# Joe Essenfeld

> Joe Essenfeld is a serial entrepreneur and Co-Founder & CEO of FORA (fora.day), a New York-based AI communication intelligence platform that transforms unstructured enterprise meeting, email, and chat data into actionable leadership insights. He previously founded Jibe, a recruiting technology platform that raised $40M+ and was acquired by iCIMS in 2019, where he served in senior executive roles before launching FORA. FORA raised a $3.8M pre-seed round in January 2024 and counts Converge, GTM Fund, Zelkova, and Everywhere Ventures among its backers.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at FORA
- **Organizations:** FORA, Jibe, iCIMS, Insomnia Cookies, Dartcor Food Services, NightFunk.com
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S., Cornell University, Secondary education, The Pingry School
- **Known for:** Founded and scaled Jibe from a 99-cent job board (LocalBacon) to a $40M+ funded enterprise recruiting platform, Grew Insomnia Cookies from ~15 stores to 4x locations as COO, with 150+ employees, Secured iCIMS acquisition of Jibe in 2019 (iCIMS reached $1.2B valuation at time of deal)

## Career timeline

- **1998-2000** — Director of Operations at NightFunk.com, a VC-backed entertainment guide reaching 120+ college campuses, while still a student at Cornell
- **2001-2006** — Vice President at Dartcor Food Services, a corporate dining company in the tri-state area
- **2006-2009** — COO of Insomnia Cookies — quadrupled store count, grew team to 150+ employees, sparked the insight that recruiting was broken
- **2009** — Founded LocalBacon, a job board with 99-cent applications; debuted at TechCrunch DemoPit 2009
- **2010** — Rebranded as Jibe; raised seed round led by Polaris Venture Partners with angels including Jason Calacanis and Thrive Capital
- **2011** — Jibe raised $6M Series A; grew to 18 employees across three U.S. offices; ~25% of Fortune 50 were customers
- **2013** — Jibe raised $10M Series B led by Longworth Venture Partners; Nilanjana Bhowmik (then at another firm) participated
- **2014** — Jibe raised $20M Series C led by SAP Ventures; clients included J&J, Siemens, and Comcast; grew to 120 employees
- **2019** — iCIMS acquired Jibe; Essenfeld joined iCIMS as VP of Strategy
- **2019-2023** — Series of executive roles at iCIMS: VP Strategy, VP Business Architecture, CTO & GM Global Field, SVP Field Innovation
- **2022** — Co-founded FORA alongside Zach Elias and David Small
- **2023** — Left iCIMS in September; transitioned full-time to FORA; published 'From Founder to Acquired Exec: Four Lessons from 14 Years'
- **2024** — FORA emerged from stealth and announced $3.8M pre-seed round led by Converge, with GTM Fund, Zelkova, Everywhere Ventures, and others

## Achievements

- Founded and scaled Jibe from a 99-cent job board (LocalBacon) to a $40M+ funded enterprise recruiting platform
- Grew Insomnia Cookies from ~15 stores to 4x locations as COO, with 150+ employees
- Secured iCIMS acquisition of Jibe in 2019 (iCIMS reached $1.2B valuation at time of deal)
- Built Jibe into a platform used by ~25% of Fortune 50 companies
- Raised $3.8M pre-seed for FORA from top-tier investors including Converge, GTM Fund, and Everywhere Ventures
- Won Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology award for Candidate Experience (at Jibe)
- Speaker at UNLEASH America conference
- Published in Entrepreneur.com as a Leadership Network contributor

## Latest updates

- **2025-04** — Appeared on Venture Everywhere Podcast (Ep. 69) with Jenny Fielding for a full career retrospective and FORA deep-dive
- **2025-08** — Podcast appearance on CXR Recruiting Community on AI in talent acquisition
- **2025-09** — Appeared on CISO Series: 'Navigating Your Meeting Shadow Data with FORA'
- **2024-10** — Published blog post 'From Competitive Edge to Necessity' on AI in executive strategy
- **2024-01** — FORA emerged from stealth with $3.8M pre-seed round led by Converge; investors include GTM Fund, Zelkova, Everywhere Ventures, Acadian Ventures, and 14Peaks

## Links

- Website: https://fora.day
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/essenfeld
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/essenfeld
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/essenfeld

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/joe-essenfeld
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-30