的同行确信转化为持久的声誉超额收益。 Erik Torenberg、Josh Elman、Olivia Moore和David Booth推出了Cosign，这是一个动态声誉图谱，旨在让同行确信、导师关系以及高确信度的人才背书变得清晰且持久。 (0:00) 该平台旨在应对传统被动招聘和简历筛选的失效问题，目前这些环节正被自动生成数万份合成申请的AI浏览器智能体所淹没。 (35:00) Cosign围绕三类特定基语来构建职业关系：塑造职业生涯的导师、无论去哪都愿意共事的业务同行，以及对潜力新星的按顺序押注。 (5:00) Cosign并非直接竞争以取代拥有十亿用户的LinkedIn实用功能，而是瞄准AngelList转向后台工具后留下的市场空白，专注于初创生态圈的社交资本和人才发掘。 (40:00)

Erik Torenberg, Josh Elman, Olivia Moore, and David Booth argue that traditional institutional credentials and flat connection networks have lost their fidelity, leaving talent discovery vulnerable to information asymmetry and automated noise. They introduce Cosign, a platform designed to turn informal trust, shared operational history, and public peer endorsements into a durable, legible reputation graph. The Breakdown of Pedigrees and Flat Networks (0:00) Erik Torenberg and David Booth observe that higher education's historical bundle of education, social networks, and credentialing is unbundling onto digital networks, where public attention from respected industry figures often carries more weight than a degree from Stanford. Concurrently, incumbent professional networks like LinkedIn have seen their connection strength dilute over time. Josh Elman and Olivia Moore note that roughly 90% of introduction requests between mutual LinkedIn connections fail because users barely know one another, flattening real collaboration into superficial contact lists without organizational hierarchy or relationship depth. This loss of signal is accelerated by automated inbound applications. Moore recounts receiving 2,000 startup applicants from a single LinkedIn post linking a basic Google Form, projecting that autonomous AI browser agents will soon drive applicant pools to 10,000 or 100,000 per opening. As synthetic outreach renders standard resume reviews obsolete, the hosts argue that genuine human conviction and direct peer vouching remain the only scarce, unforgeable signals for hiring and funding decisions. High-Conviction Primitives and Granular Intent (5:00) To capture relational data historically confined to private backchannels, Cosign structures endorsements around three core primitives: identifying who shaped a career (mentors), who an operator would work with anywhere based on shared operational crises (the trenches), and rising talent to track before market consensus forms. This framework also introduces social capital investing, allowing non-investors to stake their public reputations on early-stage startups and establish a track record of discovery without deploying financial capital. To overcome the friction and fear of rejection associated with cold outreach, the platform pairs public endorsements with private, granular intent indicators. Users can passively tag colleagues with specific intentions, such as a willingness to fund them if they launch a venture or hire them if they leave their role. Introductions trigger automatically only when mutual interest exists, eliminating social risk and allowing delicate conversations around startup acquisitions or senior career transitions to occur when timing aligns. Anchoring Ephemeral Praise for Non-Founders (17:40) Silicon Valley culture disproportionately spotlights founders, often overlooking early engineers, product managers, and designers whose operational contributions determine company survival. While substantive praise frequently surfaces on platforms like X during funding rounds or job changes, this commentary is ephemeral and vanishes from timelines within 24 hours. David Booth and Torenberg explain that Cosign ingests this live stream of substantive commentary, converting temporary social exhaust into permanent profile endorsements. To prevent the platform feed from degrading into unstructured noise, the team restricted its communication mechanics to two primitives: career announcements and high-utility industry questions. Because vouching for underperforming talent imposes real reputational risk on the endorser, the system relies on social accountability to self-regulate accuracy, creating liquid reputation for high-performing operators who lack existing public visibility. The Long-Term Alpha of Public Endorsements (47:30) Addressing the counterargument that operators should hoard early talent discoveries as private proprietary alpha, the hosts contend that public endorsements generate compounding, asymmetric goodwill over multi-year horizons. Torenberg and Elman point to historical kingmaking examples where early backing altered careers—including Paul Graham endorsing a pre-exit Sam Altman in 2009, and Ryan Hoover bringing on Torenberg at Product Hunt. Founders consistently remember and prioritize early believers by orders of magnitude over later capital partners, a dynamic illustrated by Brian Chesky publicly celebrating Y Combinator during Airbnb’s IPO. By leveraging modern AI to aggregate fragmented public records, news milestones, and endorsements, Cosign employs an aspirational directory model similar to Wikipedia and early AngelList to overcome the classic consumer cold-start problem. Rather than relying on users to fill out speculative resumes, the platform focuses on documenting an ongoing ledger of who backed whom before broader market validation. While LinkedIn's entrenched position as passive career insurance for over one billion users and its sophisticated bot defenses make it resistant to direct displacement, Cosign targets the specialized vacuum left by AngelList's shift away from talent graphs. The unresolved question is whether a broader professional audience beyond tech's operator and venture circles will embrace the social risk of staking their reputations publicly rather than keeping high-conviction signals private.

