The AI era has accelerated demand for talent and AI expertise among every CEO and founder at every stage of growth that we speak with. There is increasing urgency to find talent who can build AI systems that deliver the improved outcomes now expected of every product and every decision. Over the last twelve months, the gaps between “exceptional” and “average” companies have broadened at an accelerated pace. Companies and founders that win in this market will be defined by both the talent they attract and how intelligently they deploy AI to solve their customers’ biggest problems.

That’s why I’m so excited to announce two hires that address both directly for our portfolio.

Cortney Erin joins Insight as operating partner and head of talent. She has built from the smallest startups to the largest tech platforms. She scaled all technical recruiting globally at Meta to more than 6,000 hires a year and built the company’s first talent intelligence function. She led global executive recruiting at Microsoft. Most recently, she ran talent acquisition at Adobe. That combination of speed, senior judgment, and the intelligence to know who’s great before you need them is exactly what portfolio companies are asking for. Finding the right person for a critical role is hard; knowing who the right people are before a role is open is an advantage most companies don’t have. Cortney has built that capability at the companies that set the standard in our era. We’re proud to bring it to the Insight ecosystem.

Gregor Stewart joins as operating partner and head of our new Office of AI. He has spent 20 years building software at both public and private companies, most recently as Chief AI Officer at SentinelOne*, an Insight Partners portfolio company. He has scaled engineering and research organizations through an initial public offering and a private equity acquisition. Gregor was also working on natural language processing at Basis Technology, now part of Babel Street, long before the current wave of generative AI (genAI). His mission will be to partner with our portfolio companies to develop the next generation of AI products that more deeply serve their customers and expand their markets.

In an AI-accelerated world, Onsite gives founders the operating advantage

Both roles sit inside Insight Onsite, our in-house team of 100+ operational experts and a superior network of peers, partners, and buyers. Onsite’s dual-engine approach, bringing together expertise and access, provides real execution, not just advice: sharpening go-to-market, scaling organizations, landing strategic buyers, unlocking growth levers. By combining expertise and network access, Onsite is able to open doors for our portfolio companies that help unlock exponential growth.

Talent and AI aren’t separate conversations; they’re one and the same. The companies that will define the next decade are hiring for it and building with it at the same time. That means knowing who the best people are before you need them, and knowing how to put AI to work in a way that actually moves the business. Onsite’s talent function gives our portfolio access to operators who have done it before, and a network they can actually reach into when speed matters. Onsite’s advisory function is every new hire’s unfair advantage upon starting.

It takes so much more than capital to scale, and getting that right as AI compresses timelines has become paramount.

It takes so much more than capital to scale, and getting that right as AI compresses timelines has become paramount. Our team knows the difference between a founder who has an AI opinion and a founder who has an AI advantage, and it almost never comes down to the technology itself. We are grateful to be part of the team helping our portfolio achieve exceptional outcomes.

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*Editor’s note: Insight Partners has invested in SentinelOne.