We’re Hiring Two Recruiters on our Investment Team

I got into venture through a blackjack table in Las Vegas.

A friend I was playing with mentioned an opportunity recruiting for venture-backed startups in San Francisco. I didn’t even know that was a job. I called him that Monday, flew to San Francisco that Friday, and moved two weeks later.

The job was commission-only, and I was making about $3,000 a month. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable start.

What I didn’t appreciate then was what it would ultimately give me: access.

Before long, I was sitting across from the founding teams at Cloudera, Zendesk, SumoLogic, and AngelList, before most people knew who they were.

One opportunity led to another. My next job recruiting at AppDirect taught me how companies scale. My time at Stripe taught me how exceptional teams are built. M&A taught me when it makes more sense to buy a team than build one.

Looking back, recruiting was actually my first investing job. It taught me how to read the market through people. Which companies were magnets for talent. Which leaders people would follow. Which engineering teams solved the hardest problems. Which organizations became the training grounds for the next generation of founders.

Every firm says venture is a talent and network business, but very few are organized like they believe it.

Most firms hire investors first and bolt an operating team. Recruiters, engineers, designers, and GTM leaders become a service organization that arrives after the investment.

We built TheGP around where founders spend their time. Long before a term sheet, founders work alongside our recruiters, engineers, designers, and operators. Those folks aren’t a service organization, but key to how we invest.

Every venture firm writes checks. But we believe talent should be part of the investment too.

That doesn’t mean every great recruiter should become an investor. Nor should every engineer or operator.

But when someone has spent years recognizing exceptional people, helping founders solve hard problems, and earning their trust, they’ve already developed one of the hardest skills in venture. The rest of the craft can be taught.

Most people think venture is a capital business. It isn’t. Capital is the commodity and judgment is scarce. The real edge is recognizing exceptional people before the company is obvious, which happens long before the company is legible to capital. Often before there’s even a company.

If venture is fundamentally a talent business, why do we organize firms as though it isn’t? Because we assume the only path to becoming a great investor starts in venture.

It doesn’t.

As a recruiter, you develop an intuition for people. You learn the difference between curiosity and rehearsed answers. You notice who gets better every year. Who becomes the person everyone else starts calling.

Market maps, cap tables, and term sheets can all be learned. Judgment about people is much harder.

That’s why we’re hiring two recruiters to work with the investment team.

That sentence probably sounds unusual today, but we think it will eventually sound obvious.

These roles aren’t operating roles with a path to investing; they are investing roles for people uniquely skilled at recognizing exceptional talent before the rest of the market does. And the remit is simple: build the best network of builders in the Valley.

That happens in two ways.

First, help our portfolio companies build exceptional teams. Not because recruiting is a service we offer, but because helping founders win is part of how we invest.

Second, spend time with the people who are still a year or two away from starting something. Often there isn’t a deck yet. Sometimes there isn’t even a company. That’s exactly when we want to know them.

Recruiting shaped the way I think about investing. It taught me to look for slope instead of pedigree, curiosity instead of polish, and the people who somehow leave you more impressed every time you meet them.

If that sounds like the way you’ve spent your career, we’d love to talk. You can reach out at ak@thegp.com.