Erik Torenberg、Josh Elman、Olivia Moore 与 David Booth 认为，硅谷传统的名校凭证与宽泛的职场社交关系已逐渐钝化；新平台 Cosign 旨在通过导师关系、实战经历和早期潜力等高颗粒度背书，将非正式的社交资本与私密意向转化为公开且持久的声誉图谱。 机构背书解绑与声誉图谱的演进 (0:00) Erik Torenberg 指出，传统的高等教育将教学、社交圈层与职场凭证打包在一起，但数字网络正在将凭证层独立解绑。例如行业领袖在社交媒体上的关注或公开发声，其声誉溢出效应已成为比名校文凭更具穿透力的无形背书。然而，以往只有天使投资人能通过开出支票将早期发现转化为财务回报与声誉记录，非投资人与业务骨干长期缺乏将个人社交资本记录在册的机制。Cosign 的目标即是改变过往散落于私下对话或流失于 X 等平台时间线上的短暂赞誉，将其构建为一个免费、透明且公开的科技生态流动名录。 David Booth 与 Olivia Moore 补充道，硅谷的核心商业货币在于先于市场共识发现价值。商业数据库如 PitchBook 和 Crunchbase 设立了高昂的付费门槛，主要面向企业买家，导致需要评估初创公司发展潜力的早期工程师与求职者处于信息劣势。要穿透这种信息不对称，关键不在于通用的简历罗列，而在于获取行业同侪真实、高信度的点对点背书。 三大关系基语与低摩擦意向匹配 (5:00) 为捕捉私下沟通中真实存在却无法被现有职场网络表达的关系数据，Cosign 确立了三类核心基语：指明职业导师以传递信任圈层、标注共同经历过危机与实操考验的“战壕战友”，以及对后起之秀的远期押注（如早年发掘当时在特斯拉担任工程师的 Russell Kaplan）。平台还将这一逻辑扩展至公司层面，允许非投资人通过“虚拟投资”以个人声誉押注早期项目，在项目成功后获得公开的发现红利。 针对传统冷启动联络伴随的时间成本与被拒风险，Erik 介绍了单向隐藏的细颗粒度意向机制（如“若其创业我愿注资”或“若其离职我愿招募”）。此类意向仅在双方达成双向匹配时才触发引荐，既规避了贸然接洽在职员工或仍在运营中的创始人的社交尴尬与潜在冒犯，也让长期的职业招募和项目整合得以在恰当时机自然发生。 扁平图谱退化与AI时代的信任壁垒 (30:00) 曾参与早期 LinkedIn 商业化搭建的 Josh Elman 回忆，最初的职业网络建立在高信任度的直接引荐上，但随着时间推移，平台关系逐渐演变为仅有一面之交的浅层收集，导致当前通过相互好友发起引荐的失败率高达约 90%。现存职业网络将主管、普通同侪与活动偶遇者无差别地压缩为单一层级的二元连接，完全丢失了关于“谁在排查故障、谁能挽救业务危机”的真实协作上下文。 Olivia Moore 强调，随着 AI 自动化工具的普及，职位申请门槛被极大抹平；她在一次发布普通招聘表单的测试中短时间内就收到了 2,000 份申请，预测未来每个职位都将充斥上万份机器生成的申请，使传统简历筛选彻底失效。在无摩擦的 AI 生成内容泛滥的环境下，承担自身声誉风险的真实人类背书成为唯一无法伪造的稀缺信号。Cosign 将产品定位为捕捉专业声誉而非单纯展示职业档案，通过推荐不合格人才会反噬推荐者自身声誉的自律机制来过滤网络噪音。 细分网络突围与早期背书的复利 (40:00) 针对 LinkedIn 凭借十亿级被动求职者筑起的二十年网络效应与反爬虫壁垒，对谈嘉宾认为新平台无需直接取代垄断巨头，而是可以通过深耕垂直高信任网络实现突围。类似早年 AngelList 覆盖初创生态人才图谱后转向后台基础设施所留下的生态空白，Cosign 借助 AI 聚合公开新闻、招聘和融资数据构建类似维基百科的动态公开档案，以此绕过消费级社交软件传统的冷启动瓶颈。 对谈指出，过早公开人才背书虽然看似放弃了短期独家优势，但从多年周期来看，在人才崭露头角前两至五年公开予以背书所积累的长期信任将呈不对称放大。硅谷历史上如 Paul Graham 在 2009 年对 Sam Altman 的力挺，或 Ryan Hoover 提拔年轻的 Erik Torenberg，均证明创始人对最先认可自己的伯乐具有持久的认同感。将这种“回馈文化”代码化，使声誉发现者能够在整个行业生态中沉淀长期的声誉复利。 Cosign 试图通过结构化同侪背书与双向意向系统重塑硅谷的信誉流转，但在 LinkedIn 强大的被动防御网络与公开背书可能带来的利益博弈下，该模式能否从科技垂直圈层顺利向外扩展，仍取决于其声誉图谱能否持续维持高门槛的真实度与防御力。

## Background 该内容由 Erik Torenberg、Josh Elman、Olivia Moore 和 David Booth 于 2026 年 9 月 25 日在播客及 RSS 平台上发布。节目围绕新产品 Cosign 的上线展开，探讨了硅谷核心的人才与公司声誉图谱，以及如何将那些真正有价值的点对点信任信号显性化并沉淀为持久资产。 ## TL;DR 节目深入剖析了硅谷运转背后的信任飞轮：在传统学历证明逐渐被公开输出与行业大咖关注拆解的当下，比市场更早发掘潜力人才和初创团队的能力成为了最稀缺的资本。团队介绍了 Cosign 如何通过记录“塑造你职业的人”、“战壕并肩者”与“未来之星”三大维度，构建去中心化的信誉网络并解决冷启动与双向私密意向匹配问题。此外，嘉宾们还对比了 LinkedIn 的演进史与连接膨胀弊端，阐述了在 AI 制造的海量低信噪比信息时代，人类真实背书作为长期正和博弈资产的独特 Alpha 价值。 ## Atmosphere & style 对话洋溢着硅谷资深圈内人复盘行业机制的通透与热忱，既有投资老手对职场痛点与背调内幕的坦率吐槽，又带着创业者推出新基建时的兴奋感。几位老友兼合作者配合默契、观点碰撞密集，从亲历的经典案例与增长哲学中娓娓道来，整体氛围兼具高度的智性启发与温暖的长期主义情怀。 ## Bulletin - `00:00` Erik Torenberg 联手 Josh Elman、Olivia Moore 与 David Booth 推出免费职场声誉平台 Cosign，旨在将科技圈分散在社交媒体中的隐性背书和同行评价转化为持久的信誉档案。 - `05:00` Cosign 围绕三大核心维度设计背书机制：谁塑造了你的职业生涯、在战壕中并肩作战的战友，以及值得关注的上升期新星，帮助用户通过社交资本进行“虚拟投资”。 - `35:00` 针对 AI 时代投递量激增导致人脉信号严重稀释的痛点，Cosign 引入双向私密信号与维基式预建档案，利用网络公开数据与同行背书解决传统职业网络的冷启动与信息摩擦问题。 - `45:00` 平台聚焦于服务科技社群与消除幕后功臣的信息不对称，主张公开早期背书是长期的正和博弈，能够为背书者沉淀下被投资人与创业者长期铭记的信誉复利。 ## Key takeaways - `00:00` 传统大学文凭的“教育、人脉与资历证明”正在被社交平台拆解，公开作品与顶尖同行的关注已成为更具穿透力的工作量证明与背书信号。 - `00:00` 硅谷最核心的竞争力在于先于市场发现非共识人才与事物，率先为新星背书能够帮助从业者积累“点金者”的行业声誉资本。 - `05:00` 求职者与投资机构长期面临严重的背调与内幕信息不对称，初级从业者难以判断初创团队的真实成色，极度缺乏高置信度的同行指引。 - `07:30` Cosign 定位于免费的创业生态活体目录，旨在打破 Crunchbase 等付费数据库的壁垒，让行业专家的声誉直接挂钩初创公司与团队。 - `10:00` 传统职业社交网络好友泛滥导致弱连接失效，而 Cosign 通过点对点的实质性声誉质押，让新人能够携带可信的信誉凭证完成高效引荐。 - `12:35` 双向私密意向匹配（如“离职愿雇佣”、“创业愿跟投”）消除了单向冷私信的尴尬与拒绝顾虑，使隐性职业意向在精准时机静默交汇。 - `15:00` 产品信息流砍除冗余互动，专注于融资等重大公告与精准提问，将社交媒体上转瞬即逝的祝贺转化为个人档案中不可磨灭的持久声誉。 - `20:00` 公开背书具备天然的声誉惩罚机制：一旦背书不合格的人才将直接损伤自身信誉，这种高门槛保证了正面评价的高信噪比。 - `24:00` 科技行业普遍存在创始人独占光芒的偏差，Cosign 继承 Rise Awards 精神，致力于让设计、工程等幕后关键贡献者的真实战绩显性化与资本化。 - `30:00` LinkedIn 的演进遵循“规模增长、提升活跃、商业变现”三阶段，但二元连接的膨胀导致其失去了真实协作细节与深度背书颗粒度。 - `35:00` 随着 AI 浏览器智能体大幅降低申请门槛，常规投递数量将爆发式增长，人工筛选濒临失效，人类同行的真实背书与坚定信念因此成为最稀缺的资源。 - `35:00` LinkedIn 的不可撼动在于其绑定了占多数的“被动求职者”和防抓取壁垒，Cosign 无需全面替代它，而应专注于构建科技行业特有的高信任度声誉子网络。 - `40:00` Cosign 采用类似维基百科的模式，借助 AI 从互联网公开信息中预设档案，并结合“有人评价了你”的机制打破冷启动阻碍。 - `45:00` 提前背书他人并非泄露挖掘 Alpha 的零和博弈，早期给予创业者关键信任的前辈将获得深厚的心理认同与长期超额的合作复利。 ## Detailed walkthrough ### `00:00` 介绍 Cosign：硅谷背后的声誉图谱与点对点背书 硅谷乃至整个商业世界中最核心的能力，往往是在市场形成共识之前率先发现事物与人才。Erik Torenberg 联手 Josh Elman、Olivia Moore 与 David Booth 共同推出新产品 **Cosign**，旨在为创业圈打造一个围绕“专业声誉（Professional Reputation）”构建的人才与公司目录。 谈到产品的灵感来源，Erik 分享了朋友 David Perel 的经历：尽管花了几十万美元读大学，但 David 坦言自己的 Twitter 账号为职业与个人发展带来的价值远超那纸大学文凭。大学本质上捆绑了“教育、人脉圈与资质证明（Credential）”，而在社交媒体时代，这种传统捆绑正在被拆解： - **人脉与教育**：在公开社交平台上，人们通过交流建立联系，作品与言论成为实打实的“工作量证明（Proof of Work）”。 - **资质证明的转移**：与其拿斯坦福的文凭，现代人往往觉得“被 Patrick Collison、Elon Musk 或 Marc Andreessen 关注”更具分量。 这种关注行为本质上就是一种内隐的“联署背书（Cosign）”。它是顶级人物日常浏览信息时留下的“数字副产物（Exhaust）”，却向外界释放了极强的正向信号。一旦获得这种背书，不仅会有更多人阅读你的内容，工作机会、投资机会与顶级团队的邀约也会接踵而至。 背书对于“发现者”本身同样具备巨大的飞轮价值。硅谷的运转逻辑本就是一场发掘未知潜力的竞赛——未来的行业领袖可能年仅 18 岁，或者毕业于完全不知名的高校。率先发现并支持他们的人（如以敏锐发掘人才著称的 Zack Frankel，或是 Josh Elman 和 Olivia Moore 这样的投资人），能够借此确立自己“点金者（Kingmaker）”的行业声誉。然而，过去这种强信号几乎只能通过“做创始人”或“做天使/机构投资人”才能释放，广大普通职场人缺乏将自己的判断力和声誉资本化为信号的工具。 Erik Torenberg 精辟地总结了这种信号的源头： > “Some of the most important opportunities in Silicon Valley start with a simple signal. Someone you trust believes in someone you don't know yet.” ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 传统资历与点对点声誉网络的背书路径对比 accDescr: 对比传统通过学校获得文凭的路径，与通过行业顶尖人物关注和背书建立声誉飞轮的路径。 subgraph TraditionalPath["传统路径"] A["顶尖高校 (如斯坦福)"] --> B["获取学位文凭"] B --> C["传统招聘与简历筛选"] end subgraph CosignPath["Cosign 声誉网络路径"] D["公开输出与工作量证明"] --> E["行业翘楚关注 / 早期背书"] E -->|"释放强信任信号"| F["声誉与资本倍增"] F --> G["获得早期投资与顶尖合作机会"] F -->|"反馈机制"| H["背书人确立发现人才的行业声誉"] end ``` --- ### `05:00` 个人主页的三大背书维度与早期信号的稀缺价值 为了让这种原本散落在私聊或瞬时推文中的声誉沉淀下来，Cosign 为每个用户 Profile 设计了三个最核心的背书维度： 1. **谁塑造了你的职业生涯？（Who shaped your career?）**：硅谷运转的核心基石是“导师经济（Mentor Economy）”。例如年轻时的 Erik 曾得到 Josh Elman 大量时间的指导，当这种关系公开化，外界对 Josh 的信任与尊重便自然平移至 Erik 身上。对导师而言，早期发现并扶持新星也能反哺自身的影响力。 2. **在战壕中并肩作战 / 无论去哪都愿共事的人（Would work with anywhere / in the trenches with）**：现有的职场社交软件很难看出谁才是你真正能“托付后背、一起打硬仗”的人。