The renowned Silicon Valley VC company Andreessen Horowitz is helping fledgling UK startups that are setting up to “redefine” how AI is used to match companies and talent.
Dex, as called startups, targets candidates and companies with a variety of AI-powered recruiting smarts, such as matchmaking and coaching, with the aim of improving retention in the long run.
Dex is the handicraft of CTO Harry Uglow and CEO Paddy Lambros (pictured above), and recently retired from his position as software engineer and talent head at the European VC company Atomico. They say Dex already has around 20 British tech companies (“includes two famous British unicorns”), but the platform remains in a closed beta for now as it tweaks things ahead of a more extensive launch later this year.
Prior to that, the London-based startup on Tuesday raised $3.1 million in pre-seed funding led by A16Z’s Speedrun Fund and concept venture, including Meta’s board member Charlie Songhurst, which includes participation from many angels from technology and VC landscapes. Derviroo coo eric enric; Incide.io CEO Stephen Whitworth; Concept Capital Partner Kamil Mieczakowski; Former Atomico partner Bryce Keene;
Hire the ground
Dex enters busy spaces as AI is increasingly intertwined in the field of adoption. This includes fledgling startups, funded unicorns and new AI Smarts burned directly to LinkedIn. However, Dex sees the gap in all the comprehensive platforms that focus on lasers on real-world knowing candidates.
In the first example, Dex, who is pitching the company as an “AI Voice Talent Agent,” invites you to talk to candidates to understand their experiences, skills, ambitions and more. Dex will then help you plan your next career move. Present them with relevant opportunities. Prepare for the interview. And even negotiating offers they may receive.
It is noteworthy that Dex works for passive candidates, those who are not actively looking for new jobs, so many candidates in the hunt. For example, when Dex builds a candidate profile, it can maintain tabs in open positions advertised on the web (probably a very specific kind of role), providing alerts when such opportunities arise.
For those who are actively looking for new jobs, Dex can go 9 yards full yards, from search to application.
“Dex introduces you to what you want – your preferences and needs, and asks questions to help you understand your experiences and skills,” Lambros explained to TechCrunch. “Using this data, Dex maps the entire market to find the most appropriate opportunities and brings them to the surface. If you want to move on, Dex handles the application – no more resumes and no more cover letters.
So for candidates, Dex is an AI agent with fewer markets and job boards and doing all the everyday things.
“Since candidates don’t want to track hundreds of popular job ads, Dex saves you a few hours of searching, scrolling, researching, and admin,” says Lambros.
After all, Dex can mentor interview candidates and even provide market data on average compensation for such roles.
In addition to leaning towards “large public datasets and thousands of interviews and call transcripts,” Dex has learned more than 50 of the UK’s “most experienced recruiting leaders” about their recruitment methodology and what they’re looking for in their ideal candidates. And all this data ended up being Dex.
Under the hood, Dex is built on multiple LLM providers, including Openai, Google (Gemini) and Meta (LLAMA), switching based on any improvements introduced in each model.
“We are constantly evaluating and modifying our providers so we can benefit from the latest advancements,” Uglow says.
Meanwhile, on the company side, Dex talks with the recruitment team to establish a preference for the ideal candidate.
“Dex talks with hiring managers and candidates and has a deep understanding of what a great fit looks like,” Uglow said. “Individual and business culture, behavior, requests, needs and ambitions. This, combined with a wide range of publicly available data, works to curate personalized matches in a recommended system.”
With a $3.1 million bank, the company is currently increasing employment across engineering and marketing, aiming to be made public in the UK before turning its eyes to international markets.
“Recruiting is not about filling up seats, it’s about creating lasting partnerships that benefit employees and businesses,” says Lambros. “The funding helps businesses maintain the best talent and help employees find the job they love.”
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