Keep pulling the thread on Jonathan.
Athena was bootstrapped and scaled to 1,000 employees without taking any outside capital.
Athena receives 50,000 applications per month for its executive assistant positions and has a hiring rate of approximately 1 in 300, or 0.33%.
Thumbtack once experienced a "death penalty" from Google where it was completely de-indexed from search results, causing its website traffic and revenue to drop to zero.
Jonathan agrees with Sequoia Capital's Michael Moritz's view that typically only one co-founder from a founding team remains with a company for the long term.
Thumbtack was founded by four individuals, three of whom were non-technical, a structure Jonathan now views as a non-ideal way to start a technology company.
High-caliber individuals often take Chief of Staff roles as a two-year "tour of duty" to learn from a founder before starting their own company.
Prominent investors like Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale build proprietary talent networks by consistently hiring from specific pools like the Stanford Review and Stanford University.
Elon Musk reportedly does not use an executive assistant and manages his own scheduling.
An unnamed billionaire hedge fund manager employs a personal team of 40 people, including eight executive assistants who are all graduates of Princeton University.
Athena's vision includes digital assistants that connect to a user's Zoom, inbox, and calendar to mine their "digital exhaust" and proactively identify tasks for a human assistant.
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz operate with a consolidated structure, funneling most of their professional activities through their firm, Andreessen Horowitz.
Peter Thiel operates with a fragmented organizational structure, managing multiple independent but collaborative entities such as Founders Fund and Mithril Capital.