Storied Silicon Valley VC agency Andreessen Horowitz is backing a fledgling U.Okay. startup that’s getting down to “redefine” how AI is used to match firms with expertise.
Dex, because the startup is named, targets candidates and firms with numerous AI-powered recruitment smarts, together with matchmaking and training, with a view towards bettering retention in the long term.
Dex is the handiwork of CTO Harry Uglow and CEO Paddy Lambros (pictured above), who lately left their positions as software program engineer and head of expertise, respectively, at European VC agency Atomico. Whereas they are saying that Dex has already lured some two dozen U.Okay. tech companies on board (“together with two high-profile U.Okay. unicorns”), the platform is remaining in closed beta for now as they fine-tune issues forward of a broader launch later this 12 months.
Forward of that, the London-based startup on Tuesday introduced it has raised $3.1 million in a pre-seed spherical of funding led by a16z’s Speedrun fund and Idea Ventures, with participation from a slew of angels from throughout the tech and VC panorama, together with: Meta board member Charlie Songhurst; Deliveroo COO Eric French; Incident.io CEO Stephen Whitworth; Notion Capital companion Kamil Mieczakowski; and ex-Atomico companion Bryce Keane.
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With AI turning into more and more intertwined within the recruitment realm, Dex is coming into a busy house — this consists of fledgling startups, well-funded unicorns, and new AI smarts baked straight into LinkedIn. Nevertheless, Dex sees a niche for an all-encompassing platform that’s laser-focused on actually attending to know candidates.
Within the first occasion, Dex — which the corporate pitches as an “AI voice expertise agent” — converses with candidates by way of a name to garner an understanding of their expertise, abilities, ambitions, and extra. Subsequently, Dex will help them plan their subsequent profession transfer; current them with related alternatives; put together them for interviews; and even negotiate gives they could obtain.
It’s price noting that Dex will work each for passive candidates — i.e. these not actively trying to find a brand new job — and people very a lot on the hunt. As an illustration, as soon as Dex has constructed a profile of the candidate, it could preserve tabs on open positions marketed on the net — maybe very particular sorts of roles at very particular firms — and serve alerts when such alternatives crop up.
For these actively looking for new work, Dex can go the complete 9 yards, from search by to software.
“Dex talks by what you need — your preferences and wishes — and asks inquiries to deeply perceive your expertise and abilities,” Lambros defined to TechCrunch. “Utilizing this information, Dex then maps the whole market to seek out essentially the most applicable alternatives and surfaces them to you. If you wish to proceed, Dex handles the appliance — no extra CV, no extra cowl letter — and when there’s a match, introduces you to the hiring supervisor.”
So for candidates, Dex is much less market or job board, and extra an AI agent that does all of the mundane stuff for them.
“We imagine candidates don’t wish to trawl by a whole bunch of generic job ads, so Dex does the trying to find you, saving you hours of scrolling, researching, after which admin making use of,” Lambros mentioned.
In any case this, Dex can coach candidates for his or her interview and even present market information on issues like common compensation for such roles.
Lambros mentioned that along with leaning on “giant public information units and hundreds of interviews and name transcripts,” Dex spoke to greater than 50 of the U.Okay.’s “most skilled recruitment leaders” to find out about their recruitment methodology, and what they search for of their preferrred candidates. And all this information, in the end, went into Dex.
Beneath the hood, Dex is constructed on a number of LLM suppliers, together with OpenAI, Google (Gemini), and Meta (Llama), switching based mostly on no matter enhancements are launched with every respective mannequin.
“We’re consistently evaluating and altering suppliers to make sure that we’re capable of profit from the most recent developments,” Uglow mentioned.
On the corporate facet, in the meantime, Dex converses with recruitment groups to determine their preferences for his or her preferrred candidate.
“Dex speaks with hiring managers and candidates to deeply perceive what an amazing match appears to be like like,” Uglow mentioned. “The tradition, behaviors, desires, wants, and ambitions of people and firms. That is then mixed with a variety of publicly accessible information, powering our advice techniques to curate customized matches.”
With $3.1 million within the financial institution, the corporate is now ramping up its hiring throughout engineering and advertising, with a view towards launching publicly beginning within the U.Okay., earlier than trying to worldwide markets.
“Hiring isn’t about filling seats — it’s about creating lasting partnerships that profit staff and firms,” Lambros mentioned. “With this funding, we’ll assist firms retain high expertise and empower staff to seek out work they love.”
