Interviews

UofT/Vector AI researcher now building agent-native search infrastructure

Mohan's clean HiRey interview follows his University of Toronto AI path, Geoffrey Hinton and Vector Institute context, early Transformer and BERT-era research, Thomson Reuters retrieval work, Sixty Degree Capital investing, and his current thesis that agents need credible search infrastructure.

Design technologist exploring AI trust and no-UI interaction

Chris's HiRey interview covers design technology, NYU ITP context, no-UI product thinking, and the trust gap between AI tools and users.

UCSD cognitive science graduate and Startup Incubator community builder

Curtis Chen is a recent UCSD graduate from Taiwan with a background in cognitive science, machine learning, and neurocomputation. In this long-form conversation, he explains how Startup Incubator helps students move from ideas to teams, resources, and early startups, and how his own path led him toward human-centered technology and community building.

Founder building Yup in Indonesia

Donny Zhang's HiRey interview covers building Yup in Indonesia, credit cards and credit payments in emerging markets, fintech growth, fundraising, and how an established business can move toward an AI-native operating model.

Founder building VoiceCursor, an AI voice layer for computers

Henry's HiRey interview introduces VoiceCursor, an AI voice dictation product that starts with replacing typing and points toward a broader voice layer for human-computer interaction.

Co-founder building Insight Lab AI for founder customer simulation

Kira's HiRey interview introduces Insight Lab AI, a product that simulates ideal-customer reactions and A/B-style product feedback before founders spend time setting up calls or shipping features.

Founder building Thine, a conversation-aware personal agent

Pratyush's HiRey interview introduces Thine, a personal agent centered on conversations, work context, and memory across tools such as Slack and email.

Founder of HiRey building a trusted people network built from real meetings

Walter Wu's mirrored HiRey stage pitch explains the problem behind HiRey: the person you need may already exist, but email, LinkedIn, forms, spam filters, and attention-driven internet products make trusted stranger discovery hard. The current HiRey framing is a trusted people network built from real meetings where media, network context, and human judgment turn intent into real introductions.

Full-stack engineer and AI builder looking for an autonomous product role in San Francisco

Zubair Zafar's mirrored HiRey session introduces a full-stack engineer from Pakistan with a full-ride Master's in Computer Science from Eastern Illinois University, a 4.0 CGPA, three years of full-stack development experience, multi-agent real-estate project work, MRI computer-vision research around Alzheimer's and dementia, and a move to San Francisco to join a meaningful builder community where he can own product work end to end.

Investor at Delight Ventures, running DelightX, a program helping Japanese-speaking entrepreneurs build AI startups in the Bay Area

Masato describes Delight Ventures, founded by DeNA's founder, and its DelightX program that funds Japanese founders with $60,000 to relocate and build startups in the Bay Area, highlighting a nine-founder cohort with a demo day in late August and a prior successful cohort. He also shares his career path from working at DeNA, where he was inspired by founders, to joining Delight Ventures, and invites talented Japanese entrepreneurs and supportive partners to connect with him as DelightX opens applications for its third cohort.

Freelance tech worker with a background in game dev, QA testing, and data entry, exploring careers in tech

Riley discusses their freelance experience, comparing the Hiree network favorably to Upwork due to its usability and transparency. They highlight the value of Hiree's task scheduling, AI-driven job matching, and 'who I met' tracking feature for both convenience and security, and describe how the platform's AI helped guide them as someone new to the tech industry. Riley also praises Hiree's open-source approach and free access, noting it builds trust compared to opaque AI tools.

Fund operations and deal sourcing professional at BLT & Partners, a Seoul-based startup accelerator

Jiye Kim introduces herself as a recent addition to BLT & Partners, a Seoul-based accelerator, where she handles fund operations and deal sourcing. She explains that the firm invests in early-stage startups with proprietary technology, particularly in AI and computing, as well as consumer startups. She invites motivated founders worldwide to connect with her via LinkedIn and X.

Building a behavioral intelligence layer for AI agents

Sandy Jin talks about building social and virtual-event products from Tantan to Vland, then her new direction: capturing professional workflows and human judgment as reference data for AI agents.

Investing in AI-native founders and agent networks

Kevin Yu from Llama Ventures talks about investing in early-stage AI founders, learning from founder obsession, AI wearables, and why agent-native networks may become a new startup surface.

User tester giving detailed UX feedback on a networking/hiring app's console, feed, meetings, and connection features

Jonathan Enrique walked through a beta hiring/networking platform, sharing his screen to point out issues like the hard-to-find feed (only accessible via the graph/people section), lack of a back button on the 'Who I Met' capture page, a chat window that resets scroll position, and a broken feed login link. He praised the app's overall philosophy of focusing on direct connections and task-oriented workflow rather than profile-building or feed browsing, comparing the console's homepage favorably to typical networking platforms, while suggesting reorganizing sections like Who I Met, Videos, and Meetings for clarity. He also discussed features like sharing a virtual business card and uploading personal videos tied to connections, noting some functionality still seemed in progress.

AI integrations consultant and business coach who helps founders and creators build and automate their businesses

Carl discussed his experience onboarding to the HiRey AI network, noting that while setup via Claude was straightforward, it was unclear what benefit he'd get and hard to find people with shared interests; he suggested pulling profile data from existing platforms like LinkedIn to speed onboarding. He and the interviewer also swapped notes on recent AI tools and projects, including CRM/Make integrations, connecting siloed tools like Calendly, and apps like Hermes, Apify, MiniChat, and Capacities, while giving feedback that HiRey needs clearer guidance on use cases and networking value.

