The a16z Show
00:01:26 · David Booth
[00:01:26] S0: We did. Mean, we're coming in towards the end twenty twenty six, and it's been crazy. It's been a crazy year. One of the things we keep seeing again and again is that, sometimes, you know, the the people that get the recognition public, the the founders, the CEOs, the face of the company. But more and more, and this year in particular, I think going forward, there's across all of the functions, there's like one or two or, you know, there's there's some smaller number of people who are just the operators who are, like, having the most impact. They can single handedly turn a company's trajectory around. They can, you know, single handedly have the... Have more impact than anyone across it. So Cosign Awards is honestly... The the first idea was, well, can we shine a spotlight on who are the people that had the most impact across the year? Which are the companies that have the highest talent density that, you know, have the most impact on the world, but also could have the most impact on your career? Which of the products that had the most impact throughout the year? And so bring that together and and to do this combination of, like, the incredible opportunity for people to nominate Yeah. Those that they see that someone might not see. And also for people who, you know, we've selected this pool of judges, we'll talk about some more who have this visibility spanning the industry and can talk about, you know, what they're seeing at the the high level in the in the meta trends. And hopefully, pull this together into some really, really interesting people to celebrate, companies to celebrate.
00:02:47 · S2, Dhruv Gupta
[00:02:47] S2: This is pretty cool. I would say one of the big things that I saw from Cosign Awards is that this information right now lives in silos. Like maybe here at MTS, we know who are some of the top people when it comes to Twitter growth. But that information isn't known across you guys or you guys know some information across other companies that we don't quite know. So what's the big goal here with Cosign Awards? Maybe, Dhruv, I know you were... Played a really impactful role in actually building this system. So tell me more about that. [00:03:16] S3: Yeah. I think the Cosign Awards, our main goal is to give people the chance to celebrate everyone at their company that they think deserves it. I remember like being at, like, MTS, that was really my first experience in San Francisco. I think that I really could only get into, like, the startup ecosystem as a whole because Brent, the CEO of MTS, cosigned me in one way. And I think cosign awards are a way for us to also try and give all those people who are doing great jobs that visibility. With anyone being able to nominate, anyone being able to vote, we hope that a lot of, like, operators that are under recognized by the public but have great recognition inside their company are able to kind of take that step to being, like, well known in the public for the great work they're doing as well.
00:03:16 · Dhruv Gupta, S2
[00:03:16] S3: Yeah. I think the Cosign Awards, our main goal is to give people the chance to celebrate everyone at their company that they think deserves it. I remember like being at, like, MTS, that was really my first experience in San Francisco. I think that I really could only get into, like, the startup ecosystem as a whole because Brent, the CEO of MTS, cosigned me in one way. And I think cosign awards are a way for us to also try and give all those people who are doing great jobs that visibility. With anyone being able to nominate, anyone being able to vote, we hope that a lot of, like, operators that are under recognized by the public but have great recognition inside their company are able to kind of take that step to being, like, well known in the public for the great work they're doing as well. [00:04:09] S2: Yeah. You brought up an important point right there around Brent cosigned you. Oftentimes, it's not the resume that's the impressive piece or your past job, but it's the person that I trust who can vouch for you. It's that connection. That's that person who can actually cosign and prove that this person is worthy or this person should get hired or this person is phenomenal at what they do. And a little bit what you guys are doing is you're just now allowing that to happen on a massive scale. So what are some of these awards that you could potentially win here?
00:04:09 · S2, David Booth
[00:04:09] S2: Yeah. You brought up an important point right there around Brent cosigned you. Oftentimes, it's not the resume that's the impressive piece or your past job, but it's the person that I trust who can vouch for you. It's that connection. That's that person who can actually cosign and prove that this person is worthy or this person should get hired or this person is phenomenal at what they do. And a little bit what you guys are doing is you're just now allowing that to happen on a massive scale. So what are some of these awards that you could potentially win here? [00:04:42] S0: There's... I mean, firstly, exactly that. One way you could say is like if you were willing to introduce this guy to somebody that you deeply respect that's incredibly busy, not... Most most people can't get to, but you say, actually, this is worth your time. That's the that's cosign. In the same way here, I'd say across of... What we try to do is we try to break... And that's not perfect. We couldn't get as granular as you... As you'd like to, but break down across to those three categories, the people, companies, and products. What's like the the most logical way to to think about each. For for people, there's... A lot of them are role based. So there's things like engineers, FDE product design. There's things like AI researchers, comms growth. There's a couple that are less traditional on the org chart, like this category for public intellectuals with 65 nominees. There's one for podcast for the year with 76 nominees. One that Well, [00:05:34] S2: maybe we can end up on it.
00:05:34 · S2, David Booth, Dhruv Gupta
[00:05:34] S2: maybe we can end up on it. [00:05:35] S0: Well, was gonna say, mean [00:05:36] S3: I think you are on. [00:05:37] S0: There should be a... [00:05:38] S2: Yeah. Sweet. [00:05:39] S0: If all the MTS hosts out there already, then we're doing something wrong. Poster of the year, I mean, any... You know, a lot of the the audience here will be pretty x native anyway, so they'll see a lot of familiar faces in there. There's ones I'm personally very excited about. I think the rising stars is the is the most popular category. I don't if we can... We we could share this or or otherwise people should head to cosign.co/rewards. But there's a 135 so far, and there's some really interesting people. There's, you know, a mix of, like, is... I see I see founders who are, you know, series... See through series a, but still a huge ramp ahead of them. I see people who are, like, you know, some are better known and and some I've never heard of ever in my life. But, you know, I sure know that if if someone out there thinks they're a rising star, then that is a cosign, and that's something that I'm gonna, you know, take note of and pay attention to. [00:06:24] S3: Yeah. And similarly for companies, we have a lot of awards that you can win by industry, but also general awards for things like talent density. We want, like, employees especially to be voting for their own companies because that tells us that, you know, this is a place that they like to work and probably a place that, like, other people would also like to work.
00:06:24 · Dhruv Gupta, S2
[00:06:24] S3: Yeah. And similarly for companies, we have a lot of awards that you can win by industry, but also general awards for things like talent density. We want, like, employees especially to be voting for their own companies because that tells us that, you know, this is a place that they like to work and probably a place that, like, other people would also like to work. [00:06:42] S2: That's really interesting too. So the people that would benefit from this information, it's not just individuals to figure out. It's also companies. So who are the... Who's this for? Like, what is all this information for? [00:06:57] S3: I think it's for everyone. I think we want Cosign to be the source of truth for the startup ecosystem. This should be where you go to get, like, any question you have answered, whether that's like, who in New York is building the coolest thing in biotech? Or like, who who was, like, the first person who discovered Sophia Duke? All of those questions should be able to be answered from Cosign, and I expect that, like, people will be interested in it. Companies will be interested in it. Agents will be interested in it. Yeah. We're really building this for everyone. [00:07:30] S2: Yeah. Agents will be interested.