The Tacit Dimension (1966)
We know more than we can tell.
As Michael Polanyi explains, there are two kinds of information in the world.
1) Explicit information survives by internet query, or written down: titles, schools, keywords, manuals.
2) Tacit information dies through your lived experiences: culture, judgment, momentum. How do you teach someone the feeling of riding a bike?
Hiring has turned into an explicit information game. A contingency shop runs twenty searches per recruiter, races rival agencies to submit the same profiles first, and gets paid on the start date, so churn is priced in as someone else’s problem. Recruiting has become a volume business because incentives are misaligned for exceptional outcomes.
Tacit is a relationship practice devoted to tacit hiring.
Our engagement represents a three-way service:
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 as a drug dealer while in community college? Rank 1 in League of Legends in Thailand? 7-figure Roblox hacker at 13 years old? We read these capabilities 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 to staffing: place one person, then strengthen that person up to hire the next ten. The goal is to sustainably blitzscale talent density, thoughtfully.
Tacit isn’t meant to be a scaling business. It is a people and trust business, where it compounds in serendipitous ways.
We started Tacit because we enjoy learning by doing. We’ve built up our own tacit graphs & have encountered archetypes of brilliances we’re grateful to call our friends.
Lastly, to call it living vicariously: we have been fortunate to champion and mentor amazing people into their life’s work at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Ramp, xAI, Mercor, Centerview, Goldman Sachs, Jane Street, and more. And they are still moving, still growing. We will keep helping these friends do extraordinary things.