Tener

Tener is an AI recruiting agency that replaces CVs with verified references and runs hiring end-to-end in Slack. Built by a founder who scaled a 200-person recruiting firm and sold it to Fiverr.

Launched August 10, 2026. Current traction: $11K MRR, $118K success-fee pipeline, 3 subscriptions in active pipeline, and 6 additional clients expected to sign. The engine has been validated on 35 real roles. Design partners include Fiverr and Zalando. Demand since launch has shifted primarily to the US, especially the Bay Area.

We are raising a $2M pre-seed on a YC SAFE at a $10M post-money cap. $265K is closed and transferred, with another $350K soft com

Hiring is broken. A typical hire takes 60 days, costs 15 to 25% of annual salary in agency fees, and burns dozens of engineering hours on irrelevant interviews. The root cause: the entire industry still screens people by CVs, and the CV is a dead signal. In the age of AI generated resumes and AI assisted interviews, what a candidate claims on paper tells you almost nothing about how they actually perform. Companies pay $75B a year in agency fees plus internal recruiting payroll to compensate for this broken signal with manual human labor.

Tener is an AI-native recruiting agency. Our AI employee Freya runs hiring end to end without a human in the loop: role intake, sourcing, outreach, interviews, references, shortlisting, and offer support. Instead of ranking CVs, Freya builds a hiring signal around what actually predicts performance, with references from former colleagues at its core. The result: a signed hire in ~10 days vs. 60, with just 2.6 client interviews per hire. Freya lives in Slack and plugs directly into the client’s hiring workflow.

Two revenue streams:

Regular hiring: clients license Freya as an AI recruiter, with guaranteed hiring volume.
Occasional hiring: 8% of annual salary per hire, versus 15–25% for traditional agencies.

We typically start with success fees and convert clients to subscription. Cost per hire is ~$500, gross margin is ~90%, and margins improve as we replace third-party tools with internal infrastructure. Target: $200K MRR within 12 months of the raise.