The a16z Show Sep 25, 2026 50m · 43m saved
With Olivia Moore, Partner at a16z, where she invests in AI companies, and co-founder of Cardinal Ventures, Stanford's on-campus startup incubator
A single LinkedIn post in which Olivia Moore offered to help her portfolio companies hire drew 2,000 responses, and she expects AI tools to multiply that count many times over.
a16z still finds much of its talent by scraping online profiles and checking connections by hand. Moore said that method breaks down as AI multiplies outreach, and that a person's word about someone becomes worth more.
"And so in an age I think of like endless kind of outreach and interests with AI like the scarce thing is like the human endorsement or the human conviction or the human knowledge."
Olivia Moore, a partner at a16z who co-founded Stanford's on-campus startup incubator and spent six and a half to seven years curating startup job lists with her twin sister, spoke on The a16z Show as the firm launched Cosign, its own directory of professional endorsements for the startup community. The panel also included a16z's Josh Elman and David Booth. This summary covers what Moore said in the interview.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 50 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.
Here are the 4 insights that matter.
Key Takeaways
One job post drew 2,000 responses, and Moore expects 10,000 and then 100,000 as automated browsing improves
Her view: when outreach is endless, a human endorsement is the scarce thing
Moore and her twin sister ran a Sunday startup job list for six and a half or seven years, because even Stanford insiders could not tell good startups from bad ones
A VC meets the right candidate months before the right company, and has to remember, re-check and re-introduce by hand
Asking a founder whether they want to sell can insult them, so a network where both sides signal intent privately could match hires and acquisitions
1. A Sunday Startup Job List
The host asked Moore about talent discovery and the newsletter she ran. Her twin sister, Justine, also works at a16z, on its infrastructure team, and both have been in venture capital for about a decade.
A Sunday newsletter that ran for years
"We have both been in venture for basically a decade now and at our very first venture role we started a newsletter that we ran every Sunday for I think like six and a half or seven years." — Olivia Moore
Even insiders could not sort the startups
The list aggregated startup job postings. The reason for it was that Stanford students, even ones running an incubator, had no reliable way to judge which young companies were worth joining.
"It was basically just aggregating startup job postings and the thesis was like we both went to Stanford, we ran a startup incubator at Stanford and still before we were working at a venture firm, we had no way to differentiate between all these startups and founders of like who is legitimate, who's not, who's the most exciting." — Olivia Moore
"And so we were like, okay, we have some inside information now. Let's like curate a list of like the companies that we think are worth joining for young people." — Olivia Moore
The information did not exist outside the Valley
"And it really it built up a real community because I think people appreciated it because you can't get that information outside of Silicon Valley." — Olivia Moore
The sisters ran a network of scouts on college campuses, and Moore said some of those scouts are now founders a16z has invested in. She called the newsletter the manual form of what Cosign is trying to do.
"So, that was like the less scalable version of this kind of network." — Olivia Moore
The signal matters more as company formation gets easier
The host said that as starting a company gets easier and the market gets noisier, it is getting harder to do what the sisters did. Moore agreed.
"Exactly. So this kind of signal is more important than ever." — Olivia Moore
