Here’s an exclusive look at the pitch deck that micro1, an AI-powered startup helping companies hire engineers, used to raise its pre-seed funding round
- Micro1 helps companies hire and manage software engineers by vetting potential hires with AI.
- Micro1 uses “GPT Vetting” to sort through candidates for open roles and can generate edit tests.
- Founder Ali Ansari grew the team to 25 employees in one year and raised $3.3 million.
When it comes to hiring, Ali Ansari is no stranger to the needs of early-stage founders.
By the time he started college at the University of California, Berkeley, the 22-year-old founder had already started two businesses. The first assisted students in reselling textbooks on Amazon, while the second was an online tutoring marketplace.
Ansari tried his hand at building an engineer talent agency startup while in undergrad, where businesses could hire software engineers on a project-by-project basis. As he grew that company to 30 full-time employees, he became intimately familiar with the stumbling blocks that many employers face when hiring engineering talent.
“There was a very common request that we would get from our clients, which was, ‘Hey, can can you guys help us build our in house engineering team?'” Ansari explained to Business Insider.
It didn’t take him long to realize that by incorporating AI that could vet and predict whether certain candidates were a good fit for open engineering roles, he could automatically tailor the hiring pool for his clients. As a result, micro1 was born.
Ansari founded the company a year ago and has since expanded it to 25 employees. This fall, the team raised a $3.3 million pre-seed funding round led by Dream Ventures, which was oversubscribed. DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder and Zfellows founder Cory Levy were the first two investors in micro1, with other investors including Jason Calacanis and Aryan Bhatnagar also participating.
Ansari had planned to raise only $2 million in pre-seed funding, but the Dream Ventures team was eager to lead the round after micro1 had already raised some capital. According to him, the team decided to increase the round to $3.3 million at a $30 million valuation.
Micro1 works by pre-screening software engineers to become platform candidates through a series of AI-generated questionnaires and edit tests. After an engineer completes an application, micro1’s “GPT Vetting” software scans the answers and recommends specific candidates for open roles at client companies based on criteria such as soft skills and required coding languages. Client companies pay a monthly fee to gain access to the engineer talent pool, and micro1 pays engineers directly for the duration of their jobs.
Ansari added that Micro1 accepts international talent and that employers can use it to manage their engineering talent for tasks such as tracking hours, sending bonuses, giving raises, and asking for replacements.
Other HR tech startups, such as the unicorn Deel and the tech talent management platform Turing, have integrated AI tools. Ansari explained that micro1 distinguishes itself by using AI to both test and recommend engineering candidates for roles.
