The AI hiring bubble frenzy

Tales from the trenches. Also: Inside a16z’s Tech Week, people moves, and some links.

(Credit: Alfred Wahlfors)

The billboard didn’t say “Listen Labs.” It didn’t say anything about hiring. It consisted of just a plain white background with “https://” and a single line of grouped numbers hanging over Nob Hill, San Francisco.

Last month, Alfred Wahlforss, the startup’s CEO, posted on X that whoever cracked the code and completed a subsequent challenge would win a trip to Berlin and get on the guest list for the ultra-exclusive nightclub Berghain.

One of the more elaborate tech startup recruiting stunts in recent memory worked, Wahlforss later told me. Within days, the billboard garnered millions of views online, attracted media coverage, collected 10,000 email sign-ups, and led to roughly 60 interviews with potential candidates.

In recent conversations I’ve had with Wahlforss and other startup founders, it’s clear that, even for well–funded firms, attracting top technical talent is more challenging than ever. “We are spending a ton of money to not even advertise the company, but just to advertise us to engineers,” according to Wahlforss, whose company has raised $27 million from Sequoia. “It has been extremely challenging to hire good people. I have a friend who’s a high school dropout, and he can work at OpenAI and make like $2 million a year.”