Jeff Stump

Jeff Stump is an Operating Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads the firm's Talent Network team. He joined a16z in 2010 — relatively early in the firm's history (a16z was founded in 2009) — and has since focused on helping the firm's portfolio companies recruit senior leadership and build out executive teams and boards. He arrived at a16z after roughly nine years working in executive search.

Before a16z, Jeff was a Partner at Howard Fischer Associates International, a retained executive-search firm, where he ran senior-level executive and board searches for both emerging and established companies. Earlier in his career he worked outside of recruiting: he was a Senior Associate at Arthur Andersen LLP (auditing and IPO financial-statement preparation) and before that handled financial analysis, market research, M&A transaction support, SEC compliance, and financial reporting at Pulse Electronics. That accounting-and-finance foundation is unusual for a talent leader and informs how he evaluates operating executives.

Jeff earned a BS in Accounting from Drexel University's LeBow College of Business. He is a frequent author and contributor within a16z's editorial output on hiring and organizational scaling, and is often cited as one of the firm's authorities on executive recruiting. Outside of work, his bio notes interests in mountain biking and bonsai cultivation.

Jeff does not run a personal investing thesis or write checks; his "product" is executive talent for a16z portfolio companies. His stated focus areas, drawn from his own writing, include:

• Executive hiring as a founder-defining skill — his article series argues hiring senior leaders is one of the highest-leverage things a founder does and should be run as a rigorous, structured process, not intuition.
• Assessing for "expectations fit" on both sides — he emphasizes aligning the company's needs and the candidate's expectations before a hire, rather than optimizing only for résumé pedigree.
• Integrity and trust in interviewing — he has written specifically about building trust and assessing a candidate's integrity during the interview process.
• Board construction — he coaches founders on a strategic, deliberate approach to building a board of directors, and on when/how to hire a COO.
• Scaling the operational org — he advises on how and when to layer in operational leadership as a company grows.

Not applicable in the traditional sense — Jeff is an operating/talent partner, not a deal-leading investor, so there is no public portfolio of personal deals or led rounds attributable to him. His impact instead shows up in executive placements at a16z portfolio companies across the firm's funds. (No specific, publicly attributed executive placements were verifiable from primary sources at the time of research.)