Startup Advisor
raised in hawai'i
student of life
works in san francisco
ALOHA!
I'm Aurora.
What I Do
After more than a decade of working in technology in San Francisco, Aurora discovered she had a passion for building startups, working with teams to develop creative solutions to challenges, and empowering others to do great work. As a recruiter and leader, she grew Airbnb from 50 to 900 and Coinbase from 7 to 700. Prior to Airbnb she worked in HR at Salesforce and Engineering Recruiting at Google.
She specializes in early-mid size (5-700 employees) hyper-growth startups and now works as an independent advisor working with A16z Crypto as well as other startups both in and outside of the Web3 space. She helps companies with both their hiring and HR strategies. What's top of mind for her? Developing strong recruiting strategies, top-notch candidate experience, enabling founders to build their teams, driving diversity, thinking through healthy organization structure as well as lightweight HR structure, and building a healthy culture. She spends her free time reading, surfing & snowboarding, traveling, and adventuring with her family.
Experience
Companies where I've been fortunate to learn and grow.
Polychain Capital
May 2019 - May 2021
Leading recruiting strategy for the portfolio as the Head of Recruiting.
Coinbase
January 2014-January 2019
Joined at 7 employees, grew it to 900. Built out Engineering, Compliance, G&A, Customer Support. Took over as Director in 2016, scaled recruiting team from 0 to 55 over 7 offices in 4 countries.
Airbnb
June 2011-January 2014
Joined at 50 employees, grew it to 900. Built out Engineering, G&A, led recruiting for international expansion to 10 offices in 9 countries, led the design recruiting team.
Google
October 2010-June 2011
Transitioned from HR to Recruiting as a Technical Recruiter for Software Engineering.
Salesforce
June 2007-October 2010
HRIS Administrator and Generalist.
Directorial Work
A selection of projects that are important to me:
"My blog"
Thoughts on hiring and scaling tech startups.
Building a partnership with the SF Ed Fund
Education
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) 2002-2006
Global Studies, French, Phi Beta Kappa
Reach Out
Drop me a line so we can collaborate!
Aurora Harshner © 2018