
After hundreds of rejections, the Contrario CEO stopped trying to automate recruiters and started doing their work. The lesson became a company: let software carry the paperwork, and leave judgment to people.

Reval began with reference checks, learned the whole hiring funnel, and ended inside Metaview. The useful lesson in Seth Tilliss's path is simple: automate the chore, then follow the work.
Claire McTaggart is the founder and CEO of SquarePeg, an AI-powered recruiting platform that acts as an intelligence layer on top of applicant tracking systems - screening, sourcing, enriching and scoring candidates beyond the resume. A former Monitor Deloitte strategy consultant who ran campus recruiting, she left a partner-track career to attack a problem she had lived: the resume is a terrible predictor of fit. Starting with psychometric matching and evolving into an AI evaluation engine integrated with 95+ ATS platforms, SquarePeg raised a $3.5M seed round in February 2025 led by Next Frontier Capital, bringing total funding to roughly $6.4M.
Anil Dharni is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sense, a San Francisco-based AI-powered talent engagement platform that serves over 1,000 organizations. Before reshaping how companies hire, he co-founded Funzio, the mobile gaming studio behind 'Crime City' and 'Modern War,' which sold to GREE for $210 million in 2012. At Sense, backed by SoftBank with $106 million raised and a $500M valuation, he is on a mission to humanize the contingent workforce and make candidates feel genuinely valued through AI, automation, and omnichannel communication.