Cosign, a16z New Media's vouching-based professional network, is launching alongside the Cosign Awards, which have drawn 135 nominations so far.
Dhruv Gupta argues vouching beats cold applications on LinkedIn and Handshake, positioning Cosign as the source of truth for the startup ecosystem.
David Booth frames Cosign around serendipity, aiming to give users more chances for luck and to connect people with complementary skills, such as design and engineering award winners.
Cosign bets vouching beats cold applications in startup hiring
Cosign is a bet that professional networking should run on people vouching for each other. Cold applications and LinkedIn's closed graph bury good talent, while a cosign carries real signal. Gupta and Booth want Cosign to become the source of truth for the startup ecosystem that people and AI agents can both query, with the Cosign Awards seeding it.
Takeaways
Vouching beats cold applications for startup talent. Dhruv Gupta cold applied through Handshake to finance roles at Morgan Stanley and Jane Street. His break into startups came when Brent, CEO of MTS, cosigned him. David Booth wants Cosign to be that opportunity for the next 50,000 Dhruvs.
LinkedIn will never open its graph to AI. Gupta argues LinkedIn will never offer broad search access over its graph, and Gemini and ChatGPT gave him poor answers about New York's best startups. Cosign offers Ask Cosign, an iMessage agent and a personal MCP for outside bots such as Muse and Grok.
Agents could run the first hiring screen. Booth describes a job seeker's agent negotiating with a company's agent, as in Decagon's protocol, before elevating the candidate to the hiring manager. Personal agents reached about 10m users in a month or two. Today's inbox treats Sam Altman like a 14-year-old.
The awards seed the network with signal. There are 135 nominations so far, 65 public intellectuals nominees and 76 podcast nominees, with rising stars the most popular category. Many people categories are role based. Gupta reads employees voting for their own company as a sign people like working there.
The product is built to increase luck. Booth argues much of what happens comes down to coincidence and cites Steve Jobs on putting yourself in the path of luck. Cosign should help people with complementary skills, like a design winner and an engineering winner, find each other or a future cofounder.
Layered data makes the ecosystem browsable. Cosign has Wikipedia-style profiles for about 40,000 to 50,000 people and lightweight company lists from around 400 people, including Packy McCormick's Not Boring list of 36 companies. Users can intersect lists like the Interact and Thiel fellows, with a curation layer on top.
What happens next with Cosign
Voting and nominations run through November, with about three weeks left.
Winners will be announced live on MTS, and category winners will be invited together to build relationships.
Onboarding is the feedback the team hears most, and it is the first thing they plan to smooth out.
The founders expect the product to change rapidly.
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