A solo founder hired her CTO without a recruiter.

Julia had built ESAI to real traction with contract engineers and no long-term technical owner. The role was specific: senior enough to own architecture, fluent in AI, and genuinely invested in getting students into college.

She tried running the search herself with warm intros and late-night LinkedIn DMs. A recruiter would have cost around forty thousand dollars for one role, which made no sense for a company whose mission is affordability.

The search started as a voice conversation. The agent pushed on vague phrases, made Julia rank must-haves against nice-to-haves, and loosened over-strict technical filters that would have shrunk the pool.

It then ran outreach in ESAI's voice and dropped every interested candidate into a shared Slack channel with a short rationale: why they matched, and what to probe in an interview. Pass or proceed was an emoji.

Of 18,410 people researched, 28 met the bar and reached Julia. One had the leadership background plus years spent building a creator community that helps people break into tech from nontraditional paths. He became ESAI's CTO-level partner.

Superposition is now how ESAI opens every senior role.