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 films such as “Transformers” and “How to Train Your Dragon,” Pramanik left the film industry in 2012 to join VC firm Social Capital as an engineer in residence. There, he co-founded Choir, a mental health app for iOS. Several years later, Pramanik was hired by PlanGrid, a construction productivity software startup, as a senior product manager, where he met Encz.
In PlanGrid, many of of Encz time consumed by recruitment. (He previously worked at IBM in a rotational program before moving to Datagroup, a consulting firm.) At PlanGrid, director of engineering, Encz familiarized himself with the problems of hiring processes.
“The industry has gone from companies rapidly increasing headcount to suddenly shedding employees, changing the dynamics of the talent market and how talent acquisition teams must adapt,” Encz told TechCrunch. “The pain is being felt all the way up at the top, with executives citing talent as the number one issue, which is causing them concern.”
As a remedy for this “pain”, Pramanik and Encz began Ashby, a platform that unifies existing talent acquisition tools and relies heavily on artificial intelligence to automate the most repetitive steps in the hiring pipeline. Ashby can help create job listings, source candidates and send calendar invitations for interviews, while providing dashboards with real-time hiring metrics to stakeholders.
“As hiring managers and leadership team members ourselves, we know how difficult it has historically been for employees outside of the hiring team to have a positive experience with an applicant tracking system (ATS),” said Encz. “Ashby was built with all stakeholders in mind, as we believe that talent is the most important element for a company to align for growth.”
One of Ashby’s AI capabilities, AI-generated candidate search filters, allows recruiters to describe in plain language the type of candidates they are looking for in a candidate database (e.g., “Candidates with Python skills we hired this year that didn’t come from referrals”) and ask Ashby to write the necessary filter logic and booleans for the search query.
Ashby can also insert personalized AI-generated copy into pitch messages based on a candidate’s job description and resume, and automatically classify email responses from candidates as “interested” or “not interested.” Beyond that, the platform can summarize interview feedback collected during the hiring process into reports for recruiters, with highlights listing individual interview feedback.
What if the AI makes mistakes, as AI tends to do? Encz notes that results can be modified or customized — and that human review is built into every workflow.
“We see our opportunity in artificial intelligence in line with our overall focus on speed and product quality,” Encz said. “Our biggest differentiator centers on the quality and accessibility of talent pool data, the connection of system-derived workflows built on a single platform versus multi-point solutions, and the quality of our customer experience.”
Since coming out of stealth in September 2022, Ashby’s customer base has grown to more than 1,300 brands, including Quora, Ironclad, Vanta, Reddit and Lemonade. Revenue is up 6x. Encz says Ashby makes most of its money through a basic subscription with additional fees for more sophisticated planning and analysis tools.
Investors are happy with the numbers, it seems. 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 to $70 million.
Encz described the C Series as a “solid step up” from the B Series.
“We have seen very strong growth over the past two years and are seeing increasing growth rates in both startups and enterprise customers, making this an ideal time to double down on further product development and market investment,” he added. “This additional funding gives us many years of runway and many options.”
One of those options is expansion. Ashby plans to hire about 50 people by the end of the year, adding to the team of ~100 people based at its San Francisco headquarters.
