About Scott Kupor
Scott Kupor is an American venture capitalist, lawyer and author who has served as director of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government's central human resources agency, since July 2025. Before entering government he spent more than 15 years at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and he is the author of Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It (2019).
Kupor grew up in Houston and earned a BA in public policy and a JD from Stanford University. After law school he clerked for Judge Jerry Edwin Smith of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, then worked as an investment banker at Credit Suisse, managing initial public offerings. In 1999 he joined Loudcloud, the company co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, which later became Opsware; after Hewlett-Packard acquired Opsware in 2007, he led its global support organization within HP's software division.
When Andreessen and Horowitz started their venture firm in 2009, Kupor was its first employee. He became a partner in 2010, served as chief operating officer and later managing partner, and helped build the firm into one of the largest venture investors in the United States. He chaired the National Venture Capital Association from 2017 to 2018, testified before congressional committees on startups and investment, and taught entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Secrets of Sand Hill Road grew out of that work: a guide, with a foreword by Eric Ries, that explains how venture capitalists decide where and how much to invest and how founders can negotiate better deals and manage their relationships with investors.
President Donald Trump nominated Kupor to lead OPM in December 2024, and the Senate confirmed him in July 2025. As director he oversees federal hiring, pay, benefits and retirement policy, and he writes Secrets of OPM, a newsletter of weekly updates on the agency and the federal workforce.
What Scott Kupor is known for
- Secrets of Sand Hill Road (2019)
- First employee and managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz
- Director of the US Office of Personnel Management
- Former chair of the National Venture Capital Association
- Explaining venture capital in plain language for founders
Works by Scott Kupor
1 essay to practice
More notable works
Hiring is hard. (opens in a new tab)
Article · 2026
A Secrets of OPM post explaining how federal job descriptions and classification work and introducing an AI tool meant to speed them up.
Merit Matters (opens in a new tab)
Article · 2026
Uses the economists' "sheepskin effect" to argue that employers lean on degrees and years of experience as lazy proxies for actual skill.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It
Book · 2019
A founder's guide to how venture capitalists decide where and how much to invest, and how to get the best possible deal.
Secrets of OPM (opens in a new tab)
Newsletter · 2025
His weekly newsletter as OPM director on the agency and the federal workforce.
Scott Kupor’s writing style
Kupor combines venture capital expertise with clear explanation. His writing is characterized by detailed analysis of venture capital mechanics and startup dynamics. He excels at making complex financial concepts accessible.
- Explains the plumbing
- He walks readers through how a system actually works, such as how a federal position description is mapped to a classification standard, before proposing a change.
- Translation for outsiders
- He defines insider terms in everyday ones, telling private-sector readers to think of a federal PD as a job description, much as Secrets of Sand Hill Road decodes venture jargon for founders.
- Numbers to show scale
- He uses concrete figures, like 609 classification standards and about 150,000 hires a year, to make an abstract bottleneck feel real.
- Conversational asides
- Short informal lines and rhetorical questions, dropped between technical explanations, keep policy writing from sounding bureaucratic.
- Blunt one-liners
- He punctuates explanation with short, plain verdicts, as in a post on degree requirements that sums up employers' reliance on credentials with "Hiring is hard and people are lazy!"
How to write like Scott Kupor
Write for the smart outsider. Pick a process that insiders take for granted, such as raising a venture round or hiring in government, and explain each step in order, defining every term by comparison to something the reader already knows. Kupor's approach is to show the machinery first so the reader understands why a change matters.
Use a few precise numbers to convey scale, keep sentences plain, and drop in an occasional informal question or aside to keep the tone human. When you reach your point, state it in one short, plain sentence, so the reader leaves with a verdict rather than a summary.
The quickest way to absorb these habits is to retype one of Scott Kupor’s essays above, word for word, then write a paragraph of your own in the same voice. New to this? Read what copywork is and how to do it.
Frequently asked questions about Scott Kupor
- Who is Scott Kupor?
- Scott Kupor is the director of the US Office of Personnel Management, confirmed in July 2025. Before that he was the first employee and later managing partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, chaired the National Venture Capital Association, and taught at Stanford. He wrote Secrets of Sand Hill Road, a guide to venture capital for founders.
- What is Secrets of Sand Hill Road about?
- Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It (2019) explains how venture capital works from the investor's side. Kupor explains how VCs decide where and how much to invest and how entrepreneurs can get the best possible deal, with practical material on term sheets, boards, down rounds and preparing for an acquisition. Eric Ries wrote the foreword.
- What did Scott Kupor do at Andreessen Horowitz?
- Kupor was the first person hired when Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz started the firm in 2009. He became a partner in 2010, served as chief operating officer and later managing partner, and helped grow the firm into one of the largest US venture investors. He resigned in 2025 to take up his government role.
- What is Scott Kupor's role at OPM?
- As director of the Office of Personnel Management, Kupor leads the agency that manages human resources policy for the federal civilian workforce, including hiring, pay, benefits and retirement. He was nominated in December 2024, confirmed by the Senate in July 2025 and sworn in on July 14, 2025. He publishes weekly updates in the Secrets of OPM newsletter.
- What is Scott Kupor's writing style?
- Kupor writes in a clear, explanatory style aimed at non-specialists. He breaks complicated processes into steps, translates jargon into everyday terms, and uses concrete numbers to show scale. His tone is conversational, with short asides, rhetorical questions and the occasional blunt one-line verdict.