这一维度表达了极高颗粒度、极强信任的关系，远非简单的社交“关注”所能比拟。 3. **值得关注的新星（Person to watch）**：由用户预测并标记那些尚未显露锋芒、但处于上升轨道的年轻人才。背书平台会对这些早期标记按时间排序建立信用积分。Erik 提及自己 7 年前曾给几百人发邮件做过一次“未来之星预测”实验，当时年仅 22 岁、在特斯拉担任普通工程师的 Russell Kaplan 就在名单中，而如今他已成为 Cognition 的总裁。 不仅是人，Cosign 还允许用户对自己看好的未上市初创公司进行声誉质押。对于无法直接写支票的普通从业者，这相当于一种“虚拟投资（Fantasy Investing）”或“社交资本投资（Social Capital Investing）”。 Olivia Moore 从投资人的实操痛点出发，强调了这种真实信号的极度匮乏： > “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 and who and who can give you kind of a real read on a person for so many decisions.” - **背调的日常摩擦**：投资人和招聘团队每天都在四处发私信寻找“谁跟某某共事过”，费时费力且信息严重不对称。 - **求职者的致命盲区**：初级工程师在手握 5 个创业公司 Offer 时，根本无法获取业内真正有穿透力的内幕判断，而这一步选择往往决定了他们是踏上一艘“火箭飞船”还是一艘即将沉没的破船。 --- ### `07:30` 从大学求职周报到去中心化的免费行业活地图 Olivia Moore 回忆了她早年探索人才发现的经历。她和同在 a16z 基础设施团队担任合伙人的双胞胎妹妹 Justine 从事风投近十年。在她们的第一份风投工作中，两人创办了一份每周日发出的求职 Newsletter，连续坚持了近七年之久。 尽管姐妹俩毕业于斯坦福并曾在校内运营创业孵化器，但直到真正进入风投行业之前，她们面对海量初创团队时，同样完全无法辨别哪些项目靠谱、哪些纯属炒作。于是她们把风投工作带来的“内幕信息”整理成筛选名单，帮助年轻人寻找值得加入的公司。这份刊物在高校校园内建立了由童子军（Scouts）组成的庞大网络，早期读者中不少人后来成为了 a16z 领投的明星创始人。在 Olivia 看来，当年的 Newsletter 本质上就是 Cosign 的低扩展性、手工处理版原型。 随着 AI 时代各种低门槛输出泛滥、行业噪声急剧增加，像 Packy McCormick 这样深耕硬科技和垂直整合领域的意见领袖，其愿意公开押注名誉、撰文背书的标的，就成了普通求职者和投资者最重要的信任罗盘。 不同于 Crunchbase 或 PitchBook 这类高昂收费的商业化数据库，Cosign 旨在作为一项面向创业社区的免费基础设施： - 沉淀最真实透明的融资与公司信息，清晰展现投资人以往的投资组合（如 Olivia 的全部交易项目）。 - 将行业专家的声誉背书直接附加在公司和团队之上，构建一个由从业者共建、动态更新的“创业生态活体目录”。 ### `10:00` 早期识别与社交资本的“背书（Cosign）”机制 在打造 Cosign 产品的过程中，团队确立了一个基本原则：没有任何一款产品可以取悦所有人，必须做出权衡。他们明确决定 Cosign 将专注于呈现正面、准确的评价与成就展示，剔除传统职业社交平台中水分过多的噪音。在现有的 LinkedIn 等网络中，常常发生好友列表成千上万，但真去发私信询问“你和某人是好友，能介绍一下吗”时，对方往往只能尴尬地回复“其实我根本不熟”。Cosign 致力于建立更细颗粒度、具有真实高信号的信誉记录。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: 传统网络与 Cosign 背书机制对比 accDescr: 展示了传统 LinkedIn 弱连接与 Cosign 强信任背书在促成合作上的路径差异。 subgraph Traditional["传统职业网络"] A["庞大但廉价的互关好友"] --> B["询问背景：“其实不熟”"] B --> C["冷私信 / 极高摩擦与忽略率"] end subgraph CosignFlow["Cosign 信任流转"] D["识别潜力人才 / 早期项目"] --> E["投入个人声誉进行 Cosign"] E --> F["受背书者携带信誉凭证"] F --> G["高权重暖引荐 / 迅速获得回应"] end ``` David Booth 谈起早在七年前两人就曾做过类似实验，后来因为忙于其他事务而搁置。他指出，在硅谷、乃至整个商业世界中最核心的技能，就是**比市场更早识别出潜在价值**的能力。天使投资人押注非共识且正确的早期公司，一旦被市场验证就能赚取丰厚的财务回报；但过去，人们无法直接为个人信誉进行投资并积累记录： - **无法量化的先见之明**：世上既没有记录“谁最先发现这家小众咖啡馆”的潮人排行榜，也没有工具记录哪位招聘主管或管理者比市场更早发掘了某位天才工程师或高管。 - **社交资本的质押与流动**：当你对一个毫无名气的新人深信不疑时，你可以为他引荐像 Josh Elman 这样的大咖。Josh 根本不认识这个新人，但他知道 David 的眼光足以让他给新人一次机会。 - **让声誉背书成为流通凭证**：通过 Cosign，新人甚至能直接向 Josh 发冷私信附上“David 背书了我”，从而润滑整个社交资本的流转机制。 > “One thing I've always believed is... 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.” —— David Booth David Booth 还特别引用了 Naval Ravikant 的名言：“要做到如此优秀，以至于人们通过你来做生意（Be so good that people do business through you）。”这种无需当事人时刻介入、就能持续赋能他人的机制，正是产品追求的理想状态。 --- ### `12:35` 私密信号：以零摩擦、双向匹配重构职业意向 Erik Torenberg 分享了他 2018 年参加 SV Angel 年会的经历。那次会议是业内少有的高效社交范例：主办方在活动前向所有受邀者发送了一份包含 150 名顶尖精英的名单，参会者可以向右滑动表达结识意向。当时尚属年轻新秀的 Erik 对几乎所有人滑动了认可；一旦双方都表达了意向，系统就会自动完成双向引荐并附带完整上下文。借助这一机制，Erik 在一场活动中深度结识并转化了数十位长期的朋友与合作伙伴。 现实生活中，想认识彼此的人极多，核心痛点在于**信息摩擦**和**单向冷私信的心理成本**。为了解决这个问题，Cosign 引入了更细致的“私密意向信号”： - **消除拒绝顾虑**：发送冷私信伴随着时间投入、构思话术的负担以及被拒绝的尴尬；被动而低风险的私密标记完全消除了这些顾虑。 - **极细颗粒度的意向选项**：用户不仅可以私密标记“想认识某人”，还可以精确选择“如果他们离职，我愿意雇佣他们”或者“如果他们创业，我愿意投资他们”。 - **高意向的精准触发**：对于管理者而言，不可能同时去敲定数十位潜在员工并询问离职意愿，这既不合时宜也耗费精力；只有当双方同时表达对应诉求时，高意愿的引荐才会被静默激活。 Olivia Moore 补充道，这种机制让平台上的每个人都变成了“人才匹配器（People matchers）”。在日常工作中，人们每天都会遇到极具特色的人才，但往往直到几个月后遇到契合的岗位或项目时，记忆早已模糊或无法把握联络的时机。建立一个持久、能够跨越时间沉淀的数据库，让人们随时查阅“谁是顶尖的设计师”、“谁是擅长带领团队度过危机的操盘手”或“谁是关键职业决策时最值得信赖的导师”，能让有限的人脑记忆转化为长效的信誉网络。 > “There are so many people in the world who we want to meet who also want to meet us. And it's just an information problem.” —— Erik Torenberg --- ### `15:00` 跨越周期的持久信誉：公共档案与动态信息流 随着讨论深入，团队进一步剖析了产品的双层设计与信息流机制。一方面，产品探索体验极具趣味性，用户可以在人、公司、投资者、项目资料之间像逛 Wikipedia 一样不断深挖，同时像在 Pinterest 上“收集”心仪对象： 1. **私密意向清单**：存放那些打算在未来秘密挖角、跟投或深入合作的人选。 2. **公开背书清单**：用于对外展示公认的优秀人才（例如“我认可的顶级设计师列表”）。当创业者登门求助“我需要一个增长负责人或工程师”时，不再需要耗费心力翻找聊天记录，只需直接调用私密信号或分享公开列表。 3. **消除并购与跳槽的敏感时机差**：Olivia Moore 指出，许多初创公司在生死线上挣扎，此时如果有大公司想要收购或吸纳团队，直接去问“你打算卖公司吗”往往极具冒犯性且带来风险。而依靠 Cosign 的双向意向标注，双方可以在合适时机静默交汇，彻底破解信息差。 谈及产品的信息流（Feed）设计，Erik Torenberg 透露 Josh Elman 在关键时刻帮助团队砍掉了自由发帖等泛杂功能，将核心聚焦在**重大公告（Announcements）**与**精准提问（Questions）**两大模块。这一设计的本质是**将短暂脆弱的社交网络声誉转化为持久资产**： | 信息流模块 | 核心运作逻辑 | 解决的传统网络痛点 | |:--- |:--- |:--- | | **重大公告 (Announcements)** | 围绕公司融资、高管离职、岗位变动等节点展开，自动汇聚同行的公开背书与评价 | 传统社交平台（如 X/Twitter）上同行的盛赞与支持会在 24 小时内被信息流淹没，无法沉淀到个人档案中 | | **精准提问 (Questions)** | 解决垂直具体的寻人需求（如“谁是某垂直领域最棒的公关”、“谁是 Fintech 领域最优秀的天使投资人”） | 提问沉淀的优质人选直接累积进入对应榜单，让即时口碑固化为该专家主页上的持久信誉 | Erik 举例提到，当 Josh Elman 加入某家机构时，大量业内资深人士在社交网络公开为他站台、叙述他当年如何提携后辈，但这些极高价值的证明不到一天就被信息洪流冲刷得无影无踪。Cosign 将这些里程碑公告直接绑定在持久的个人档案中，确保任何人在第一次检索该档案时，都能立刻查看到那些曾经与他同行、被他帮助过的人所留下的真实证言。 > “A lot of reputation is built on social media, but it's ephemeral... And so for us, any announcement is going to be tied to their durable reputation.” —— Erik Torenberg ### `20:00` 捕捉流逝的赞誉：Cosign 的核心主张与正向网络效应 在社交媒体和日常工作中，无数闪光的时刻和真诚的赞誉常常转瞬即逝。嘉宾们指出，无论是 X 还是其他社交论坛，人们经常能看到很多在当下非常美好的互动，但它们很快就会被信息流冲刷、遗忘。Cosign 的核心理念正是构建一种全新的档案体系：它不是用户自吹自擂的简历，而是由他人为你赋能、映射出你真正优势的展示空间。Erik Torenberg、Olivia Moore 和 David Booth 都深有感触地提到，在职业生涯中得到曾经帮助过的人公开致谢是非常珍贵的体验，但这些认可随后往往就沉没了。Cosign 希望能够捕捉并追踪这些背书（cosigns），将其沉淀为硅谷乃至整个科技行业底层的人脉信誉网络。 David Booth 用一个生动的网络迷因打趣道：“你知道那个梗图吗？一个人像火柴人一样站在派对角落里，心里想着‘他们甚至都不知道……’无论他是谁的背书者还是怎样。现实中，这就像‘Marc Andreessen 专门为我加入公司写了一篇博文，这太酷了，我希望当别人想到我时，第一时间就能联想到 Marc Andreessen’。”在职业语境下，这种认可的分量举足轻重。当团队真正将互联网的数据流接入产品后，他们才震惊于现实中究竟存在多少被浪费的高价值瞬间——融资官宣、关键人才跳槽，以及 X 上充满洞见的转发与回复。通过过滤出真诚、有深度的正面评价，Cosign 将来自具体个人的认可精准沉淀在另一个具体个人的档案上。Josh Elman 强调，产品必须在某个特定维度上建立胜势，而 Cosign 的制胜点就在于成为大家自豪地展示个人与公司成就的场所。 - **脆弱的发布时刻需要庆祝**：开发产品是漫长而艰辛的心血结晶，无论是手写代码还是与 AI 智能体协同，向世界展示作品本身就是极度脆弱、渴望被认可的时刻；与充满挑剔和批评的外部平台相比，Cosign 选择专注于庆祝与留存这种正向价值。 - **背书的自然声誉惩罚机制**：Olivia Moore 指出，硅谷从业者在公开推荐或引荐他人时门槛极高，因为“如果你背书了一个并不优秀的人，这会直接连带损害你自己的声誉”，这种天然的机制确保了正向信号的高信噪比。 - **辨别深度与浮夸**：真正的背书不仅是无脑转发，而是建立在深度体验产品、了解背后的创业故事与研发心血之上，平台很快就能筛选出谁在言之有物，谁只是盲目吹捧。 --- ### `24:00` 聚光灯之外的幕后英雄：从 Rise Awards 到消除信息不对称 长期以来，科技行业的荣誉和光环几乎都被创始人独占，但真正将企业建立起来的往往是一个庞大的团队。设计、工程、市场、产品、财务等各职能环节的幕后功臣至关重要，却鲜少得到应有的公众赞美。为了扭转这种不平衡，Erik Torenberg 回顾了自己十多年前发起 Rise Awards 的初衷。当时还是 2015、2016 年左右，Josh Elman 也受邀担任了评委。这项评选旨在挖掘并嘉奖那些创始团队背后的中坚力量——“为其他人设立的奖项”，不仅收到了数千份提名，还发掘出大批日后顶尖的人才，许多人因此建立了延续至今的深厚人际关系。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 传统声誉传播与 Cosign 流动性匹配对比 accDescr: 对比传统模式下幕后核心员工声誉被掩盖，与 Cosign 将隐性声誉公开化并加速流动性。 subgraph Traditional["传统痛点：声誉信息不对称"] A["幕后核心员工<br/>（如 4 号工程师）"] -->|"支撑业务成功"| B["公司整体成功"] B -->|"媒体报道 / 光环"| C["创始人独揽光芒"] A -.->|"无法公开履历权重"| D["求职 / 融资门槛高"] end subgraph CosignGraph["Cosign 机制：声誉市场流动性"] E["同事 / 行业权威"] -->|"Cosign 明确背书"| F["高信噪比声誉图谱"] F -->|"解决信息不对称"| G["流动性释放：快速匹配投资人与雇主"] end ``` Olivia Moore 进一步探讨了离开大厂或明星独角兽出来创业的人才现状。在行业尽调中常常会发现，某个低调的“4 号工程师”其实才是决定公司成败的关键先生，但这并非他们能在媒体文章中大肆吹捧的事情。当他们离开原团队重新启程时，缺乏一个有效的机制将过往的真实战绩转化为可携带的声誉资本。Erik Torenberg 对此概括道：“我们正在让声誉市场变得更有效率，基本上是在效率和流动性两个维度上让它更加充盈。”通过消除信息不对称，那些拥有极佳口碑却未被广泛知晓的人才，能够及时获得匹配的招聘与融资机会。同时，这也极大解决了投资人和高管日常的推荐负担：无论是为求职者背书推荐去处，还是企业急寻公关负责人（Head of Comms）等关键岗位，网络中的信誉图谱都能促成更无缝的供需对接。 - **武术哲学的坚持**：“不怕懂一万种招式的人，只怕把一招练上一万次的人。”Erik 表示，从早期的 Rise Awards 到今天的 Cosign，团队始终在深耕“让幕后贡献者显性化”这同一件事。 - **投资人推广的痛点**：Olivia Moore 坦言，如果不会稀释推文受众和互动率，她恨不得每天都在推特上不遗余力地为被投企业宣传招聘；投资人迫切需要一个专门的去处，能够理直气壮、毫无心理负担地全天候展现这些公司的亮点。 --- ### `27:00` 现有平台的局限与 LinkedIn 的三阶段演进 针对现有平台在人才连接上的不足，嘉宾们展开了深入的对比与探讨。尽管 X 拥有极高的价值和庞大的衍生数据流，但在职业信誉和人才发掘上缺乏结构化沉淀工具。Erik Torenberg 吐槽道，有时自己很想直接下载粉丝列表，或者触达那些给公司招聘推文点赞的数千名用户，但平台并非为此场景而生——关注并不代表对方想为你工作或给你投资，互动背后缺乏精确的职业意向与信誉信号。 话题随后转向了职场社交巨头 LinkedIn。尽管大家打趣“所有人都讨厌 LinkedIn”，但不得不承认它是科技史上最具标志性的产品之一，Marc Andreessen 当年也曾在其被微软收购时力挺其百亿级估值的合理性。曾于 2004 至 2005 年在 LinkedIn 早期团队任职的 Josh Elman 回顾了创始人 Reid Hoffman 当年对公司的战略规划。Reid 当时清晰地将公司的成长划分为三个发展阶段： | 发展阶段 | 核心任务与产品逻辑 | 用户行为与平台定位 | |:--- |:--- |:--- | | **第一阶段：规模增长 (Growth)** | 打造最大规模的专业职场网络，确保即使网络尚无实际功能，加入其中也有基础价值。 | 用户只需注册并填写个人档案即可，即使完全静止、等待机会主动找上门，也是完全合理的健康使用方式。 | | **第二阶段：提升活跃 (Usage)** | 开始在已建成的网络之上构建功能和互动产品，激活节点之间的联系。 | 用户开始在网络中进行日常互动、拓展联系人并消费信息流内容。 | | **第三阶段：价值变现 / 平台应用** | 深度挖掘网络资产的底层价值，建立招聘、销售及商业服务等高级应用生态。 | 将底层人脉网络作为基础设施，赋能企业与人才的高效商业匹配。 | Josh Elman 总结了 Reid Hoffman 当初的核心洞见：“真正的核心在于，网络本身才是一切的基础。”在网络基础设施成型之前，过多的功能都是空中楼阁，这也为后续探讨职业社交产品如何进化提供了深刻的复盘视角。 ### `30:00` 从“社交简历”到连接膨胀：LinkedIn 的早期辉煌与信号稀释 Josh Elman 回顾了自己在 LinkedIn 早期主导产品增长的经历。当时团队的核心框架被称为“GUR”（Growth, Usage, Revenue，即增长、使用度、营收）：先构建网络规模，再开发增值服务（如帮助用户寻找顶尖公关专家、推出第一代 LinkedIn Jobs），最后实现商业变现。在早期，该网络最强大的地方在于其极高密度的信任信号——如果 David 想结识 Erik，他会先请 Olivia 引荐，Olivia 再找到 Josh，Josh 则确信 Olivia 的背书并愿意将 David 推介给 Erik。这是一种真正的受信任关系图谱（trusted graph）。 然而，随着时间推移，这种强关系连接逐渐退化。用户开始疯狂“收集好友”，关系弱化为“我们在派对上见过一面、击过掌，或者有过一次愉快的邮件来往”。这种连接泛滥导致网络中的真实信号被极度稀释。 尽管如此，Josh Elman 强调了当年创始人 Reid Hoffman 提出的“社交简历”（Social Resume）概念对求职招聘的重塑。传统招聘只是单向投递干瘪的简历，而 LinkedIn Jobs 将“社交图谱”嵌入其中： 1. **对招聘方而言**：当一份申请递进来时，系统不仅展示求职者的履历，还会标注出你公司内部有谁认识他、谁曾在他以前供职的公司待过，或者谁的人脉与他高度重合。 2. **对求职者而言**：职位不再是冷冰冰的文字，而是直接展示招聘经理（Hiring Manager）的个人主页，并提示求职者与该经理或目标公司员工之间存在哪些连接路径。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 社交简历与传统招聘流程对比 accDescr: 对比传统冷冰冰的单向招聘投递与 LinkedIn 早期创新的社交增强简历机制。 subgraph Traditional["传统招聘模式"] A["求职者投递静态简历"] --> B["企业HR系统筛选"] B --> C["缺乏背景参照的孤立决策"] end subgraph SocialResume["Reid Hoffman 的'社交简历'创新"] D["求职者带有社交属性的申请"] --> E["展示公司内部谁与求职者有交集"] D --> F["标注谁曾与其在前司共事"] G["职位页面直接展示 Hiring Manager"] --> H["求职者顺着人脉路径建立真实引荐"] end ``` Josh Elman 指出，如今的 LinkedIn 已经缺失了大家在日常（例如在 X/Twitter 上即时互动中）积累的深度细节：那些一起并肩作战、一同身处战壕中解决危机、彼此救场的真实背书，都无法被有效沉淀进现有的职业档案里。 Olivia Moore 随即指出，现实中人际关系存在极其分明的层级，而 LinkedIn 却把所有连接“一刀切”地同等对待： > “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.” —— Olivia Moore 人脉关系有着丰富的颗粒度：你们是单纯认识？还是在同一家公司共事？是在同一时期共事，还是在同一个团队或协同团队？抑或是上下级管理关系？LinkedIn 将其全部压缩为一个二元的“是否已连接”，而这正是 Cosign 试图切入并打破的痛点。 --- ### `35:00` AI 时代的泛滥与稀缺：寻找职场版“MySpace Top 8”与不可动摇的超级网络 当谈到 a16z 内部的投后人才挖掘时，Olivia Moore 坦言，目前很多工作仍然极其低效：团队必须抓取现有平台的公开档案，然后靠大量人工核查去确认“谁与谁的人脉关系最硬、最真实”。而在 AI 时代，这种基于二元连接的筛选机制面临崩溃。 Olivia Moore 举了一个切身体验的例子：她在 LinkedIn 上发帖称“想帮被投企业招人，想去初创公司的人请填 Google 表单”。结果瞬间涌入 2,000 份申请。她预测，随着浏览器智能体（Browser-use agents）的成熟普及，未来类似职位的申请量会从 2,000 暴增到 10,000 甚至 100,000。届时即便用尽各类 AI 辅助工具，筛选成本也将高到不可承受。 > “As browser use aging gets better and more people use browsers, it's going to be 100,000. And so it's like, how do you, even me using Astra at maximum strength, how do you sift and sort? kind of outreach and interest with AI. Like the scarce thing is like the human endorsement or the human conviction or the human knowledge.” —— Olivia Moore 在充斥着向全世界广播的大平台和仅有 50 人的小社群之间，存在着一个巨大的断层——市场缺少一个规模在一万人左右、经过严格资质核验的高信任度社区。这也正是 Cosign 的切入点：从小规模高质量圈子起步，提供确定度极高的人脉信号。 讨论中，Erik Torenberg 提到了早年社交网络的一个经典功能： - **职场版 MySpace Top 8**：人们渴望知道谁是真正在战壕里陪你打过仗的人、你日常和谁交谈、彼此如何认识、对方到底怎么评价你。 - **定位对比**：LinkedIn 承载的是“职业身份”（Professional Identity），关注的是“你认识的人”；Twitter 承载的是“想认识你的人”；而 Cosign 的核心定位是“职业声誉”（Professional Reputation），致力于以更颗粒化、可信度更高的方式将两者结合。 尽管投资人和从业者多年来不断寻找“LinkedIn 颠覆者”（如 Charles Hudson 在 12 年前撰文呼吁颠覆 LinkedIn，业内也先后尝试过加密激励等无数手段），但 LinkedIn 依然坚如磐石，坐拥超 10 亿用户。Josh Elman 解析了其底层网络效应的秘密：LinkedIn 事实上服务两类人群——“主动找人的人”（销售、BD、投资人、猎头）与“希望在人生某一刻被好机会找到的人”（占绝大多数的被动求职者，比如平时工作稳定、极少刷动态的普通工程师）。 对于那些过着稳定生活、无需频繁互动的绝大多数在职者而言，只要有一个符合所有兴趣的绝佳机会可能找上门，他们就绝不会离开该网络。再加上 LinkedIn 拥有极强的人机抓取防护能力（Bot Detection）和几乎无法迁移的人脉密度，构建起了极深的壁垒。正如与会者总结的那样：面对关乎职业生涯的重大决定，人们终究必须留在“所有人都在的地方”。 ### `40:00` 垂直生态与 Cosign 的冷启动机制 嘉宾们探讨了在新平台崛起时，如何通过捕捉新信息与更高价值的信号来建立壁垒。在职场社交领域，高品质的背书（endorsements）和高信念度（conviction）的人际网络正催生细分赛道，正如 GitHub 在程序员群体中事实上成为了比 LinkedIn 更有效的专业凭证网络。针对 Cosign 的定位，讨论指出它并不需要全面取代 LinkedIn，而是要将科技行业内早已隐性存在的“前人栽树、后人乘凉”（pay-it-forward）文化和对潜力的信任感聚合起来。在硅谷，即使一个人之前没有光鲜的履历，只要拥有独特的洞见与想法，就能迅速凝聚资源与动能，进而改变世界。Josh Elman 强调：“如果 Cosign 运作良好，哪怕它最终只服务于科技社群，这也已经是一个巨大的胜利。”（“And if Cosign works great, and it still only serves the tech community as a huge win.”）