Quick Update: Vibescaling is now Crew.
When Cailen and I started this in early 2025, the name made sense for the moment.
Vibecoding was everywhere. Founders were shipping faster than ever. It felt fun and on the nose.
But it stopped fitting what we actually do.
We've spent the last year and a half placing the best AEs, BDRs, and sales leaders into the top AI-native startups in NYC and SF.
That type of work requires credibility. Founders trust us to find people who'll shape their first $XXM of revenue. Candidates trust us with the most important career move they'll make going into this AI-era.
Meanwhile, "vibescaling" kept tripping up our champions when they brought us up internally. "Is this a real company?" was the line we heard most often from folks who didn’t know us. Brutal.
That's a tax we weren’t willing to keep paying. It pained me each time I would hear about it (even though I wasn’t ever in love with the name, it still stung).
I'm running talent, brand, and media now, and polish matters to me. What people think/say about us when we’re not in the room matters a lot to me.
So we picked a name that signals what we want people to feel when they hear us or work with us: quality, trust, growth, polish.
A bit on Why Crew:
The word comes from the Latin crescere, meaning "to grow."
It entered English in the 15th century as a military term: reinforcements raised to strengthen an existing force.
Same root as recruit. We felt it was fitting, given what we do.
That root also gave us crescendo (a build) and accrue (to compound), which maps neatly onto the three things we run:
Talent is the reinforcements: the highest-leverage hires for an early-stage AI company. BDRs and AEs in NYC and SF for seed through Series D AI-natives (contingent), plus Head of Sales, VP Sales, and CRO searches (retainer). Rowing in the same boat, helping to build their teams.
Media is the crescendo: a compounding asset for us, and a growth-minded read for the operators on the other end of it. The podcast, blog, and events all sit here.
Investing is the accrual: we selectively back our top-performing clients. Same boat, but now with stronger alignment.
We're also winding down the advisory business. Always happy to share what we're seeing in the market with clients for free. The formal fractional engagements are done, just wanted to focus our time on the three areas above.
It's been a wild year. We got to work with 10 of this year's Forbes AI 50 and 16 of the Wing Enterprise Tech 30 across recruiting and media. Anthropic, Clay, Cursor, Harvey, Granola, Replit, Vercel, Decagon, Listen Labs, Basis, Parallel, and a bunch more. Huge thanks for letting us help with team build-outs and showcase your growth through our content.
A couple things on the horizon:
We're bringing on another full-time hire to help lead our BDR/SDR recruiting, both IC and leadership (shout out to Matt!)
Cailen is going full-time on the executive recruiting business (head of sales, VP sales, CRO searches)
I'm going all-in on the media side (while still heading up our AE recruiting)
Lots in motion for 2026 + never been more energized building this.
Appreciate you all being part of this crew 😬 - onward.
🫡 Cheers,