Head of Talent @getserval Previously @tryramp @sfresearch @linkedin Fútbol aficionado ⚽️
San Francisco, CA
Joined May 2010
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3. Why I Would Invest in Serval over Cognition and Baseten
This is the only show you need to listen to in tech:
- OpenAI Cuts Valuation to $1.25TRN
- Public Market Meltdown: GOOG Loses $500BN in 12 Hours
- DoorDash Buys Instacart for $17BN
- Kalshi Raises $1BN and Cognition Eyes $80BN Valuation
My notes with @jasonlk and @rodriscoll
1. Kalshi Have Departed the Social Good, They Are a Sports Gambling Market
Kalshi started out as a prediction market with some social utility and has since become a sports gambling market growing like a weed. Sports betting is regulated state by state, and Kalshi is pushing through on a national basis, which is why Utah is suing. VCs will put a lot of money into what is working.
2. Why I Would Invest in Cognition at $80BN
At $80B, Cognition looks market correct, and coding agents remain the one thing that never stops working. Cognition got lucky buying the Windsurf team and IP, but its momentum is too strong to sit out. With the fund up 5X on paper, the pitch is to put its last $2B into Cognition.
3. Why I Would Invest in Serval over Cognition and Baseten
ServiceNow is an old guard with a sales-led CEO, while Serval has an amazing product and the best enterprise adoption Harry has seen. A 10X looks very likely at Serval, but far harder at Baseten at $30B or Cognition. The catch is Serval only raised $150M, so a fund that must deploy capital still has to do Cognition.
4. Where Is the Risk in the AI Trade Right Now?
If AI demand is as strong as people think, every GPU and data center will be needed and CoreWeave's bonds will be money good. If demand falls short, the first to suffer will not be Google or Amazon with their big balance sheets, but companies like CoreWeave.
5. Why Large Foundation Model Companies Will Acquire in the Robotic Space
Foundation model companies will either build or buy a robotics model. An LLM sells to the 81 million knowledge workers in the US, and a robotics foundation model lets the same company address physical workers too, doubling its TAM in the prospectus. That lure means there could well be acquisitions in the space.
6. Agents Are an Existential Risk to DoorDash
DoorDash said AI agents sent only several hundred orders against 3 million deliveries a day, which Jason called a dumb comment. Agents can tell users which restaurants deliver themselves or offer pickup, cutting out platform fees. Rory counters that ordering dinner through an agent is not much easier than using the DoorDash app.
7. Why Pricing Pressure Hit Anthropic in Q3
Anthropic's GAAP revenue went from roughly $5B in Q1 to $11B in Q2 and $17B in Q3, so quarter-on-quarter growth fell from about 100% to about 50%, still 5X year-on-year. Jason puts the slowdown down to pricing pressure, with OpenAI selling somewhat equivalent products for 30% off, while demand on OpenRouter has not declined.
(links in comments)
Every engineer who joins Serval spends their first week on a luxury vacation with their own concierge, because we want you to start recharged. Not only that, but if you're referred, you'll each get $30k on top of the trip.
Let's build! serval.com/careers
Starting today, every engineer who joins Serval begins with a weeklong, $10,000 paid vacation. We’re building the next generational company. We need generational talent to see it through.
Our mission has always been to empower people across every team to turn their understanding of a problem into working, trustworthy automations. Making that function inside the largest enterprises takes world-class engineering.
That’s what you’d be joining us to do. There are foundational decisions still to make, and the engineers making them will shape the future of how big we can build this company.
We want you to arrive rested and ready to do the best work of your life. So your first week is a chance to get away.
And if a @getserval employee refers you, both you and that employee receive $30,000, on top of the vacation.
Come build with us: serval.com/careers
Excited to have @eladgil double down on @getserval. Really special to meet him and his team irl today to talk recruiting strategy. Excited for what’s ahead. 🐯
We raised a $150M Series C at a $3B valuation led by @sequoia. Really fortunate to be a part of the talent dense @getserval team and get to work with people like @jakeserval, @AlexAtServal, @TatianaBirgisso, @ChristneKim, @AlanaOG_ (just to name a few). Taking on the most complex challenges of my career and having a great time doing it. We’re scaling aggressively and looking to hire 500+ in the next year. Serval.com/careers
Its been an incredible experience building with @ChristneKim at @getserval. One of the many many highlights of this company. Come build with us.
I hit 9 months at @getserval on Monday, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how much has changed.
When I started in January, I was the first talent hire and the entire talent function, and today we have a team of 12.
Talent is the number one priority at Serval, and everything we’ve built over the last 9 months reflects that. 161 total hires across engineering, GTM, and every corner of the company. Nearly half came through referrals, which tells you everything about the culture here. When you get to learn from such a talented leadership team and own problems that shape the company from your first week, you want to bring the best people you know along. We’ve paid out more than $1 million in referral bonuses, and @Inc recently covered what that actually means for how we think about employee value and experience. We launched the Automation Engineer role, a net-new job category that didn’t exist two years ago, and Fox News covered what we’re building. We had one office when I started, and now we’re in SF, NYC, and Austin, with EMEA planning underway and more offices being explored.
