Spokes vs. Tribe Leaders

My day job for 20 years has been recruiting high tech talent for Silicon Valley companies so most waking hours are spent surfing LinkedIn profiles, which are approaching proper resumes in level of detail and have potential to bring us resume 2.0. Bulk of my activity is reviewing hundreds of profiles for positions I have open. Supply and demand of skills. Very transactional.

Sometime last year, I found out that the creator of the web browser, Marc Andreessen, was tweeting so I revived my Twitter account to see what this was all about. During this process, I found gems like Hunter Walk, Mark Suster, and Danielle Morrill who are sharing their unique experiences in the startup world: educating and entertaining current and future entrepreneurs. As I followed and read various personalities, I started to find incredibly talented individuals who are surely on great trajectories.

A friend would describe these people as “spokes” for networking. Basically, you connect with one of them and they help you connect with many, many key contacts to help your business. But the following three individuals are beyond introduction brokers. Whether they realize or not, they are tribal leaders — men and women who through their own internal motivations and passions can influence hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of people. Each has mastered the art of engaging communities and one on one through blogs, tweets, and thought leadership.

JD Carluccio is an angel investor and advisor to startups. His mission is helping founders from the underrepresented demographics, particularly the Latino community. His blog is at https://medium.com/@JDcarlu and his analysis is excellent for business students and startup teams alike.

Kiki Schirr is the cofounder and Chief Marketing Officer of Fittr app. She has authored the first book Product Hunt called The Product Hunt Book and coined the phrase,“You do PH, don’t you?” Read her writings to better understand the state of marketing now.

Eric Willis is the founder of SteamRolers, a community for underrepresented talent in the tech industry. This is one of the most positive and vibrant communities I’ve ever seen. My colleagues in human resources and tech should keep this community on their radar for talent.

Read their blogs, follow them on Twitter and engage. Help them on their rise.

Thanks to Alan Daniel, Terrence Yang, and Daniel Crompton for review.

Feedback is always welcome on Twitter @charlesjo.