The Startup Talent Agency

Built by a CHRO. For the companies that can’t afford to get hiring wrong.
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Why We Exist

The world’s most enduring companies aren’t built by products alone. They’re built by extraordinary people. Yet one of the most important decisions a founder will ever make—who joins the team—is too often treated like a transaction. Recruiting has become a volume business measured by resumes sent, interviews scheduled, and placements made. We believe that’s the wrong measure of success.

The Startup Talent Agency was founded on a simple conviction: founders building exceptional companies deserve exceptional talent advisors. Not vendors. Not resume brokers. Not agency pyramids where the most important work is handed to the most junior people. Trusted partners who understand that every leadership hire shapes culture, influences strategy, and changes the trajectory of a business.

Our perspective comes from both sides of the table. We’ve led People organizations, built recruiting functions from the ground up, advised founders through periods of hyper-growth, and earned the trust to help build leadership teams when the stakes were highest. Together, we’ve spent decades helping high-growth companies navigate their most important hiring decisions. But experience alone isn’t what defines us. Our ambition is.

We are building the talent advisory firm founders call when the next hire matters most.That means asking harder questions than a traditional recruiting firm. Challenging assumptions. Protecting culture as fiercely as capability. Representing our clients’ brands as if they were our own. And earning the right to be invited into the conversations that shape the future of a company—not because we’re recruiters, but because we’ve become trusted advisors.

Our success will be measured by the companies our clients build. Because generational companies are built by extraordinary people. Our mission is to help founders find them.

Our Founding Belief

“We believe the right hire at the right moment can change a company’s trajectory. We exist to make that happen — reliably, and with the depth of partnership the industry has long failed to deliver.”

Jared Lucas

Jared Lucas has spent 15+ years inside the companies that define Silicon Valley. He joined LinkedIn’s founding HR team ahead of its 2011 IPO and helped scale the company from 600 to 4,000 employees. He led people for MobileIron from its 2014 IPO through its successful acquisition by Ivanti. He also has led the people function at three early stage startups: The Climate Corporation (acquired), Cresta (series C raise), and Aisera (acquired).

Along the way, Jared has been privileged to work with some of Silicon Valley’s great venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital (3x), Norwest Venture Partners (2x), A16Z, Menlo Ventures, True Ventures, and Storm Ventures. He has helped recruit full executive, product, engineering, and go-to-market teams in periods of hyper-growth, and brings extensive international experience, labor market calibrated across North America, Europe, and India.

As a Chief People Officer responsible for hundreds of hires, Jared experienced a persistent gap: finding recruiting partners who truly understood the business. Not just the role — the stage, the culture, the stakes. Most agencies filled requisitions. None solved organizational problems.

Before his career in People, Jared served honorably as a Special Agent with the FBI, working Public Corruption and Organized Crime investigations that led to the indictment of forty members of an international drug trafficking cartel. It’s a background that shapes how he works: with rigor, discretion, and an instinct for the details that matter — reading a room, knowing which relationships matter, and accurately assessing talent. That combination of operator credibility and intelligence training is the foundation of The Startup Talent Agency. Jared received his Masters Degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and his Bachelors Degree from Brigham Young University.

Outside of work, Jared enjoys golf (still chasing his first hole in one). Jared spends winters trying to keep pace with his family on the ski slopes of Brundage Mountain in Idaho.

 

Lucas Swope

Lucas Swope is the Director of Recruiting at Startup Talent Agency. GTM hiring is the thing he’s built his whole career around — sales, marketing, customer success, the people who sit closest to revenue and make growth actually happen.

Most recently, he was a Principal Recruiter at Aisera, where he led global GTM recruiting across the US and EMEA, working directly with the CRO, CPO, and CCO to build out sales, marketing, and customer success teams from the ground up — averaging four hires a month over two and a half years. When Aisera was acquired by Automation Anywhere, Lucas transitioned in-house to keep building GTM hiring for the combined company. Before that, he was Lead Recruiter at Cresta, where he built the company’s entire non-engineering hiring function from scratch and made 18 strategic GTM hires in his first 90 days alone.

What led him to join the launch of Startup Talent Agency is pretty simple: he’s always been drawn to companies where the right hire changes everything, and he wanted to bring that same hands-on, embedded approach to founders building something new.

Lucas holds an Honors BBA in International Business from Boise State University, with a minor in French, and has lived and worked in Kenya, France, and Taiwan. He’s also a Professional Ski Patroller and Wilderness First Responder. Outside of work, he’s usually on a long bike ride (he once rode the Pacific Coast from Canada to Mexico), building surfboards in his garage, or out on his motorcycle.

 

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Credentials & Experience

Jared's Track Record

  • LinkedIn

    Director, People Operations · IPO May 2011 · Headcount from 600 to 4,000

  • The Climate Corporation

    VP People Operations · Acquisition by Monsanto for $930M

  • MobileIron

    Chief People Officer · IPO June 2014 · Led HR organization across 22 global offices

  • Cresta

    VP People Operations · Grew headcount 120% from employee #91 · Sequoia, A16Z, Greylock-backed

  • Aisera

    Chief People Officer · Led global expansion and acquisition by Automation Anywhere (2025)

Advisory & Investment

Jared’s network spans founders, VCs, and executive leaders across the Bay Area ecosystem. He has served as an advisor or an investor to:
  • Public Companies

    Spire Global (NYSE: SPIR)

  • Growth-Stage Companies

    Eightfold.ai, Sendoso, Blind

  • Portfolio Companies

    Knoetic, Compa, Simppler (acq. by Indeed)

Education & Credentials

  • Cornell University

    M.S. Industrial & Labor Relations

  • Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara

    Certified Executive Coach

  • Federal Bureau of Investigation

    Special Agent · Organized Crime & Public Corruption

  • Languages

    Fluent in Spanish

Lucas's Track Record

  • Quest Groups
    GTM Recruiter & Recruiting Manager · Executed high-stakes placements spanning Sales leadership, Customer Success, Product Management, and Design
  • Cresta
    Lead GTM Recruiter · Series C · Established the foundational non-engineering recruiting engine from zero · Secured 18 key GTM hires within initial 90-day window
  • Aisera
    Principal GTM Recruiter · Architected global hiring across US and EMEA markets · Acquired by Automation Anywhere · Recipient of the “GTM Impact Player of the Year” award (2024)
  • Automation Anywhere
    Principal GTM Recruiter · Spearheading strategic NAMER Account Executive expansion · Integrated via Aisera acquisition (Nov 2025)

Education & Credentials

  • Boise State University — Honors College
    BBA, International Business w/Honors Minor 
  • Beta Gamma Sigma “Best in Business” Honor Society
  • Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (France)
    French Language Studies · DEUF B.1
  • Providence University (Taiwan)
    Chinese Language & Business Management
  • Wilderness First Responder Certified
  • Professional Ski Patroller
  • Languages
    • Intermediate French

Why Now?

AI Disruption

The AI boom is creating a new wave of well-funded startups with urgent hiring needs and zero internal recruiting infrastructure.

Quality Vacuum

The pandemic-era hiring frenzy exposed just how shallow most recruiting firms are. Founders are actively searching for better partners.

Recruiter Talent Pool

Top-tier recruiters are disillusioned with large firms and ready to join a platform that rewards performance and autonomy.

Founder Experience

Two decades of operator credibility — including IPOs and acquisitions  — create immediate trust and network access.

Ready to work with us?
Let’s talk about your hiring challenges and how we can help you build the team that defines your next chapter.
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