随后，若其他行业也能借鉴这种硅谷式的信任飞轮，更是额外收获。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Cosign 冷启动与数据聚合机制 accDescr: 展示 Cosign 如何利用全网公开数据通过 AI 自动生成档案并依靠社交好奇心解决冷启动问题 subgraph DataSourcing["公开信息聚合"] A["全网公开足迹 / 融资公告 / 社交动态"] --> B["AI 结构化提取与整合"] end subgraph ProfileCreation["档案生成与背书"] B --> C["自动预设高质量个人主页<br/>(维基百科模式)"] C --> D["外部夸奖与背书 (Cosigns)"] end subgraph GrowthLoop["增长飞轮"] D --> E["'有人在评价你' 通知触发好奇心<br/>(Nikita Bier 增长策略)"] E --> F["用户认领 / 校验并共建档案"] end ``` 谈及产品形态与破局策略，Erik Torenberg 提到了早期的启发源泉：10 年前 AngelList 曾凭借“投资人图谱”（Investor Graph）精准切入初创企业、投资人和优秀人才的连接点，但随后业务转向；而 Cosign 则试图重新拾起这块阵地。在构建方式上，团队参考了维基百科的思路——维基页面具有令人向往的声誉属性，Cosign 选择主动为从业者创建包含外界赞誉、投资意向与合作背书的完整主页。借助现代 AI 技术，平台可以直接从互联网公开发布的信息（包括项目披露、融资公告等）中提取并重构整个专业图谱，从而彻底击穿传统职场社交产品的“冷启动难题”。这一打法也契合了消费级增长专家 Nikita Bier 的经典策略：通过告知用户“有人正在产品里讨论/夸赞你”来强力驱动自发裂变与回访。 - **泛行业指数信念**：引用 Benchmark 合伙人 Eric Vishria 在 Patrick O'Shaughnessy 播客中的观点，优秀的基建和平台往往能随着行业大盘一同壮大；斯坦福会依然繁荣，LinkedIn 会继续做好其基础生态，而 Cosign 则专注在科技生态做深做透。 - **数据透明度**：Cosign 所有聚合的内容均来自公开互联网信息源，经由 AI 结构化梳理后呈现在一处，兼顾声誉展示与信息真实性。 --- ### `45:00` 公共品属性、名家背书案例与长期主义 Alpha 随着产品步入公测，团队明确 Cosign 目前并非一个封闭、成型的终极产物，而是一个开放邀请——它希望成为一个类似公共设施（public utility）的平台，供创业者寻找天使投资人、供行业伙伴相互补充事实、编辑档案并添加背书。谈到“Cosign”（联署背书）这一概念在科技圈的深远影响，嘉宾们列举了大量通过前辈强力背书而迅速崛起的标志性案例：Paul Graham 早在 2009 年就公开将尚未有大额退出的 Sam Altman 列为与 Steve Jobs 并列的顶尖创业者之一，为 Sam 后来接掌 YC 并创立顶级科技公司奠定了极高的声誉资产；Ben Horowitz 对 Databricks 联合创始人 Ali Ghodsi 的力挺；以及 Product Hunt 创始人 Ryan Hoover 早期对年轻的 Erik Torenberg 的提携与信任。硅谷之所以具备强大的唯才是举（meritocracy）色彩，正在于新人不必按部就班熬上二十年资历——例如 Dwarkesh Patel 在 25 岁时便凭借播客吸引到 Patrick Collison、Marc Andreessen 及 Mark Zuckerberg 的背书，迅速确立行业声誉；Michael Truell、Ashton Brenner 等新生代创始人也都在二十几岁便凭借过人才智获得了核心圈层的推崇。 针对“过早背书他人是否会泄露自己的投资或挖掘 Alpha（超额收益）”的顾虑，讨论给出了长期正和博弈的视角。如果你只着眼于眼前正在进行的融资，或许有保守信息的冲动；但若将眼光放宽至未来两到五年，提前背书并赋能一个人，将带来难以估量的复利收益。正如与会者所阐述的，当这位被背书的人在几年后启动下一轮融资时，对方必定会铭记谁在自己微末之时给予了最早的公开信任，进而将最核心的合作机会优先留给你。这种“先相信者”的声誉沉淀，恰如 Airbnb 上市时 Brian Chesky 在博文里特别致谢首位投资机构 YC 一样：世人或许会随着时间注资更多金钱，但创始人永远最深刻感念在最初阶段站出来为自己押注名誉的人。 - **核心观点引述**：关于为什么应该公开背书优秀的人，讨论中指出：“从长远来看，大家总是会以数倍的程度深深记住那些最早相信他们的人。”（“The benefits just accrue to you in the sense of people always remember by order of magnitude more the people who believed in them first.”） - **开放协作呼吁**：团队鼓励用户积极试用 Cosign，为同行提供真诚的声誉联署，并通过共建档案与反馈持续完善这一专业信誉图谱。 ## Notable quotes > `00:00` Some of the most important opportunities in Silicon Valley start with a simple signal. Someone you trust believes in someone you don't know yet. — Erik Torenberg > `10:00` One thing I've always believed is... 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. — David Booth > `35:00` Like the scarce thing is like the human endorsement or the human conviction or the human knowledge. — Olivia Moore > `12:35` There are so many people in the world who we want to meet who also want to meet us. And it's just an information problem. — Erik Torenberg > `45:00` The benefits just accrue to you in the sense of people always remember by order of magnitude more the people who believed in them first. — Erik Torenberg, Josh Elman, Olivia Moore, David Booth ## Mentioned Cosign, Erik Torenberg, Josh Elman, Olivia Moore, David Booth, David Perel, Patrick Collison, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Zack Frankel, Russell Kaplan, Cognition, Justine Moore, Packy McCormick, Crunchbase, PitchBook, LinkedIn, Naval Ravikant, SV Angel, X, Twitter, Rise Awards, Reid Hoffman, MySpace, Charles Hudson, GitHub, AngelList, Nikita Bier, Eric Vishria, Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Steve Jobs, YC, Ben Horowitz, Ali Ghodsi, Databricks, Ryan Hoover, Product Hunt, Dwarkesh Patel, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Truell, Ashton Brenner, Brian Chesky, Airbnb, a16z ## Video description a16z’s Erik Torenberg sits down with Josh Elman, Olivia Moore, and David Booth to introduce Cosign, a new product built around professional reputation and the people, companies, and products you’re willing to put your name behind. They unpack a simple idea at the heart of Silicon Valley: some of the most valuable professional signals aren’t credentials, but who believes in you. From the mentor who shaped your career to the colleague you’d work with anywhere or the young builder you think everyone should be watching, Cosign is an attempt to make those signals more visible and durable. They also discuss why human endorsements may become more valuable as AI makes outreach and information abundant, what existing professional networks get right and miss, and how making reputation more legible could help talented people get discovered earlier, find collaborators, and carry the work they’ve done behind the scenes into whatever they do next. [Source](https://mgln.ai/e/1344/afp-848985-injected.calisto.simplecastaudio.com/3f86df7b-51c6-4101-88a2-550dba782de8/episodes/8edd75ff-d524-4b42-805a-b2a89a86f10d/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=3f86df7b-51c6-4101-88a2-550dba782de8&awEpisodeId=8edd75ff-d524-4b42-805a-b2a89a86f10d&feed=JGE3yC0V)

[0:00] Erik Torenberg: Some of the most important opportunities in Silicon Valley start with a simple signal. Someone you trust believes in someone you don't know yet. [10:00] David Booth: One thing I've always believed is... 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. [35:00] Olivia Moore: Like the scarce thing is like the human endorsement or the human conviction or the human knowledge. [12:35] Erik Torenberg: There are so many people in the world who we want to meet who also want to meet us. And it's just an information problem. [45:00] Erik Torenberg, Josh Elman, Olivia Moore, David Booth: The benefits just accrue to you in the sense of people always remember by order of magnitude more the people who believed in them first.

