Patrick O’Neil leads talent across Thrive Capital, which works with companies from its own incubations to Stripe and OpenAI. Before that, he was one of Gusto’s first recruiters and Notion’s first technical recruiter. He opened RecOps Con 2026 in a fireside chat with Wahab Owolabi.
From funnel math to talent intelligence. Recruiting has long been a numbers game: talk to 100 people, and some fall out at every stage. Patrick sees teams at every stage starting to treat it like go-to-market instead, with warm leads, brand engagement and a clear ideal profile. One example: getting employees to tag their LinkedIn connections with how they know each person, so the company knows who its people already trust.
Build for more conversations. He pointed to a portfolio company that measured how much time its sales team actually spent with customers, then built internal tools to push that number up. Recruiting should aim the same way: tools that free recruiters to spend more time building relationships.
Glass balls and rubber balls. At a startup, you’ll drop things. Candidate data and the trust that comes with it are glass, so get those right. Most tooling experiments are rubber, so tinker freely.
Small touches still win. His best memories of RecOps support are simple ones: a Gusto onsite packet that told candidates exactly what to expect, and a Notion candidate wiki with a blurb for every interview. Self-serve information didn’t replace the prep call. It made the call more valuable.
The golden age of recruiting. Patrick is more bullish on the profession than ever. When companies can build fast, the team is the moat. (He also thinks investors are basically recruiters.) AI can take the forensic accounting and scorecard chasing, but automating every first conversation would lose what makes recruiting work.
