I built the alternative. Fifteen years inside high-growth SaaS companies taught me something most people learn too late: the hiring system doesn't fail because companies are careless. It fails because there's no structure for truth.
I've spent fifteen years inside fast-moving B2B SaaS companies — running go-to-market, demand, lifecycle, and revenue marketing at Meta, Google, and high-growth companies scaling revenue in real time. I've sat in the room when founders make hiring decisions. I've watched what happens in the months after. And I've been on the other side of those decisions too — as the operator being evaluated.
What I noticed, again and again, is that the system has no mechanism for truth. Resumes lie by omission. Interviews reward preparation over substance. Reference calls are theater — everyone knows the ones you're given are the ones someone coached. A $400K decision gets made on four conversations and a gut feeling, and then a year later a founder is sitting across from me telling me what went wrong. The outcome is almost always traceable back to the same root cause: they never saw how the person actually thought.
Most people observe this and move on. I couldn't. I've seen it from both sides — as the person being hired and as the person watching hires get made. That double vantage point is rare. It's also why I knew exactly what needed to be built.
"I've been laid off twice. Both times I came back to the market and went through the same broken process. That proximity — being evaluated by a system I knew was wrong — is what made the solution obvious."
After the second layoff, I stopped going through the motions and started having real conversations with founders — the kind where they tell you what's actually happening, not what they'd put in a press release. Almost every one had the same story: a revenue hire that looked right, cost a fortune, and didn't work. And almost every one said the same thing: "I wish I'd seen how they actually thought before I made the call."
The Foundry isn't a response to a market gap I found in a spreadsheet. It's the thing I would have wanted to exist — as the operator who wanted to be evaluated on thinking, not on paper, and as the person who watched founders make avoidable mistakes in real time. A private room. Real endorsements from named founders and CEOs who've seen these operators perform. Twelve minutes of real reasoning on real problems — not rehearsed answers. Founders see how someone thinks before they make a $400K bet.
The solution was obvious once I could see the problem clearly. What I built is not complicated. What it requires is judgment and standards and a willingness to keep the room small. That's what most people aren't willing to do. That's exactly why I am.
The wrong revenue hire is a company-level event. $200–400K in salary, severance, and lost pipeline — and that's before you count the team disruption and the six months you lost going the wrong direction.
A personal vouch is worth more than five reference calls. References are coached. An endorsement from a founder who puts their name on an operator — that's real accountability. That's what changes the calculus.
Exclusivity is a feature, not a limitation. The room works because it's selective. The moment you optimize for scale, you lose the thing that makes it valuable. Small and sharp beats big and noisy.
The network is the product. The platform gets you in the room. The relationships are what make it worth staying. Roundtables, dinners, introductions — that's where the real value compounds.
I'm not building a marketplace. I'm not taking placement fees. I'm not running a scoring algorithm that makes the hard judgment calls feel like math. The Foundry requires real judgment — the kind that comes from being in the room on both sides, from knowing what good looks like and what a wrong hire costs. That judgment is the product. The moment I remove it, this becomes everything else.
The layoffs gave me something I wouldn't have gotten any other way: the perspective of being evaluated by a system I knew was broken, while also watching others use that same system to make decisions. Most people in that position get bitter or get busy. I got clarity. I saw exactly what needed to exist and exactly why nobody had built it the right way.
If you're a founder who's made a hiring mistake and doesn't want to make another one — or an operator who's tired of being reduced to a resume — the room is for you. It's built with you in mind. And it's held to a standard I'm not willing to lower.