[10:00] David Booth: One thing I've always believed is 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. [47:30] Erik Torenberg: The benefits just accrue to you in the sense of people always remember by order of magnitude more the people who believed in them first.

[0:00] The most important skill in this industry, or perhaps in the world, is your ability to identify things before the market. There are so many people in the world who we want to meet who also want to 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? 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 A16C network. 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. There's this Novell quote I love, be so good that people do business through you. In fact, if I co-sign two people, they might be able to meet and otherwise build something in a way that I enabled without even having to know about. But it's always hard to match the needs and the skills at exactly the right time. What we've enabled is this. Some of the most important opportunities in Silicon Valley start with a simple signal. Someone you trust believes in someone you don't know yet. In this episode I sit down with Josh Elman Olivia Moore and David Booth to introduce Cosign a new product built around professional reputation We talk about why those who believe in you can sometimes say more than a resume how endorsements can help serve as great people before they're obvious, and why that human signal could become even more valuable as AI makes everything else easier to generate. We also get into what we've learned from LinkedIn, X, and AngelList, and what happens when the reputation that normally lives in private conversations and fleeting social posts becomes more visible and durable. 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 companies and people. And I want to start with a story, which is my friend David Perel told me, he said, my Twitter account is more valuable to me than my college education. You know, even though I paid a quarter million, whatever it is, my Twitter has given me more value to my career and also personally. Now, we, of course, just launched our own school. So we are big fans of higher education. But I thought that story was profound because, of course, Twitter has been free for so long. And this idea what he got behind it is of course college is a bundle of education network and credential And social life Yes yes of course Some of that is hard to recreate on Twitter but yeah exactly And so the education you learn from having conversations, the network, of course, you meet people, you discover people, kind of is proof of work of 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, Mark Andreessen, et cetera. I think most people would say the latter. And so this kind of like peer-to-peer credential. And so what that is implicitly, other people also do this explicitly, is a cosign. 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 signal and create this kind of like reputational benefit that these people get, which is really the exhaust of, this person's not even trying to give them 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 want to also read what you say, they want to work with you, they want to invest in you, they want to have you part of their team. And also there benefit to the receiver but there also benefit to the giver too Because if you the first person to discover someone well it kind of how Silicon Valley operates You going to be able to hire them quicker You be able to fund them quicker And the cool thing about Silicon Valley is you don't know who the next big person is going to be always. And sometimes they're 18 or come from, you don't come from a name brand school. And so we're kind of all in this little bit of a race to discover talent before anybody else. And like Zach Frankel has done an amazing job, right? So many people have done amazing, building a reputation for discovering people. And so the benefit they get is talent thinks, oh, I can get king made by them. Like if Josh Allman or Olivia invest in my company, that's a signal to the market. And angel investing or just investing from venture firm, that's one way to express 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 signal. Really curious, as you've been building cosign, like what are the kinds of endorsements you hope to get from the platform? Yeah. Yeah. So we want on every profile to have at least three. One is who shaped your career? Wow. Because we think this sort of like mentor economy, this is what Silicon Valley runs on. If Josh Elm is my mentor, that means that he is putting, which is true actually, just happens to be true. I was a young person, Josh spent a bunch of time with me. And that's a signal to other people that I'm worth other people spending time with too. [5:00] You respect Josh, you respect me by association. And it's also, again, the benefit to you to discover talent early, to be known. People want to work with you if you help them. So one has shaped my career. Two is would work with anywhere or in the trenches with, because it's hard to tell from existing platforms, like as you were saying the other night, who are you really in the trenches with? Who have you really built bonds with? Who would you go to war with? Who would you, like no matter what you're doing, you'd want to work with them. That's a much more granular signal than do I follow them. which could be any number of things. And then third is person to watch. Like who do you think is going to really be emergent, like ascendant? And we rank order these two. So platforms just started, most of it's fair game. But in the same way, like to build a great investor profile, it takes many years, but then you've got the credit for doing so. We think you do that around people too. So you can say, hey, let's say when you're just starting in your career, I think Olivia is going to be one of the greats. 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. them for their prison 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. 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, I'd see, but are going to be great? Because of course, if you're able to, you can express your conviction with your money, but not everyone's an investor. It's almost like fantasy investing or social capital investing. 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 and who and who can give you kind of a real read on a person for so many decisions. Every day, we are pinging people saying, hey, do you know anyone who worked with this person? And we do it every day. And we still, I would say, have to work really hard to find that signal. And so how can someone who is maybe evaluating between five startup job offers get that level of impact? 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. And I know the data has to be handled carefully around who says what about who. be and there's like a massive opportunity to add so much value to people's lives and careers. Talk a bit about, because you think a lot about talent discovery. Talk about the newsletter you did. Yeah. So my twin sister, Justine, also works here at Andreessen on our infrastructure team. 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. Thank you so much. It was basically just aggregating startup job postings. And the like we both went to Stanford, we ran a startup incubator at Stanford. And still before we were working in a venture firm, we had no way to differentiate between all these startups and founders of who is legitimate, who's not, who's the most exciting. And so we're like, okay, we have some inside information now. Let's curate a list of the companies that we think are worth joining for young people. 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. We had a network of scouts on campuses that read it and some of those people are now founders that Andreessen has invested in. They're off running fantastic companies and in fantastic places. So that was like the less scalable version of this kind of network. And I'm excited for more people to have the ability to kind of put their name behind ideas. as it gets noisier and noisier out there, it's actually getting harder for people to do what you're describing exactly. So this kind of signal is more important than ever. If you think about 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 hundreds of others we hope to empower here. An example I love to point to on the site when people go and you've got people like Paki McCormick, who I think has always had a lot of very good signal around the deep tech and the vertical integrators in particular. if you want to get into this space. And there's many, many more behind them, self-included. So there was like, in a way, he's co-signing some of his reputation against that company. He's saying, 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, so it becomes a sort of living directory of companies and of people that are worth paying attention to. And free. Crunchbase, Pitchfuck, Cost Money, et cetera. They're great products. They have to be businesses. We have the luxury of being able to just really offer this for the startup community. And so we want it to be the most valuable place and see who invested in what. What is Olivia's set of deals that she's done? What is the most reliable company information [10:00] Who are the co-founders? Who are employees? What are the products they shipped? And one thing we've decided is that no product can be all things to all people. And there are trade-offs. And this is just going to be positive. So this is going to be a place where people brag. It's going to be accurate. But, you know, so... How often do you go to, uh, you know, someone's, uh, LinkedIn or text someone and be like, "Hey, you're connected to someone on LinkedIn. Can you tell me about it?" And you're like, "Ah, I don't really know them." We're going to have a much more granular information to make sure that there's real signal there. But that is one product decision that we've made. David, this is something that we experimented with seven years ago and decided not to pursue because we got busy with other stuff. But I'm curious what has always struck you about this idea in terms of the need for it or what we're really trying to do here. One thing I've always believed is... 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, if you're an investor, it's companies, if you're a hiring manager, if you're a founder, it's people, sometimes it's products. If you are in charge of procurement for a growing company, maybe you need to identify which product is better before the market. But there's no way of recording that. There's no hipster leaderboard that says this person found this coffee shop first. For angel investors, of course, they want to 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. always drawn me back was the idea that I can't invest in 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 heard of them. I can make an introduction to the Josh Illman, for example, and he will hopefully take that introduction because he 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. To me, the thing that stood out the first time around and the thing that we're trying to really lean on coming back is – Like when I co-sign someone, I take it seriously. I want that person to be able to take the cosign I've 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. And in fact, that lubricates the wheels of social capital that should you could empower a lot more people to achieve a lot more. There's this Naval quote I love from a long time ago is be so good that people do business through you. I enabled without even having to know about it, which is very exciting. Yeah. I, um, It's really interesting. Related to that, I want to talk about more features of the product. I was talking about sort of the more granular ways of expressing reputation. One of the best events I ever went to was this SV Angel conference in like 2018. I think they do one once a year or something like that. And every event should do this. But before I went to the event, they had this list of 150 people that they sent out. And all of it was a... Everybody was a baller. And they said, swipe who you want to meet. who you want to intro to. And I swiped on almost everybody. I was up and coming, you remember, Josh. And 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 should chat. And I then ended up meeting with most of those people and they became really... So that event, of course, I couldn't have met 40 people 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 to say that there's There are so many people in the world who we want to meet who also want to meet us. And it's just an information problem. And if you can reduce the friction to make that introduction, because right now it's like I have to DM them, but 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 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 started company. or I would hire that. if they consider leaving. 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 might be inappropriate and 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 granularity around professional intent, um, passively there's no low no risk of like because 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 good stuff. Yeah. That conference example is so interesting because I feel like the other takeaway for me is like we can all be people matchers now with a product like Cosign. Like I think about in all of our jobs, we meet so many people every day. I often meet someone I'm like, they're 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, remember this person? [15:00] If they still want the intro, make the intro. And so that store of information and somewhere that's more persistent and can kind of work across time is really, really interesting. I mean, I agree with that completely. You know, so much of what we like to do, both as investors and people around Silicon Valley, is make these connections. But it's always hard to match the needs and the skills at exactly the right time. And remember that being able to codify this. Here's the people I think are truly great designers. 