Who you are talking to

Most advice about potential comes from people who never saw how the story ended. I did. Recruiting put me at the point where decisions get made, and I have spent five years watching which choices opened doors for people and which quietly closed them.

I have been recruiting continuously since June 2021. I am the first dedicated recruiting hire at ImagineArt, a bootstrapped AI creative suite, where the company has grown from 130 to 208 people. Before that I owned technical recruitment at Cowlar Design Studio, a Y Combinator Winter 2017 company, through growth from 14 to 136 people.

I also founded and ran Placentek, built a team of 14, placed 15 to 20 engineers with clients, and exited to Vyro. Personal and operational finances are a particular strength of mine, and not a theoretical one. I have set pricing, watched runway, and met a payroll of my own.

For a single role I will read anywhere from 100 to 1,000 applications and speak to 30 to 100 people. That is why this is not generic advice. I am not guessing at what works, I have seen the sample.

BSc Electrical and Computer Engineering, CASE Islamabad. Professional Certificate in Public Policy, UMass Amherst, on a US State Department exchange.