AI enthusiast and freelance Upwork worker specializing in AI chatbots and automation, testing the HiRey.ai recruiting/networking agent

Alros walks through his first impressions of the HiRey.ai plugin, noting it matched candidates well but initially lacked detail on completed projects, though follow-up prompts led the agent to surface project info from linked personal websites. He and Mark (a HiRey employee) discuss the product's dual use for networking and recruitment, the new iMessage feature, and Alros's broader use of AI for tasks like digesting business books, automating Upwork job applications via n8n workflows, and automating LinkedIn connection requests.

AI enthusiast and content creator with a master's in data science who uses AI daily for coding, automation, and content creation

After a false start due to a recording mishap, the conversation covers the economics of AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX operating at massive losses while still being highly valued, comparing this to historical high-investment projects like the Manhattan Project and Space Shuttle Program. Mark, from the company HiRey, then gives an intro about his company's shift from traditional recruiting to AI-powered connections, before Justin describes his own background using AI extensively for coding, automation, and content creation such as generating transcriptions for videos.

Marketing professional using AI to automate healthcare recruitment outreach

Bruce discussed how his marketing team uses AI to automate cold outreach and recruitment for healthcare professionals, build rapport with candidates, and occasionally assist with creative tasks like brochures. He also shared his interest in using AI agents to vet and research people before meetings, helping identify qualified partners and reduce the legwork of networking and follow-ups, in the context of trying out the HiRey AI networking platform.

一位13岁的初中生创业者，正在开发为独立开发者（OPC）提供AI员工服务的产品

访谈中，这位13岁的少年介绍了自己的创业项目——一款为OPC（独立创业者）提供AI员工的产品，通过问卷调研、AI agent网络调查和辩论分析来生成商业可行性报告，整个开发过程仅用了四天。他谈到了自己因参加共创节受到启发而萌生创业想法，分享了普通的家庭背景（母亲爱看科技视频、哥哥留学经历的影响）、学习情况以及此前尝试AI视频自媒体失败的经历，最后表达了希望为中国梦做贡献的愿望。

AI education startup founder

Wenxin Chang recently graduated from the University of Chicago and is building in AI plus education, focused on helping Gen Z students with ADHD or procrastination study better.

Health informatics professor in Vancouver who built Manuscripts, a Mac-first productivity and submission-tracking tool for academic researchers

Jamie is a professor of health informatics with roughly 80 published papers who grew frustrated tracking manuscript submissions across journals via spreadsheets, so he taught himself Swift with AI assistance and built Manuscripts, a discipline-agnostic Mac app offering calendars, productivity and writing-support tools for solo researchers or research coordinators managing multiple submissions. The app is currently sold via Gumroad with support for outside AI API keys (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter), and Jamie is preparing a Mac App Store version built on Apple's Foundation models, with a longe

Texas A&M computer engineering student building Aside, a lightweight, local Windows note-taking app that stays out of your way until summoned

Andres built Aside, a local-first Windows note-taking app that pops up via a global hotkey (Alt-A) for quick, temporary notes and disappears when not needed, aiming to avoid the feature bloat and paralysis of tools like Notion and Obsidian. It stores data locally via SQLite, supports markdown and student-focused features like natural-language Pomodoro timers, and was built largely by learning Electron, Astro, and SQLite through heavy use of Claude Code. He has just launched a public beta at setaside.dev and is seeking user feedback, with no fixed official launch date yet.

Solo founder of RenderMe, an AI-powered ArchiViz platform that renders and edits architectural and interior designs in seconds while preserving the original geometry and creative intent

Intisar, a computer science graduate with a decade of experience in 3D animation, compositing, and architectural visualization, built RenderMe to solve the slow rendering times and loss of creative control that plague traditional and AI-based design workflows. The tool offers free web-based rendering, canvas editing, 3D interior design, floor-plan digitization, and plugins for SketchUp, Blender, and ArchiCAD, using a custom AI workflow that keeps geometry and composition faithful to the original design, built and coded solo over six months. Intisar is now seeking collaborations with architecture firms, game designers, AI artists, and influencers to expand adoption and plans to add support for more software like Revit and 3D Max.

AI engineer and product builder behind Cold Visit, a tool that sends an AI agent to test and audit websites like a real user, exposing friction and positioning issues before they cost conversions

Raihan is a four-year AI engineer, currently also working as a product manager at a UK-based fintech building an AI CFO tool, who built Cold Visit after seeing many products fail due to distribution and clarity problems rather than bad ideas or engineering. Cold Visit sends an AI agent to browse a website or sign up and attempt a defined 'first value moment,' then returns a detailed report on friction, positioning, SEO, design, and required-field issues, according to Raihan. He says early users came from Reddit while his first paying customers came through personal connections, and he plans to

Industrial real estate acquisitions professional sourcing off-market deals and building a nationwide broker network

Tom works in sales and acquisitions for a national real estate investing company that buys and holds industrial properties (typically $1M to $50M deals) across roughly 30 states, relying heavily on relationship-building and long-term seller pipelines to source deals. He's looking to connect with brokers, agents, and other real estate professionals in his target markets who can act as liaisons to property owners, as well as like-minded people interested in investing and personal development. He is personally an active real estate investor and avid reader, and joined the HiRey AI platform to exp