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 that I go to. Being able to actually endorse that now has it available so that when you're looking for that, 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, you're going to be able to do that. Josh, I'm looking through those cosigns and you said that this person really helped you in this one situation. Yeah. 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 and really that reputation that transfers and builds over time. 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. I mean, honestly, 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. Maybe it's Pinterest that I'm going to put this person on my personal private list of people that I want to work with in the future. And I'm going to put this person on my public list of designers that I read. And every time a founder comes to me and they say, David, I need a new designer. I need a growth guy. I need an engineer. 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. 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. I can kind of shortcut that work that you're saying. You do. You have to do it every time someone asks a question. 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, I'm like, hey, 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. Totally. And it's so fascinating. The company to company, I didn't even think about it. Like, Yeah, we'll get the product feature shift tomorrow. I think we just extended the road path. Yeah, that happens. There are a couple of things I want to 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 freeform, et cetera? And Josh helped us really nail down sort of the focus of the feed to be around, you know, questions and announcements. And announcements is so interesting because we think a way to differentiate there is to basically make reputation durable. A lot of reputation is built on social media, but it's ephemeral. So when Josh joined a firm, he wanted me to focus on other people, but you're such a good example. A lot of people came out of the woodwork who've been working with him for a long time, but who maybe haven't publicly said anything recently because they didn't need to and said, wow, I really endorse Josh. You should work with Josh. Josh helped me in my career. that, Nikita said that, a bunch of other people said that. And then the next day just happened. 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 the first time you're looking them up. And so for us, any announcement is going to be tied to their durable reputation. And so when companies fundraise, when people switch jobs, these are opportunities for cosigns, for endorsements, etc. And then on the question side, it's really this, you know, this we were talking earlier is like, who's the best comms person for this? Or who's the best angel investor in fintech? Or, you know, who are people I should work with for this? Or this kind of like, you know, very specific, you know, question of some sort of person or company or product you're looking to either surface to you or learn more about. And in that way, it will also build durable reputation because you get added to a list through that. No, and I think this idea of bringing those ephemeral moments and those ephemeral conversations that happen on Twitter and other situations [20:00] 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 building a profile, not a profile that is just what you say about yourself, but really that lets other people be positive and help shine on your strengths, I think is really, really powerful. And 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 David. We get these comments and it's just so special and you feel so lucky to have people that you've helped in the past be able to say those things about you now. But then again, it just gets lost. And I think this idea of tracking those cosigns and really making it feel like this fundamental network of the web that we are of Silicon Valley, of the tech industry. I'll give you an example. It's really powerful. Do you know the meme where the guy's like walking into a party and stick figures and he's like, they don't even know that. or cosigner or whatever, and you're like, it's not probably, like, you know, Marc Andreessen wrote a blog post about me joining the firm. Like, that's pretty dope. Like, I want that on my, like, I want, the first thing when you think about me is to, like, think about Marc Andreessen. Professionally, it is. And so... There's all these moments that happen. If we can make them more legible, you can more accurately represent someone's... Honestly, it wasn't until we actually hooked up the internet FIHOs to this product that I realized how many of those moments are. I mean, you look at the main feed and every day there is fundraising announcements, there's talent transitions. Thanks to our good friends at X, we're plugged into a lot of those and we're taking like whenever someone quote tweets and announcement or replies and you're filtering them, it's a genuinely thoughtful, positive comment you pointed out about positivity. pulled through it and it's really coming from a person and it's on the profile a person comes from and it goes to a person. And the reason why it's all positive is because products have to win on some dimension. And this product is going to win on people using it to show off, like show in a good way. Like, hey, this is what I'm proud of. Like, this represents the like the full manifestation of what I'm capable of on a. person level and on a company level. And I really think it's about celebration. I mean, like, so much of what we do, there's so much hard work that goes on into making every single product that happens. It's a toil of somebody's love, their idea, the coding they wrote, or maybe that they worked on with their agent now. But, like, putting that out in the world, it's a very vulnerable moment. And it's very, like, do you like what I've tried to make? Are you going to use it? And I think we need to celebrate that 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 plenty of places for critique, and we see all that all the time, too. But I think that doesn't need to be recorded for posterity in the same way. One thing we're talking offline is interesting is there's a lot of awards and a lot of shine on founders. And just by the way, so obviously. And also there's a lot A lot of other people build the companies too. And a lot more people are critical to those companies and they're unknown or not celebrated to the same degree. And this is an opportunity to do as well. I think even just positive signal is going to be incredibly informative because I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley have a pretty high bar for who they're willing to publicly endorse in any way. When I think about the number of intro requests that come in and how many of those do I actually bridge, I think it's great. Because if you endorse someone who's not great, reflects poorly. Exactly. Yeah. The natural reputation of sin and mechanism. Yeah. 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, you know, have you even read the article before you retweet it? And I think I think the key is like you'll get to know pretty quickly who's just spouting things in is, you know, celebrating everything that can be celebrated versus, you know, I've actually played with this. I've spent time with it. I've heard the backstory. I've thought about the backstory. And I just want to double down on one comment you said about this going beyond the founders. Like I think, you know, the founders who take that risk to start a company from nothing. village to build every one of these companies. It takes so many great designers and engineers and marketers and product managers and finance. And 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 co-signing, I think is going to be incredibly powerful beyond just the people that we talk about most of the I want to tell a story or perhaps nudge Eric to tell a story. One of the first times I actually heard of Eric and then went on to meet Eric was the Rise Awards. The Rise Awards 2015, 16, thereabouts. So over a decade ago now. And it was around this thesis that, 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 principal, do you want to tell the story? What were the Rise Awards? Yeah, so the Rise Awards were this series of awards meant to be for everybody else. [25:00] for the engineers, the designers, the product. I believe Josh was a judge, you know, many others. And we had thousands of submissions and, you know, discovered and selected some great people because of it. And we're going to 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. There's the samurai, that's the kick a thousand times. So, you know, Rise Awards, Cosign, a lot of these ideas have been in the ether for us. In fact, the thing that stands out is a lot of the people each other and built lifelong relationships through the retreats they attended through the groups that you added them to and things so there's something around that the connection too it's it's really interesting because um i feel like we often meet people who are spinning out of great companies that start their own companies and often if you get really deep 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 that's not something that they can like publicize. They're not going to be like the face of every article about the company. 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 that accomplishment with them. Totally. And they can't really do that right now. We're making the reputation market more like efficient, basically more liquid in the sense of 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. And then more liquid in the sense of, if it was known that they have a great reputation, a lot of people would want to hire them or fund them, and they should get those opportunities as a result. And so it's basically like trying to fix that information asymmetry. I want to return to what you were saying earlier, because it's really interesting. It's like a bunch of times a candidate will, or someone looking for a new job will 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, you've got your list of, of companies that they should join, it's kind of the do business through you. They can, it's like Olivia stamped these companies. They can, uh, you know, reach out. And similarly, um, the, the, 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 your companies instead of having to, you know, think through, cause there's, there's, Some of you might want to share private just to keep to your companies or whatever it is. But then also there are companies who are like, hey, I want a head of comms. Who in my network knows a head of comms? Who should I even talk to? And to the extent that people are co-signing heads of comms or this kind of thing, it can just facilitate much more matching. Yeah, totally. I feel like even for investors, the most up-to-date profile of the companies they care about is 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 kind of the reach in the audience, I would be tweeting about all my companies all day, every day, like promoting them, go work for them. They just did this amazing thing, but you can't do that. And I love the idea of a place where like that kind of lives, uh, to see it anytime. Yeah. Be shameless. Yes. It is a shame. I mean, so, um, let's talk about existing platforms for a second. Like it, 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 where like, I'm like, man, I wish I could just download my follower. Like, I wish I could just like, or like, you know, a few thousand people liked this thing about joining my company. I wish I could just like see this. And why is it so difficult? Like, or it's not built for 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 want to work for me? Do you want to invest in me? I don't know. What do you want to, what do we want to do here? in, you know, It's such a valuable utility. We're on it all the time. And yet, Everyone hates it. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We love... We love LinkedIn. We love LinkedIn. Josh used to work there. One of the most iconic products of all time. Mark famously defended it, I remember, when they got acquired. Some people were like, what, only $26 billion? It was like, you know, it's a great outcome. And it was an iconic product. And yet... people have frustrations with it. Well, maybe let's... 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, I wish there was just more... more that we can do here. So why don't you talk about that? Look, I worked at LinkedIn back in 2004 and 2005 when we were just starting to form a network 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. It was a perfectly good usage. Then we talked about usage. start to build products on top of the network. The real thing was the network is just the [30:00] build a real job service. I helped launch the first LinkedIn job. We had to go build services, find the best PR professional, find those things. And then we'll build revenue. So first, so it was kind of the, I called it GR, growth usage revenue. And we really had to figure out what those platforms and products were going to be on top of the network. Now, the challenge is, as you built the network, there's 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 to me. And Olivia says, David's really good. 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 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 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 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. 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 Reed 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'd worked at in the past. Or here's who knows people really well who also worked at those companies. flat resume, you 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, oh, that job looks really easy to that company. We said, no, we're going to put the hiring manager on, their profile is going to 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 going to 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 we all have, but we don't figure out how to strengthen and put into LinkedIn anymore. The true connection, the reason we were in the trenches together, we worked on this thing, you bailed me out of a crisis. And when we can have that, that information in the network is going to 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 can really open up so many opportunities. 