The Reputation Graph of Silicon Valley | Introducing Cosign

David Booth (0:00)

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

Erik Torenberg (0:07)

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 Colson, Elon Musk, Mark Andreessen.

Olivia Moore (0:20)

A lot of people in Silicon Valley have a pretty high bar for who they're willing to publicly endorse. A lot of what we do is finding awesome people and connecting them to our companies, otherwise kind of getting them in the a16z network.

Josh Elman (0:32)

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.

David Booth (0:41)

There's this novel 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.

Josh Elman (0:52)

But it's always hard to match the needs and the skills at exactly the right time.

Erik Torenberg (0:56)

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. I want to start with a story, which is my friend David Perrell told me, said my Twitter account is more valuable to me than my college education. 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 the story was profound because of course Twitter has been free for so long. And this idea, what we got behind it is, of course, college is a bundle of education, network, and credential.

Josh Elman (2:28)

And social life.

Erik Torenberg (2:30)

Yes, yes, of course.

Yeah, 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 Colson, Elon Musk, Mark Andreessen, et cetera. I think most people would say the latter. Right. And so this kind of like peer to peer credential.

And so what that is implicitly, although 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's benefit to the receiver, but there's also benefit to the giver too. Because if you're the first person to discover someone, well, it's kind of how Silicon Valley operates. You're going to be able to hire them quicker. You'll be able to fund them quicker. And the cool thing about Silicon Valley is you don't know who the next big person is going to be always. And sometimes they're 18 or come from, you'll come from an A brand school. And so we're kind of all in this, a little bit of a race to discover talent before anybody else. And like, Zach Frankel has 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 Elman 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.