The Reason FoundersAreHiring Was Created

If you’ve hired in the last few years, you already know it’s a mess. Resumes read like SEO landing pages. AI-generated cover letters flood inboxes. Recruiters spam roles without understanding team dynamics. Founders waste hours on calls with candidates who look great on paper but can’t explain what they’ve actually built. The whole model has stopped working for startups that need signal and speed. This is the backdrop that led me to build FoundersAreHiring.

From code to chaos

I’ve spent close to a decade building products. Started solo — just me, a laptop, and a mess of bugs. Over the years, I’ve helped launch crypto exchanges, mobile wallets, and banking platforms. A few of them went on to raise more than $45 million collectively.

Now I work as a fractional CTO. I step into early-stage startups, clean up their tech debt, and get them ready to scale. I enjoy fixing things. But one problem kept showing up everywhere: hiring.

The résumé problem

Resumes used to say something. Now they say nothing.

The tipping point came during a hiring sprint for a fintech client. I spent three straight weekends reviewing over 300 resumes. Almost all looked great on paper, polished, full of ATS-optimized keywords, packed with action verbs. Once we got on calls, most candidates struggled to explain even the basics of what they’d built. I wasn’t screening people anymore. I was screening the output of ChatGPT and résumé templates.

The pattern held everywhere I looked. I’d read ten or twenty resumes in a row and still had no real sense of who the person was or what they’d built. Most couldn’t articulate what kind of teammate they wanted to be, because they were reciting frameworks rather than describing experience. Outsourcing didn’t help either. Agencies play the same keyword game and hand back CVs sorted by search score, with no view on team fit or mindset.

So I built what I needed

I wasn’t trying to build a company. I was trying to survive another round of hiring.

I needed a tool that skipped the noise. Something faster, simpler, and human. Not another job board — but a system aligned with how real builders work.

That’s when FoundersAreHiring (FAH) came to life.

At first, it was just for me. Then a few friends tried it. Then more. It turns out, everyone hated hiring the way I did.

I had to push a bit to get my co-founder on board. He was buried in backend and infra work, and hiring felt like just another headache — not something worth solving at the product level. But I kept bringing it up, pointing out how much time we were both wasting on interviews that went nowhere and resumes full of noise. After one especially bad round of screening, I told him, “This isn’t about bad candidates — it’s a broken process.” That stuck. We didn’t overthink it. We just started sketching what we wished existed. That’s how FAH began: out of shared pain and the need for something that actually works. (You can read his take on it here.)

What makes FAH different

Direct, founder-led hiring

Founders post to candidates directly from day one. The intent stays clean, expectations line up, and the feedback loop stays short.

Curated job drops only

Every week, FAH sends a focused list of open roles that someone has actually verified by hand. No infinite scroll and no algorithmic feed deciding what you see, which means no noise and no spam.

Real signal in every post

Every listing shows what actually matters — team size, product stage, equity terms, async/sync expectations, and cultural DNA. We encourage founders to share what kind of ambiguity the role includes, what failure looks like, and what success unlocks.

Background-agnostic

We don’t care where you studied or whether your résumé has the “right” verbs. If you’ve built something meaningful, you belong here. FAH prioritizes real-world output over polished credentials.

Global reach for overlooked talent

Most platforms center around SF, NYC, or Berlin. FAH actively highlights talent from tier-2 cities and emerging tech ecosystems. Builders from cities like Lagos, Tbilisi, Medellín, or Vilnius should have the same access as anyone in Palo Alto.

No résumé spam

FAH blocks spray-and-pray applications. Each application requires genuine effort, so founders only see serious intent and relevant fit. We cut résumé bloat at the source.

Fast job creation, no bloat

Posting a job takes under 15 minutes. No long forms, no “upload cover letter,” no irrelevant mandatory fields. Just the essentials: who you are, what you’re building, and who you want beside you.

Context over keywords

We’re not trying to game trends like résumé keyword stuffing. FAH emphasizes clarity, not gimmicks. Candidates are encouraged to share projects, GitHub links, case studies, or voice notes instead of just formatted PDFs.

Axira: signal without stripping the human out

One of the bigger traps in modern hiring is letting automation flatten people into data points. I did not want that. Axira, our asynchronous voice screening agent, exists to cut wasted founder time without killing the human part. It isn’t grading anyone or sorting candidates by buzzwords. It gives founders a short way to hear how someone thinks and what they have actually built, before either side commits to a call.

Candidates answer role-specific questions in their own voice, on their own schedule. Founders get real context early instead of the fatigue of back-to-back exploratory calls that go nowhere. No bots making decisions, no sterile AI interviews, just faster access to actual conversations with the right people.

Axira AI keeps the hiring flow lean and founder-led.

Built by a founder, for founders

FAH was never a startup idea. It was a fix for a process that was draining my time and focus. I couldn’t find a tool that worked the way I work, so I built one.

If you’re tired of resume junkyards, ghosting, and talent mismatch, FAH might be what you need too.

https://foundersarehiring.com