recruiting. It's the most important

thing you should be doing as a leader,

as a company, yet it's so inefficient.

And I heard from a recruiter that well

respected in the industry that 5 years

ago, if you reach out to 500 to 700

engineers, you could probably make a

hire as a recruiter. 2 years ago, that

number jumped to 1500 engineers to make

one hire, which was already so difficult

to manage. With AI recently, it's 5,000.

So essentially, AI is actually making

hiring a lot more noisier. It's bogging

us all down. If you get reached out

about thousand opportunities, it's not

special anymore. Meaning comes from

scarcity. So I think even more in the

future, if it takes 5,000 emails to get

one engineer hired, trust,

relationships, and access, these things

become more and more important. So I

think that was our deliberate decision

to work with recruiters rather than

replacing them. Yeah, we paid out 50

million soon to our recruiters. Hey

guys, I'm John Kim, one of the founders

and CEO of Parform. We uh raised 65

million uh to date and in 2025 we uh

10xed our revenue. We work with

customers from early stage startups all

the way to public companies uh like

Palunteer, Rippling, Dakagon, A Bridge.

Parapform is a a hiring platform that

makes hiring exceptional talent as easy

as pressing a button.

Ever since the age of four, I sort of

moved around a lot uh because of my

dad's job. So yeah, I lived in

Singapore, Australia, LA, uh and Korea

as well. When I was 11, 12. In

Australia, like entrepreneurship and

going out on your own is not very

celebrated. You're sort of told to stay

in your lane, like do what's sort of uh

comfortable. My grandpa encouraged me uh

to go to law school. He went to law

school and he really wanted to be a

lawyer but uh he had to sort of take a

different path because of uh his family.

And so growing up I always thought you

know that was the goal and I I did but

um there was definitely a moment uh that

I remember that I um you know started uh

living my life and treating my time and

and what I'm going to do very very

differently. I think I was 18 back then.

I like was very sick for like three

months and so um you know I went to like

the hospital to get something checked up

in Korea. I walked in and uh I was the

only uh young person there. I remember a

lot of people there were quite old like

maybe in their 80s and '9s so it felt

very out of place. I obviously didn't

really think that anything could go

wrong. I just thought like oh I'm young.

I'm you know I'm invincible. That type

of mindset. And when the results came

out, the doctor sort of said like, "Hey,

by the way, there's like something in

your lungs and um you know, it could be

something really bad." And I think when

I heard that, everything changed. I

started thinking, "Oh, well, in the most

extreme sense, if I have only 1 year or

3 years left to live, uh what am I going

to do? What am I going to do

differently? How am I going to spend

time?" And that actually really changed,

I think, all of my brain chemistry and

what I decide to do. back of my mind, I

always knew that I wanted to start and

build my own company. When it comes to

thinking that it's a big decision to

start a company, it's what I always

wanted to do, what I wanted to dedicate

my life to. I thought that, okay, when

I'm like 75, 85 years old, that's like

my timeline. So, I had, you know, 65

years to figure something out, right?

So, if you think about it in your 65

year timeline, then all of a sudden you

push things back, right? If you want to

do something, you push it back. If you

want to try achieve a goal, you think

you have 10 years, 20 years. But um if

you think about that 65 years in

three-year terms, you are sort of forced

to prioritize and then think about what

you really want. I think maybe that

event made me think, okay, I have 3

years to make that happen, so let's do

it now. And I think it added that

urgency to start for the next 3 years.

Every 6 months, I had to get it checked

up to see if it's anything bad. So there

was this sort of anticipation every 6

months of like what's going to happen.

And turns out it was uh sort of like a

false alarm. But I look back to that

moment and you know although it felt

pretty terrible. Maybe it was actually a

blessing in disguise.

I was actually on a business trip to New

York and that's when I met my co-founder

Jeff at Parapform. So I went around

asking uh other people around us uh

which were mostly founders asking them

what is your number one problem right

now and how much would you pay us to

solve it? Uh and almost all of them said

uh hiring and they said they would pay

us 40k per hire. So we were like hey

maybe if we make five hires each this

year you know that's like maybe

equivalent of like a salary. So maybe

this is a good business to start. So we

set out on a journey to make five hires

each. So the first thing we did was

actually become recruiters ourselves.

