Benjamin Encz and Abhik Pramanik’s paths to entrepreneurship have been long and unusual.
Having previously worked as an R&D engineer at FX Industrial Light & Magic and DreamWorks on movies comparable to “Transformers” and “How to Train Your Dragon”, Pramanik left the film industry in 2012 to hitch VC firm Social Capital as an engineer- resident. There, he co-founded Choir, a mental health app for iOS. A few years later, Pramanik was hired at PlanGrid, a construction productivity software startup, as a senior product manager, where he met Encz.
At PlanGrid, most of Encz’s time was spent on recruitment. (He previously worked at IBM as part of a rotation program before moving to consulting firm Datagroup.) It was at PlanGrid that Encz, an engineering director, became familiar with the pain points of the recruiting process.
“The industry has gone from companies rapidly adding staff to rapidly exiting, which is changing the dynamics of the talent market and how talent acquisition teams must adapt,” Encz told TechCrunch. “The pain is felt all the way up, with executives citing talent as the number one issue that worries them.”
Pramanik and Encz were introduced as a cure for this “pain”. Ashby, a platform that consolidates existing talent acquisition tools and relies heavily on artificial intelligence to automate the more repetitive steps of the recruiting process. Ashby can allow you to create job postings, source candidates and send calendar invites to interviews while providing stakeholders with real-time employment data dashboards.
“As hiring managers and members of leadership teams, we know how difficult it has historically been for employees outside the recruiting team to have a positive experience with the Applicant Tracking System (ATS),” Encz said. “Ashby was created with all stakeholders in mind because we believe that talent is the most important element of growing a company.”
One of Ashby’s AI features, AI-generated candidate search filters, allows recruiters to explain in plain language what type of candidates they are looking for in the candidate database (e.g., “The Python-savvy candidates we hired this year and do not come from commands”) and ask Ashby to jot down the crucial filter logic and booleans for the query.
Ashby also can insert personalized, AI-generated copy into informational emails based on the candidate’s job description and resume, and mechanically classify email responses from candidates as “interested” or “not interested.” In addition, the platform can summarize interview feedback collected during the recruitment process in the form of summaries for recruiters, with the most significant information citing feedback from individual interviews.
What if the AI makes mistakes, because it tends to do? Encz notes that results may be modified or customized, and human review is built into every workflow.
“We view our capabilities in AI in line with our overall focus on speed and product quality,” Encz said. “Our biggest difference lies in the quality and availability of talent team data, the combination of workflows resulting from a system built on a single platform versus multi-point solutions, and the quality of customer service.”
Since coming out of hiding in September 2022, Ashby’s customer base has grown to over 1,300 brands, including Quora, Ironclad, Vanta, Reddit and Lemonade. Revenues increased 6 times; Encz says Ashby makes most of its money through a basic subscription with additional fees for more advanced planning and evaluation tools.
Investors seem like joyful with the numbers. This week, Ashby closed a $30 million Series C round led by Lachy Groom, with participation from tech entrepreneur Elad Gil, F-Prime and Y Combinator, bringing Ashby’s total raised to $70 million.
Encz described the Series C as a “solid round” relative to the Series B.
“We have seen very strong growth over the last two years and are seeing increasing rates of growth among both start-ups and enterprise customers, making this the perfect time to double down on further product development and go-to-market investments.” added. “This additional funding gives us a runway for many years to come and many options.”
One such option is expansion. Ashby plans to rent about 50 people by the end of the 12 months, adding to its team of about 100 at its headquarters in San Francisco.