# Outrove

> Outrove is a San Francisco AI company from Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch, founded by Egyptian entrepreneurs Saif Elhager and Ahmed ElShireef. It launched as an AI recruiter that sourced candidates and ran lifelike video and voice interviews, then pivoted to Sapien (asksapien.ai) - a platform that builds simulated populations of real people so companies, investors, and governments can test a pricing, product, campaign, or policy decision against how audiences will actually behave before committing to it.

- **Founded:** 2025
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founders:** Saif Elhager (Co-Founder & CEO), Ahmed ElShireef (Co-Founder & CTO)
- **Team size:** 2
- **Products:** Sapien, Outrove AI Recruiter
- **Notable:** Accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch within months of launch., Ran 100 AI-conducted interviews in 5 days for an early agency customer - work that previously took weeks., Reported raising over $1M from YC and angels.

## Products & services

- **Sapien** — The current flagship product (asksapien.ai). Builds simulated populations of real people grounded in 100,000+ first-person interviews and behavioral data, then runs a proposed decision against them - predicting what audiences will do rather than what they'd say. Handles audience segmentation, evidence-based personas, and on-demand 'live signal' interviews for new markets. Every prediction is logged against actual outcomes.
- **Outrove AI Recruiter** — The company's original product: an AI recruiting platform that sourced candidates across the web, sent personalized outreach, and ran live video and voice interviews via a human-appearing digital interviewer that could join Google Meet, ask follow-ups, and grade candidates. Priced at roughly $750 per successful hire.

## Achievements

- Accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch within months of launch.
- Ran 100 AI-conducted interviews in 5 days for an early agency customer - work that previously took weeks.
- Reported raising over $1M from YC and angels.
- In a case study, its model landed 4.2x closer to actual shelf reality than traditional human conjoint research.
- Co-founder Saif Elhager previously scaled AiHello to seven-figure revenue and Amazon Advanced Partner status.

## Latest updates

- **2025-08** — Featured in Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch; reported raising over $1M.
- **2026-01** — Repositioned around Sapien (asksapien.ai) - synthetic populations for decision testing - moving from AI recruiting into AI-powered market research.

## Links

- Website: https://outrove.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/outrove

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/outrove-yc-s25
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-30