Before I get into the story, a bit of context. Solara Talent is my founder-led recruiting practice focused on helping startups hire great software engineers. I work closely with early-stage teams, usually founders and first-time hiring managers, and I blend the old school craft of technical recruiting with the new wave of AI tools that I build myself. This piece explains how I ended up rebuilding the job board and resume experience from scratch, and why I think the future of startup recruiting looks very different from the past.
How I Fell Into Recruiting
I kind of fell into recruiting the same way a lot of people do, completely by accident. Back then I was helping build iOS and Android mobile teams that were working on the NBC Sports apps for the Olympics and the Super Bowl. At the time, I did not know anything about recruiting. I was just trying to put great teams together and not embarrass myself. We had amazing successes building apps at the time that broke streaming records with billions of minutes streamed. It was a special time, and I got my first taste of building great teams and recruiting top software engineers.
Then COVID hit and I, like many others, got laid off.
The DevTalent Years: A Rocket Ship That Crashed
And in 2020, I did the thing you are not supposed to do during a pandemic. I started my own agency, DevTalent. And for a while, it was a rocket ship. From late 2020 to mid 2022, companies were hiring like crazy. They did not care about perfect matches or high bars. They just wanted as many developers as possible, as fast as possible. We were basically printing money.
Then late 2022 and 2023 happened.
Hiring freezes. Layoffs. The whole industry flipped overnight. Like everyone else, we lost clients. Everything that worked during the boom stopped working.
And at DevTalent, everything I did was manual. Manual sourcing, manual outreach, manual evaluation of technical talent. It worked because I learned how to read engineering profiles the old school way, and that became my edge as a tech recruiter. But it was a grind. When I sold my stake and moved on, it was the right timing, but it still stung. A founder never leaves their first company without feeling it.
Learning AI at Rocket
After that, I joined Rocket. They were based in SF and were leaning heavily into AI for recruiting and sourcing. At first, I was skeptical. I was still clinging to the techniques that had worked for me. And honestly, I probably did not give AI a fair shot early on. I wanted to prove that my way of recruiting software engineers was still relevant.
As the days went on, I saw both the pros and cons of AI. I was still slow to adapt because I was focused on making placements and not messing too much with my process.
The big thing that bothered me was how opaque AI felt. It often felt like a coin flip, especially when it came to scoring and sourcing engineering candidates. I did not really understand why some profiles passed the AI filters and others did not. When you are responsible for real people and real careers, that does not feel good.
Ultimately it was a great stop. I helped the company through some choppy waters, and by spring 2025, it felt like the right time to move on again.
Building Solara: A Different Approach
Which brings me to Solara.
When I started Solara Talent, I finally let myself lean into AI a bit more. Things ramped up when I built my first Chrome extension that scored candidates. I was honestly mind blown that I could ship something like that from just a prompt in ChatGPT.
The first time I used it, it was pure wow factor. This thing works. But when I dug into the results, when I looked at how it actually scored profiles, I started to question how much I could truly trust it. As a recruiter working mainly with startups and engineering-heavy teams, candidate quality is everything. I cannot pass off a questionable match to a founder who is trying to build their first product.
I knew there was a big opportunity with AI in recruiting. I just was not convinced that scoring candidates was the best place to lean all the way in. At the end of the day, I still trust my own evaluation of a software engineer more than any model.
The Real Problem: Candidate Experience
At the same time, I started noticing something else. Response rates were dropping. Email and LinkedIn were getting noisier. Candidates were getting hammered with messages. Everyone wanted a quick chat.
The problem is that quick chats are not quick for the person on the other side. They are context switching. They are emotional energy. They are risk. If you are a senior or staff level engineer with a good job, you are not jumping on every calendar invite that shows up in your inbox.
What Candidates Actually Need: Signal
What candidates actually need is signal.
The same way I am looking for signal on their profiles, they are looking for signal on roles. Before they give up their time for yet another call, they want to know: Is this actually a good fit for me. Is the company interesting. Does the role match my experience. Is the recruiter serious.
That is the entire premise of Solara.
Solara exists to give candidates more control and more signal in the process. If you want to chat right away, great, you can do that. If you want to browse and do your own research first, that is fine too. I want the flow to respect how different people like to engage.
Resume Insights: Giving Something Back
I also built a Resume Insights feature because so many candidates were asking the same questions. What is the market like. How is AI affecting my role. Is AI going to replace what I do.
Those are real concerns. We hear about AI replacing jobs every day. People are right to feel nervous.
The Resume Insights feature is my way of giving something back. You upload your resume, and you get actionable feedback on:
- Where you shine.
- How AI is showing up in your specific space.
- How you can improve your resume and positioning for the current market.
Building for Depth, Not Breadth
My belief has always been that if you do a few things really well, that is enough. You do not need to be everything to everyone.
With the Solara Resume Insights feature and an intuitive, signal heavy job board experience, I feel like the candidate experience is dramatically better than what I see in most of the market. It is built for engineers. It is built for honesty. It is built for clarity. And it is built from my lived experience as a startup recruiter who has worked with founders trying to hire their first or second engineer.
The early results have been incredible. Senior engineers and staff level engineers are telling me they like it. They are giving constructive feedback. They are also saying they will actually use the tool. That means a lot to me because I am not an engineer by trade. Hearing that kind of feedback makes me feel like I am building something with them, not just for them.
Behind the scenes, I also built an admin portal, ATS, and CRM for myself. It strips away the bloat from the systems I have used in the past and focuses on what actually matters in recruiting. That is probably a story for another day.
The Solara Philosophy
For now, Solara is simple. Give candidates signal. Respect their time. Use AI where it genuinely adds value, not just because it looks impressive in a sales deck.
If you are a startup founder looking for someone who understands both the human side of recruiting and the practical side of evaluating engineers, that is the space Solara Talent is built to live in. And if you are a software engineer looking for real opportunities without the noise, I hope Solara feels like a refreshing change to the typical job hunting experience.
That is why I rebuilt everything from scratch. And honestly, I have never been more excited about where this is going next.