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 activist. Making a ton of revenue. They're clearly doing fine. They're doing great. But LinkedIn treats... almost every kind of type of connection the same, especially as products like endorsements on LinkedIn have been 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 work 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 because it's so much more useful. Seems like the greatest time in history to be building products generally that can accumulate context that was otherwise unavailable. You say the social CV. I love that idea. I think, Olivia, in particular, you're at the firm 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. I think a lot of the things that we're building here. Can you talk more about that? There's a lot of what does the future hold? investing in them, connecting them to our companies, otherwise kind of getting them in the A16C network. And so right now, a lot of this is scraping these existing, 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 service. [35:00] signal based and it's kind of binary signal versus really granular signal, that's only going to get harder. Because, for example, recently I posted on LinkedIn. I was like, hey, I'd love to help my portfolio companies hire. If you want to work at a startup, fill out this Google form. When it works, it's almost harder because I get 2,000 results, right? And that's going to happen to every person who posts a job or who posts any kind of opportunity. And it's going to be 2,000 now and it's going to be 10,000 a month from now. As browser use aging gets better and more people use browsers, it's going to be 100,000. And so it's like, how do you, even me using Astra at maximum strength, how do you sift and sort? 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 going to be valuable to hopefully so many people in the community and also very valuable to the work that we do and what we try to do. 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, a much more vetted community and that's where we are to start. And you're growing, you know, growing slowly, and basically where you put out a post, and you'll just be more confident in the signal that, that comes in. Going back to LinkedIn for a second, some things that I wish it had is sort of like – remember like a MySpace top eight? Like I want that for business. Like, Who are you in the trenches with? Who do you talk to regularly? Who are mutuals? How do you know them? How do you meet them? What do they think about you? It's more, as you said, it treats connections all the same. And you don't really get context on the relationship or context on people's reputation. It's like LinkedIn is about personal identity. We hope that Cosign is about or I'm sorry, professional identity. We hope Cosign is about professional reputation. You know, LinkedIn is about, they say it's like people you know. Twitter is like people who are interested in knowing you. And we hope that Cosign delivers both in a more granular way. And at the same time, you need to give props to LinkedIn. It's like, it started 20 plus years ago. And no one's even come close to competing with it in any capacity. I remember Charles Hudson, you know, a 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 XYZ 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, you know, people trying crypto, like all sorts of like different incentives to break LinkedIn. And it's just fascinating. I was joking when I said everyone hates it, but people do have like, they use it obsessively. They have low NPS on it or something, and they know that a better version can exist. And yet, you know, it's been impossible to disrupt. 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 want to find people. And the other one is people who want to maybe be found at some point in their lives. And when you think about it, all of us would love to be found for the right opportunity that comes to us. We aren't known. A lot of us might be happy. happily employed 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 still might not be right for you in life at the time. 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 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 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. That's the kind of network effect that really sticks. And you think a lot about what is a 20-year network effect? Look at LinkedIn. And as you're building, and I say this a lot 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, 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. So you can't really scrape it in real time. There's whole businesses that are built off of scraping LinkedIn and selling that data. 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 going to want to be on the platform where everyone else is. That being [40:00] said, I think there's a massive opportunity for a new platform when there is new information or new value to be kind of gleaned or shared, which is like very much high quality endorsements and high conviction people. Generational shifts and also niche, the hyper niche that any person on LinkedIn, for example, GitHub is arguably a better LinkedIn for engineers than LinkedIn itself. And I'd say, is there an opportunity to say, like, what is the emergent niche here? Is it the individual talent scout? Are they trying to be a founder who wants to break through? Is there a world for a better LinkedIn that represents their taste in people? The And what gets me excited about Cosign isn't that it has to even be a better LinkedIn. It's that it really pulls together all this information that's already latently happening in our industry. And look, Silicon Valley and the tech industry is so special for this kind of pay it forward, for this belief in somebody. This stuff we talked about at the very beginning. The belief in Cosign. This person who may not have had a previously strong reputation, but has an insight and idea and that alone can gather a bunch of people and a bunch of momentum and change the world. 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. that is gonna be great, and if Cosign works great, and it still only serves the tech community as a huge win. - Oh, 100%. - And if it then, Other communities and other industries figure out they should figure out how to take part in this too and bring some of that Silicon Valley energy to more places. That's even better. But the pay it forward and every great idea can just come from somebody who wasn't previously known but truly has a unique insight. That's what I hope this captures too. Eric from Benchmark had this comment in the Patrick O'Shaughnessy podcast where Patrick was asking him, what do you think about every category? And he's like, it's all going to work. Everything is going to be huge. Not every company, but just as an index. I think we've come to a similar conclusion. like, Stanford's going to be fine. Our thing's going to be great. And then similarly, LinkedIn's going to be great. It's going to keep doing its thing. And we're inspired by them in so many ways. We're also inspired by AngelList 10 years ago when they owned the Investor Graph. It was for the startup community. And it was really focused around companies, investors, and talent. And they made a series of other bets that then made them focus on other parts of that and we think it's an opportunity to bring back. And then... we're also inspired, in terms of how we're gonna do this, we're also inspired by Wikipedia. One in terms of, you know, People want with computer profiles, they're aspirational. But two, in that we're creating profiles for people. Um, so that, that's where starting and we think people are going to 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 going to see your profile. It's going to be fleshed out with all, you know, people giving you compliments and also people expressing their interest in funding you or working with you or even before you go to the profile, like, 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 recreate a professional graph? But if we didn't go that third-party route, then we would have to get people to decide this cold start problem. It's the place where people go to update their... you know, purpose is the most reliable. Often people say like, what's the daily behavior? Well, we're, brute forcing it by covering every transition. So we'll also have reliable profiles with more reputation benefits to it. Totally. I feel like the best, I'm curious if you agree, but for consumer products, the easiest way to acquire users is to tell them that someone else is saying something about them on the product, especially if it's the Nikita beer. Your friends just answered this question about use strategy, which worked so well three times. And it wasn't before AI for a network, I think, as big as Silicon Valley. And now it is, which is awesome. Someone called me today, the Nikita Bureau of Founder Communities. It's a real compliment. That's a true compliment. Yeah, so it's worth pointing out, everything that is being pulled in is coming from public sources. So it's what people have posted on their variety of different places. It's being aggregated. There's a lot of the funding announcements. They're the ones that are being announced. So there is a lot of really, really high quality information that is spread across the public available internet. compiled and structured, we think, in one place. And Eric 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 the Silicon Valley at all. It was the... [45:00] ability to see which companies in which geographies, which people at those companies, which, you know, for a long time, it felt like it could be the LinkedIn for this sort of little niche of people who were ambitious in technology. And then, as Eric said, it sort of moved away from that for a number of reasons. But that's been missing. It becomes a place that you can go as a founder who's like, which angel investors do I want to 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. We're putting this out into the world, it's like a thing we'd like to build with people. It's not something that's being presented as a fully finished, perfect product. It's an invitation. It's an invitation to everybody who wants to come in and edit and submit an update to their own or someone else's profile. So a real ask, let's build this thing together for everyone. Yeah. And submit things to people's profiles, co-sign the things you endorse on people. and then even if somebody has feedback, co-sign that feedback so that it gets back to David and the team in order to keep improving things. Yeah, and so to end on that higher level note, a lot of the industry, but also other industries, sort of run on co Paul Graham co Sam Altman famously I feel like 2009 or something he said the five best entrepreneurs Steve Jobs three other people and Sam Altman And at the time Sam Altman hadn had a huge exit yet, but that really just gave him such a reputational boost, him running YC, et cetera, is critical to him then going on to build one of the most important companies of all time. And so many, Ben Horowitz and Ali from Databricks, I mean, so many examples of people who got their co-sign from someone older and more senior in the industry and were able to rise up because of it. Ryan Hoover, who was the founder of Product Hunt, co-signed Eric and brought Eric on to become one of the leaders of building the community for everything. And it was such a great endorsement of you early in your career and your potential. I mean, look at what you've become since. It's amazing. I'm immensely grateful for him. And 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 necessarily not necessarily just pay your dues for 20 years before you're taken seriously. One of the most important intellectuals right now is Dorkesh, he's 25 years old. He's never had a job, as far as I'm aware. He just came to San Francisco, started podcasting, and someone was, I don't know if it was Patrick Carlson, or Marc Andreessen also went on, a number of people by going on his podcast early co 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 Truel you know a young guy in his mid to late 20s et cetera One of the most important you know people labeled Ashton Brenner is like, I think like 24, 25 as well. And so it just like, if you're talented, if you're smart in this industry, someone will discover you, co-sign you and make your career. And so we hope that happens on our platform. Well, we're talking about social capital and positive sum mindsets, I think it's really important. There's a critique of this I wanted to talk about where someone might rightfully say, well, why would I share this cosine? This is my alpha. This is like, I know that person's good. Like, why would I tell you they're good? And I think actually something, if you take a very long-term view of this, you can say, sure, if that person's raising a pre-seed round right now and you want to do it, don't cosine them right now. But the person you want to cosine 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 co-signed 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 going to call her first, my pre-seed round. And if you turn it around that way and you take a very long mindset it such a long place 100 The benefits just accrue to you in the sense of people always remember by order of magnitude more the people who believed in them first Brian Chesky, when he goes public with Airbnb, who does he write in the blog post? He writes YC. His first investor. He's had so much investment all throughout it, but so much more money, so much more time into this company. You remember the first person. If you are the first person, especially publicly, because that's where the value is because they will remember you for it and then more people will come to you. Yeah. So 10, let's wrap on that. Thank you so much. Thank you. and subscribe to our sub stack at a16z.substack.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. [50:00] Thank you.