The Reputation Graph of Silicon Valley | Introducing Cosign
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What problem does Cosign aim to solve in professional networking?
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 Carlson, Elon Musk, Mark Andreessen?
A lot of people in Silicon Valley have a pretty high bar for who they're willing to find. endorse a lot of what we do it's 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 Naval 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 yeah, meet and otherwise build something on 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 Angel list. 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 Perell 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 I think
And
social life.
Yes. Yes, of course. Yeah. Some of that is hard to recreate on Twitter. But yeah, exactly. And so the education, you know, 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 and Jones. Et cetera, I think most people would say the latter. So this kind of like peer-to-peer credential. And so what that is, implicitly, although people often 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 the 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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What problem does Cosign aim to solve in professional networking?
0:00–4:53
2
How do human endorsements differ from traditional credentials in Silicon Valley?
4:53–8:56
3
What are the three core endorsement categories Cosign will use on profiles?
8:56–13:52
4
How can Cosign improve talent discovery for investors and founders?
13:52–18:34
5
What limitations do existing platforms like LinkedIn and X have for reputation signals?
18:34–23:59
6
How does Cosign plan to make reputation more durable and searchable?
23:59–28:44
7
What role does AI play in amplifying human signals on Cosign?
28:44–32:59
8
How can early‑stage professionals benefit from long‑term cosigns?
32:59–50:14
Speakers
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