Who is How
Growing a startup is hard. Few will survive; even rarer are those that will enter a growth-stage with a steep upward trajectory — a high slope. Growing a high slope business is an order of magnitude more difficult because it requires finding something equally rare — high slope people.
For us, high slope people are those we genuinely believe have the capability to be successful founders at some point in their career. You know them when you meet them. People with the right mix of intelligence, EQ, judgement, ambition and ability to execute at a level that’s unparalleled. They pass the Netflix “Keeper Test”; Microsoft and Amazon use them as “bar-raisers” to be the most rigorous judges of talent and ability. They are the people that founders and CEOs invest their time, sweat and tears to close. They are the people that investors immediately write a check to without having to hear the idea. They are leaders who can scale exponentially, and take on far more responsibility this week than last.
We believe that (aside from founding their own companies) joining high slope organizations is by far the fastest way high slope people can fulfill their potential. This belief permeates everything we do and how work with our partners:
We exclusively work with companies that we believe have the trajectory to match the ambition and capabilities of high slope people.
We exclusively work on roles that will keep a high slope person on their trajectory toward a potential founder or CEO role.
We have strong conviction that every company we work with is high slope and we structure our engagements to prioritize equity in our partner companies because we believe in their future.
Our Values
Recruiting is often maligned as a world marred by misaligned incentives, information asymmetry and bad behavior. We work differently.
We take things personally.
Emotional ownership is one of the biggest, clearest signals in identifying a high slope person. We know people who care a lot — about the quality of their work, about our partners, and about each other — are the highest slope people.
We’re not there yet.
There is always more room to achieve, grow and learn. We believe in a growth mindset and helping our partners and team reach their potential by celebrating self-awareness and constant iterative improvement.
We are refreshingly honest.
We don’t think it serves anyone, let alone our partners or our team, to be anything less than fully transparent. Our partners and our team will always know what we think, where we stand, and why.
We believe in only long-term value.
We want to work with our partners and team for years to come over multiple roles. We will always advise and build for the long-term, even when it’s harder in the short-term.
We create success through alignment.
People achieve the best outcomes when they’re pulling together in the same direction. For our partners and our team, our outcomes can only be considered a success if we all win.