The hiring decisions that determine everything.
An AI talent decision advisor behind $200B+ in outcomes. For AI founders building what comes next.
The problem is not finding candidates.
Most founders hire off instinct. It works until it does not. The first bad hire at a 10-person startup costs 6 months and $150K+. The second one kills momentum. The third one changes the trajectory of the company. The problem is never finding candidates. The problem is hiring before you know exactly what you need. That is the problem I solve. Before the search starts.
Talent Market Intelligence
More capital is flowing into AI startups than at any point in history. The companies that win will be the ones that hire the best. Every recommendation is calibrated to the AI talent market in real time.
Bay Area Network & Signals
Self-built 100K+ network from 15 years building in Bay Area AI and infrastructure, rich with signals on passive talent markets across foundation models, agentic AI, AI infrastructure and applied AI. Deep connections across the California AI ecosystem.
AI Startup Hiring Strategy
The judgment infrastructure that turns founder instinct into a repeatable system. Role calibration, interview design, evaluation frameworks and talent market maps that outlast the engagement. Not filling roles. Building the system that makes every hire better.
Every company I have built hiring systems for has become a unicorn or achieved a major public offering.
HashiCorp
$14B IPO. Designed the hiring architecture that scaled the company through their public offering.
Anthropic
$60B+. Advisor to Anthropic's AI safety research programs, including the Anthropic Fellows Program, identifying researchers and ML engineers at the frontier of alignment, interpretability and AI security. Advisor to Constellation's Astra Fellowship, the leading AI safety research program.
Stripe
$95B. Built the engineering and product teams that powered the payments revolution.
Square/Block, Twitter/X, Microsoft
Built product, engineering and enterprise teams during each company's defining growth era. Earlier: multiple IPO-track hypergrowth companies across AI infrastructure, developer tools and cloud infrastructure.
Three ways to work together
Talent Architecture
The complete startup hiring architecture for your next 10 to 20 roles. Role calibration, interview design, talent market intelligence. You walk away with the system that prevents $500K in bad hires before they happen.
- Role calibration for every open position
- Interview architecture and evaluation frameworks
- Talent market map for your target roles
- Hiring roadmap with sequencing and priorities
Critical Hire Advisory
Expert guidance on the one hire that changes everything. VP Engineering, founding ML engineer, Head of Product. Role architecture, evaluation framework, decision support through close.
- Role architecture built from first principles
- Evaluation framework designed for this specific hire
- Decision support through offer and close
- Compensation intelligence calibrated to market
Advisor Retainer
Ongoing talent strategy during rapid scaling. The hiring advisor founders keep on speed dial. Hiring strategy, org design, compensation intelligence, interview system optimization, investor-ready team documentation.
- Strategic hiring advisor embedded in your company
- Org design and team structure guidance
- Interview system optimization
- Investor-ready team documentation
Every company I have built hiring systems for has become a unicorn or achieved a major public offering.
100,000+ professional network across Bay Area AI and infrastructure. Designed the hiring architecture that scaled HashiCorp through their $14B IPO. Inside every major technology inflection point, before it had a name. 15 years building in Bay Area AI and infrastructure. Global talent architecture across North America, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Kelly Sexton, Founder and Principal, Kelly Advisory LLC
The founders I work with know that hiring is the highest-stakes decision they make.
If that resonates, let's talk.
For AI founders at Seed and Series A building their first 10 to 20 hires.