Not everything went to plan though. We have a gap in People coverage and have been absorbing it as a team while we search for the right permanent hire. It’s been a reminder that the work behind the work (onboarding, benefits, operations) matters as much as the hires themselves, and using Serval has been a massive unblock.
What I’m most proud of is the system we’re building and the mindset behind it. We take bets on people and programs that aren’t guaranteed. We build long-term nurture strategies for candidates who aren’t ready yet. We experiment, fail, and push the boundaries of what a modern talent function can look like. Most companies our size wouldn’t attempt half of what this team has taken on.
Everything we’ve accomplished starts and ends with the people on this team and the bar they hold every single day. @ryantafty, @khishida and the rest of the team. I’ve also had the chance to meet some incredible leaders across the industry along the way and those relationships are becoming part of how we build and compete.
None of the hard days feel as heavy when you have the right person in your corner, and my wife has been that person through all of it.
Grateful for 9 months and excited for what’s next.
We’re hiring: lnkd.in/eXfk9dAM
A popular take right now is that AI means fewer entry-level jobs, but we're seeing the opposite at @getserval. We're hiring more Automation Engineers than ever, and most of them are early in their careers because the people who are best at this job are often the ones who grew up with these tools.
I've built Emerging Talent programs twice before, first at @SFResearch, where we hired PhDs and professors, and then at @tryramp . The lesson that has stuck with me across both is that when you give spiky people real ownership early, they outgrow the role faster than you can rewrite the job description. That's exactly what's happening at Serval, and our customers are seeing it too, with @SeatGeek automating more than half of its IT requests with Serval and its IT engineers evolving into forward-deployed engineers.
Every wave of technology creates jobs that didn't exist before, and for this one that job is the Automation Engineer. If you're early in your career, curious, and love making broken processes disappear, we'd love to talk to you: lnkd.in/eqNt8nuE
Carlos Lezama retweeted
ServiceNow told @FoxBusiness they're hiring fewer entry-level roles due to AI
Which is so weird
Because Serval now is hiring more Automation Engineers than ever to serve our customers, most of which are entry level
Much to think about
About 40% of @getserval’s team joined through an employee referral. When I share that number with other recruiters, the first question is always about our talent bar and maintaining talent density.
A referral is the strongest signal I get. Someone already doing great work here is putting their name on a candidate. They know the role, they know the team, and they know what it takes to win at Serval.
Every referred candidate goes through the same interviews, the same scorecards, and the same bar as everyone else. The offer still has to be earned, but a referral gets someone into the process faster.
That’s why referrals are so high leverage. Exceptional people tend to know other exceptional people, and our $20,000 minimum bonus gives the whole team a reason to think hard about who belongs here. It turns 160 people into recruiters, each with a network.
Thanks to @Inc. for covering, and to @khishida for telling the story so well.
We’re still hiring. If you know someone who should be here, send them my way.
inc.com/netta-jenkins/value-…
Talent is usually the team pushing back on references. We don't want to slow down a close or impact our numbers. I've completely flipped on that. Helping scale @tryramp from 250 to 1,600+ showed me how much talent density matters as you grow, and at @getserval references are now about 50% of our hiring decision. We've passed on people who interviewed fine because the references made it clear they weren't going to raise the bar. You rarely catch that in a few hours of interviews, and it's been one of the best ways we protect the quality of our team. The upside goes beyond filtering, because when we decide to move forward with a candidate, references surface signal on what motivates them and what they need in their next role, which gives us a real playbook for the close.
We use @getserval on the talent team for the same reason our customers do. The tools got easy enough that my team builds its own workflows and automations, and as a result, the manual work stopped being worth a person’s time.
The Automation Engineer is the role that does this across a company. We’re hiring: serval.com/careers
Carlos Lezama retweeted
FIRST. EVER. SERVAL. COMMERCIAL. 🙌
Our CTO Alex McLeod is car shopping.
Billy, a used car salesman, has a green jalopy on the lot… but it’s “reliable” once you learn the system.
Up close, it’s a different story. The AI assistant is bolted on. The security system needs resetting. Lane changes require planning. Some things only work if you do them in the right order.
Billy’s best selling point: “Everyone buys from us. You have to.”
Fortunately, our CEO @jakeserval arrives in his purple corvette before Alex signs anything.
🍿🍿🍿
Learn more about the story behind the commercial: serval.com/blog/service-then…
Carlos Lezama retweeted
come get rich with us
serval.com/careers
Excited to be a part of this @getserval
More aspiring founders should go into sales. Very few start their careers carrying a quota and talking to customers, even though that’s most of what building is in the beginning. And while AI is able to take on more of the mechanics of selling, being exceptional at the human craft will matter more than ever before.
We’re launching the @firstround Sales Combine today to help more folks get their start in sales. It’s completely free and there’s no previous experience required. After two days of training, we’ll introduce graduates to companies like @NotionHQ, @fal, @togethercompute, @p0, @clay, @omni, @VerkadaHQ, @RilletHQ, @getserval and many others.
Apply by 10/3: firstround.com/sales-combine
