a16z Partner Olivia Moore: Launches Entrepreneur Endorsement Network Cosign
Andreessen Horowitz partner Olivia Moore stated that the most valuable data in Silicon Valley is who believes in whom, which determines hiring, financing, promotions, and acquisitions, yet has remained confined to private calls, emails, and texts. She announced the launch of Cosign, a curated network for the entrepreneurial community. Erik Torenberg shared the post.
The product was built with contributions from Torenberg, David Booth, and others, with Josh Elman also appearing in the launch discussion. Profiles can be generated from funding announcements, job changes, and public posts to reduce cold starts. It is designed to only record positive endorsements, with core signals including who has shaped your career, who you would fight alongside, who you think is worth watching, and company-level endorsements when non-investors cannot express belief with real money. Moore and her twin sister Justine have communicated about entrepreneurial roles for many years and co-founded the Cardinal Ventures incubator at Stanford, later making early investments in consumer and AI sectors at a16z. The platform turns private endorsements into a browsable list and count.
Belief has moved from phone calls at the dinner table to shareable homepages. Funding decisions have not automatically changed with the launch, but the information gap in hiring and seed rounds now has a layer of public visibility. Beneficiaries include founders and investors who can now be endorsed by celebrities; those under pressure are headhunters and private negotiators who rely on untraceable endorsements. The event driver is the product launch, not regulatory disclosure requirements.
Source: Public information
ABAB AI Insight
The core inventory of venture capital is "I would call this person." LinkedIn records resumes but cannot capture who endorsed whom in non-consensus situations. Cosign transforms this hidden account into positive counts and allows pre-generated profiles on public webpages to avoid having no content if no one registers. Only positive endorsements are allowed to encourage celebrities to sign, while negative reviews remain in private conversations.
The capital pathway is the productization of the reputation market. An a16z partner as the publisher equates to pouring the fund's brand into a new ledger. Communications and incubators are the front-end traffic of the same pair of sisters. Endorsements cannot replace term sheets but can change who enters the call queue for the week. Acquisitions and promotions still reside with the board, while the platform sells queue priority.
In comparison to LinkedIn recommendations, Twitter Lists, AngelList Syndicates, and academic citations: the commonality is turning private judgments into accumulable marks. The Silicon Valley phase is accelerated by AI recruiting and seed rounds, where belief data is scarcer than resume keywords.
Structural changes belong to the transfer of pricing power. Who is publicly named by whom begins to influence who appears on shortlists for funding and hiring. The mechanism is: once hidden accounts become homepage counts, not signing is also a signal; only positive endorsements mean that negative pricing power remains in private conversations, and the platform profits from the right to positive naming.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
- The most expensive data resides long-term in untraceable calls.
- Only positive ledgers are allowed; negative reviews still travel through encrypted channels.
- Endorsements do not sell terms, but the order of entry into the call queue.