Can AI Fix Professional Networking? | Inside Cosign

David Booth and Dhruv Gupta of a16z New Media discuss CoSign Awards and the broader CoSign vision: a reputation-driven professional network that surfaces high-impact operators, companies, and products. For CIOs and senior IT leaders, the episode is a preview of how AI agents, curated graphs, and trusted signals could reshape recruiting, internal talent discovery, and ecosystem networking.

Key points

• CoSign Awards aim to recognize underseen operators, not just founders and CEOs.
• The platform combines nominations, expert judges, profiles, lists, and co-signs into one reputation graph.
• CoSign wants to be a source of truth for startup talent, companies, and products.
• The team argues agent-to-agent communication could pre-screen candidates and connect mutual goals.
• They see AI search improving talent discovery beyond LinkedIn, job boards, and cold outreach.
• A future MCP/iMessage agent integration is meant to make networking and recruiting agent-native.