Porter Braswell has spent more than a decade building companies that connect talent with opportunity. He has valuable lessons to share about how hiring works today and where AI fits in.
Last week, Pursuit hosted Porter Braswell for a fireside chat with our Builders. Porter began his career at Goldman Sachs, then co-founded Jopwell, the first for-profit diversity recruiting platform, which partnered with about 400 companies before it was acquired by executive search firm True in 2023. He is now the Founder and CEO of Carter, an AI-native executive search and introduction platform.
Few people have seen hiring from as many sides as Porter has: as a candidate, as a founder building a recruiting platform, and now as someone using AI to rethink executive search. His perspective speaks directly to the job market our Builders are entering.
Here are key insights from the conversation.
Jopwell grew out of Porter's own experience. After three years at Goldman Sachs, he spent more than a year trying to break into tech. He made it to the final round at Uber when it had about 20 NY employees and interviewed in the early days at Box. He offered to work for free at a Techstars company. None of it led to an offer.
At the same time, tech companies were releasing their first diversity reports and pointing to a pipeline problem. As Porter said:
"Here I am working at Goldman Sachs, defined as successful. I have the background and the academic pedigree, but I can't break into tech. Meanwhile, all of the tech companies kept saying there's a lack of diversity because the talent doesn't exist."
Porter's view was that companies were recruiting from a very narrow slice of the qualified talent available, and that closing that gap was a business problem worth solving. He built Jopwell, which became a two-sided platform with hundreds of thousands of Black, Latino, and Native American candidates on one side and about 400 companies on the other.
The market has shifted since then. Demand for diversity recruiting peaked in the years after 2020, and many companies have since scaled back their DEI programs. Porter was clear that Jopwell would have had a hard time surviving in today's climate.
Pursuit thinks about this shift too, including in how we build and sustain our corporate partnerships. Our focus stays on the skills Builders develop in the program and on supporting people who haven't yet gotten their shot at a career in tech.
Executive search is one of the most relationship-driven businesses there is. Yet, there is still a role for AI to super-charge the work. As Porter said:
"The power of AI is to allow humans to do work that should remain distinctly human."
By Porter's count, a traditional executive search takes almost 500 hours of work to place one candidate. On Carter's platform, it takes less than 30. The time saved comes from automating the operational work that fills a recruiter's week: market mapping, outreach, scheduling, and follow-up. What's left is the work that depends on trust, like taking a client to dinner, getting to know a candidate on a run around Central Park, and having hard conversations. Porter was direct about where the line sits:
"It is a relationship game. It is a game of who do you want to work with? Who do you trust? How do you have hard conversations? That's not the purpose of AI."
Porter built Carter’s initial platform himself. "I refuse to say I'm non-technical, because I am now technical in the AI economy."
The same thinking shapes who Carter hires. Porter is looking for engineers and product people who can look at every step the team takes and ask why a person is still doing it by hand.
Pursuit's Builders are building exactly this skill set over our rigorous seven month training.
Porter's first company started with a network, well before it had a product. When he and his co-founder left Goldman Sachs, they had a coworking space and a pitch deck. They made a list of the people they knew at large companies, including a family friend at MasterCard, a former college basketball teammate at Facebook, and a friend who had started at McKinsey. They asked each one a single question: if we build this, would you pay for it?
All six said yes, in a non-binding way. Those early commitments helped them raise money, hire a CTO, and build the first version of Jopwell.
Porter's advice to Builders followed the same logic. Relationships often start with shared interests. He learned golf after seeing how the people around him connected on the course, and he now spends time with people outside of work in ways that also help him professionally. He had clear advice for Builders: Map your network. Start with the organizations you already belong to, since the leaders and advisors behind them have invested their time and reputation in you, and they are likely to take a call. So are the people who report to them.
As Porter said:
"You look for people who are immediately connected to you and tied to you through the organizations that you're a part of. You figure out your way to get in front of them, and then you don't let that chance go."
That point of connection can be small. It might be a shared volunteer organization or a neighborhood you both know. What matters is finding it, doing the research, and showing up ready to add value.
When we asked what he looks for in candidates early in their careers, Porter's answer focused on narrative. When someone gets 30 minutes with him, he already assumes they can do the job. What he's listening for is whether they have a point of view, whether they're hungry, and whether they can explain why they want to be there. As he said:
"When you find yourself in a competitive situation where it's going to be you or two or three other candidates you're competing against, and you've made it through the initial round and now it's that final decision, it's going to come down to your story."
His advice was to go deep on the industry you're interviewing for and tie your story directly to what the company does. For Carter, that means having a view on where AI-native services are headed:
"If you sat down and talked to me about your point of view of AI-native services, now you're speaking my love language."
Pursuit's Builders practice this regularly. They present their work again and again throughout the program so they can tell their story clearly when it counts.
Porter described founding something as a process. First, something happens that makes you decide you're going to do it. Then comes a year or two of struggle, when many people will tell you it won't work. Most would-be founders stop there. The ones who push through often find that what they struggled with becomes the idea. As Porter said:
"If it's happening to me, it's happening to others. Why don't I build a solution for that thing?"
Each of Porter's insights points to the same set of skills. Employers need people who can build with AI and hand off the operational work. They hire people they know or who come recommended. And when it comes down to the final few candidates, they choose the person with the clearest story.
That is the combination Pursuit's AI-native program is built to develop. Builders spend seven months learning to build with AI full-time on real projects. They practice telling their story. And they have a community of staff, peers, and employer partners who are invested in their success. As Porter's advice made clear, the next step is to use it: do the research, show up prepared, and make the ask.
Porter summed up what it takes to succeed right now:
"If you have those ingredients and you embrace this technology, you will always be employable and you will always have opportunities."
