The Tacit Dimension (1966)

We know more than we can tell.

There are two kinds of information in the world.

1) Explicit information survives being written down: titles, schools, keywords, manuals. You can query it from anywhere.

2) Tacit information is ephemeral, held in lived experience: culture, judgment, momentum. How do you teach someone the feeling of riding a bike? A gut feeling of knowing when to fold in poker?

Hiring has turned into an explicit information game. Headhunters are fighting over the same privileged collectives of people, grouped by signals. Recruiting has been allowed to become a volume business, because the incentives were never asked for exceptionality, and churn was the responsibility of the organization. SF has become colder than ever, and the belief in a high-trust society is now impeached.

Tacit Awareness is a relationship practice devoted to tacit hiring.

We help in three ways:

Tacit <> Ghostwriting

We live with the company: its culture, its momentum, what fit actually means. And we shoulder the hardest part of any CEO’s job, which is selling trust. Trust that this company is the right place for someone’s livelihood and trajectory. Trust that the role fits their north star.

Tacit <> Discovery

The market overlooks arc and tenacity, because neither fits on a resume. How do you gauge exceptional people?

Someone who made six figures trading crypto in community college? Rank 1 in League of Legends? A seven-figure Roblox hacker at thirteen? Homeless in high school? We read these as evidence. Discovery began in the long conversations that surface what a person actually cares about. We mentor, we keep the conversation going for years, and we find the diamonds in the rough, because it’s important to do right.

Tacit <> Nodeing

One great hire sets the bar for the next ten. We operate closer to executive search than staffing: place one person, then empower them to hire the next ten. Tacit is a people and trust business. It compounds in serendipitous ways & we hope to only be rewarded post a positive-sum game.

We started Tacit because we enjoy learning by doing. Along the way, we built our own tacit gut and met archetypes of brilliance we are grateful to call friends.

Call it living vicariously: we have championed and mentored amazing people into their life’s work at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Ramp, xAI, Mercor, Centerview, Bridgewater, Jane Street, and more. They are still moving, still growing. We will keep helping these friends do extraordinary things. We hope to rebuild a high-trust society & live vicariously through the success of our companies and ourselves.