Storied Silicon Valley VC agency Andreessen Horowitz is backing a fledgling U.Ok. startup that’s getting down to “redefine” how AI is used to match corporations with expertise.
Dex, because the startup is known as, targets candidates and firms with varied AI-powered recruitment smarts, together with matchmaking and training, with a view towards enhancing retention in the long term.
Dex is the handiwork of CTO Harry Uglow and CEO Paddy Lambros (pictured above), who just lately left their positions as software program engineer and head of expertise, respectively, at European VC agency Atomico. While they are saying that Dex has already lured some two dozen U.Ok. tech companies on board (“together with two high-profile U.Ok. unicorns”), the platform is remaining in closed beta for now as they fine-tune issues forward of a broader launch later this 12 months.
Ahead 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 Concept 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 associate Kamil Mieczakowski; and ex-Atomico associate Bryce Keane.
Hire floor
With AI changing into more and more intertwined within the recruitment realm, Dex is getting into a busy area — this contains fledgling startups, well-funded unicorns, and new AI smarts baked straight into LinkedIn. However, Dex sees a spot for an all-encompassing platform that’s laser-focused on actually attending to know candidates.
In the primary 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 can assist them plan their subsequent profession transfer; current them with related alternatives; put together them for interviews; and even negotiate provides they could obtain.
It’s price noting that Dex will work each for passive candidates — i.e. these not actively looking for a brand new job — and people very a lot on the hunt. For occasion, as soon as Dex has constructed a profile of the candidate, it may preserve tabs on open positions marketed on the internet — maybe very particular sorts of roles at very particular corporations — and serve alerts when such alternatives crop up.
For these actively looking for new work, Dex can go the total 9 yards, from search by to software.
“Dex talks by what you need — your preferences and desires — and asks inquiries to deeply perceive your expertise and abilities,” Lambros defined to TechCrunch. “Using this knowledge, Dex then maps the complete market to search out essentially the most acceptable 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 commercials, so Dex does the looking for you, saving you hours of scrolling, researching, after which admin making use of,” Lambros mentioned.
After all this, Dex can coach candidates for his or her interview and even present market knowledge on issues like common compensation for such roles.
Lambros mentioned that along with leaning on “giant public knowledge units and hundreds of interviews and name transcripts,” Dex spoke to greater than 50 of the U.Ok.’s “most skilled recruitment leaders” to find out about their recruitment methodology, and what they search for of their best candidates. And all this knowledge, finally, went into Dex.
Under the hood, Dex is constructed on a number of LLM suppliers, together with OpenAI, Google (Gemini), and Meta (Llama), switching primarily based on no matter enhancements are launched with every respective mannequin.
“We’re continuously evaluating and altering suppliers to make sure that we’re capable of profit from the newest developments,” Uglow mentioned.
On the corporate aspect, in the meantime, Dex converses with recruitment groups to determine their preferences for his or her best candidate.
“Dex speaks with hiring managers and candidates to deeply perceive what a terrific match seems like,” Uglow mentioned. “The tradition, behaviors, needs, wants, and ambitions of people and firms. This is then mixed with a variety of publicly accessible knowledge, powering our suggestion methods 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.Ok., 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 corporations retain prime expertise and empower staff to search out work they love.”
