Registration & Continental Breakfast

Get to know other attendees over a light delicious breakfast featuring fresh juice, bagels with cream cheese and jams, pastries, and seasonal fruit.

Opening Remarks: Talent as Capital

Opening Keynote - The Future of Recruiting Leadership: Craft, Credibility, and Culture

A conversation on the evolving identity of recruiting leadership. What does it mean to lead in an era of AI, leaner teams, and higher bars?

Roundtable Discussions: Building High-Talent-Density Teams in a Hybrid Era

High-talent-density isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a competitive advantage. Join leaders from fast-scaling companies as they share how to define, measure, and maintain talent density amid distributed work, rapid headcount growth, and shifting candidate expectations. Expect candid discussions on raising the hiring bar, comp structures, and culture design.

Roundtable Discussions: The Recruiter as a Strategic Operator: Leading Through Change

Betting on People: How VCs and Talent Leaders Evaluate High-Density Teams

VCs place multi-million-dollar bets not just on technology, but on people. In this session, investors and talent leaders unpack how they evaluate “founder quality” and leadership talent, and what high talent density looks like from seed to IPO and beyond. We’ll explore what separates “qualified” from truly exceptional: technical aptitude, grit, capacity to get things done, and the charisma or “aura” that attracts other top performers. Attendees will walk away with practical lenses and questions they can use to assess talent inside their own organizations—whether they’re hiring the first 20 people or scaling to thousands.

Morning Break

Keynote

Sponsored by Juicebox

Lunch

Product Workshops

Afternoon Treat

Take a well-deserved break and recharge with something sweet, courtesy of our friends at Ashby. Whether you need a sugar boost, a caffeine fix, or just a few moments to connect with fellow attendees, this treat break is the perfect pause between sessions.

From Zero to One: Designing Your Founding Team for Scale

How do great companies get their first hires right? This session unpacks how top founders and recruiting leaders think about founding team composition, including the balance between product, engineering, and GTM leadership. Learn how to evaluate founder-market fit, identify “franchise” early hires, and structure incentives to align for long-term scale.

Building and Sustaining High-Talent-Density Teams

Elite teams don’t happen by accident. Explore how organizations define talent density, set a consistent hiring bar, and uphold quality through scale, hybrid work, and shifting business needs. The discussion highlights how recruiting, hiring leaders, and founders work together to embed sourcing, assessment, and calibration practices that keep talent density high over time.

Executive Recruiting as a Growth Lever

The right exec hires accelerate entire orgs. Explore how to approach executive search with intentionality — timing your first VP hires, calibrating expectations, and avoiding costly mis-hires that set teams back.

Recap Day 1

Cocktail Reception

Unwind and connect after a packed day of insights and inspiration. Join us for drinks, light bites, and great conversation with fellow RecOps pros. Whether you're debriefing sessions, swapping ideas, or just vibing with new friends—this is your time to relax and celebrate the community.

VC Talent Leaders Dinner