The a16z Show
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.
00:07:31 · David Booth
[00:07:31] S0: Interesting. What types of questions could you not just go to your friendly LLM for an answer and get sort of something that's ingested off the public Internet, something that comes from a relationship graph? One thing that we, I mean, personally, I've spent most of, if not all of my career in pursuit of at this point is the idea that a huge amount of what happens around us comes down to what feels like coincidences. What feels like, you know, just meeting the right co founder at just the right time or, you know, conversation with a friend of a friend who introduces you to the person that offers you your breakout job or or the cold email you sent. It's it's been like how... Like, what happened to create that coincidence? There is the... I was tweeting about this earlier today, but the the Steve Jobs quote I've always loved, that you you can't meet... You can't plan to meet the person who changes your life, but you can certainly put yourself in the path of luck. And you can know that, you know, when that person appears, you can grab it with both hands and run with it. So one way I've started reframing Cosign is, yes, I I hope that it can be what Dhruv... I hope hope there can be a source of truth for for the the tech ecosystem. I hope there can be a place that you can go and ask questions that you can't ask anywhere else. But, like, in in its, you know, almost easiest form. I hope it's a place where you can increase your surface area for luck. Mhmm. It's a place where you can go and you know that if you build a profile out or if you browse the graph and and you sort of you teach cosign, you talk to... There is an agent. We're talking about that. You you ask cosign questions, then it's gonna help you put yourself in the path of luck. It's gonna help people find you. It's gonna help your future cofounder, you know, find you and realize that you might be into the same things. This idea of a coincidence of intent. How do you make two people who have the same hopes, dreams, and complementary skills come into each other's orbits soon? And the whole awards is really part of this. Like, maybe a winner of a design and a winner of an engineering award who otherwise never would have found each other have a better chance of doing that now. And if that happens, then they build something together, then we're all better off for it.
00:09:32 · S2
[00:09:32] S2: Yeah. It's pretty interesting because it feels like the legacy systems for maybe how you would traditionally get a job are outdated. Just the idea... Even just going to college, a lot of young people are like, do I need a degree to get my dream job? And you hear this in Silicon Valley, especially in San Francisco, where you have young ambitious people who just show up with a big dream. And for a lot of people, social media is that outlet that allows them to actually get an opportunity, land them their first job, open up doors. But it's not that clear of a path. It's really hard to build up a social media following and try to create those opportunities for yourself. So it feels like Cosign is almost this shortcut. You know, if you already have some of these people, you can get some of those opportunities that maybe social media traditionally could give you, but just get them through people you already know who can vouch for you.