What we started doing was like we

scraped the web. We looked at, you know,

your Twitter profile, your GitHub

profile, like everything really online

about you and we sort of try to combine

that with like your professional

experience, like your LinkedIn, your

resume. And then, um, you know, 3

months, 4 months in, we were not even

close to making five hires, let alone

one. And so, we were like, okay, like

clearly this is like super inefficient.

What should we do? While we were

exploring the problem space, we realized

like it's actually like trust, access,

and relationships. I could find a great

engineer at Facebook or OpenAI right

now, but doesn't mean that person will

respond to me or know me or even

interested in the opportunity, right?

Whereas like maybe if your friend

reached out, you might consider the

opportunity or someone you respect,

right? So the next idea we pivoted to

was a referral marketplace, referral

platform where essentially our startup

customers could post bounties, referral

bounties like 5 10k for the engineers

they were trying to hire and turn anyone

in the world to your recruiter. But

there was not much retention. Um I think

we overestimated how many people each

person knows, how well connected someone

is, and um it wasn't like their main

profession and job. So they um didn't

come back to the platform. You release

it to the market and no one wants it. I

think that you know it wasn't great. We

were sort of hitting a dead end for

three four months. Nothing was happening

and then um one user group started uh

using it a lot. We saw that uh user

group growing and these were like

independent recruiters, recruiting

agencies, head hunters and it made so

much sense. They're very well connected

compared to most people. Uh it's their

job. It's their profession. They're

financially incentivized. So they

started sort of um coming back and using

the platform continuously. And I think

that's when we realized, oh, we, you

know, built something people want and

then it scaled to where Parapform is

today. We're really focused on how do we

match the right person to the right

opportunity. That's done not by giving

them a thousand options and telling them

to choose, but giving them, you know,

three or four that actually really match

what they're looking for. When you don't

use AI correctly, I think it loses

meaning and makes things not special, if

you will. I think the word special is

basically directly correlated to

scarcity and directly correlated to

quality over quantity.

I think maybe AI can make you know 70

80% of what recruiters do and automate

that. But I think it's like the last

sort of 20% like the human touch I think

is like very very important. Meaning

comes from scarcity.

So, uh, at the time, um, I was actually

in Australia trying to get my visa to

come back to the US. The time zone is

obviously really difficult. I remember

my routine was sort of waking up at

11:00 p.m. and then um, working

throughout the night to overlap with San

Francisco time and then going to sleep

at like maybe lunch or after lunch and

then repeat. And we didn't even have an

office. So, I used to go to my old uh,

college uh, library to work there um,

just in a booth. So when people saw me,

they probably thought I was just like a

student. It was like a weird feeling

because it was a school that I dropped

out of and I'm like in the library um

trying to build my company. And I

remember the way we got customers

because we had no brand name was just

pure hustle like just going door to door

uh emailing people one by one. No like

email automation tool or anything like

that. Just reaching out. And so each

customer was very very valuable. Like uh

when they said yes, I want to try it

out, it meant the world to us. And there

was this one customer uh called

Hightouch. Uh they're like a AI

marketing platform. I remember they were

the first sort of uh company that it

wasn't our friend or some connection. It

was like a company that through our own

effort and hustle we got. They were

hiring like a director of engineering

which is like a very important hire. And

we felt very grateful that they trusted

us to do such an important job for them.

And so we got started. But um I remember

like it was like 3:00 am at the library

over and over again every day trying to

make it work for that customer. One of

the recruiters messaged us saying like,

"Hey, we haven't been impressed with the

quality of candidates uh and the

experience. If you guys don't turn this

around in the next 10 days, we we can't

be a customer anymore." In the middle of

that, I heard my visa got rejected.

Actually, most people get it approved on

the spot, but uh for some reason, mine

didn't get approved for the first time.

It was definitely mental breakdown, not

being productive, all these struggles.

So, I couldn't fully focus um, because

it's almost like a company killing

event. What failing a visa interview

actually means is never being able to

come back to the US. Maybe for some

people it's just like, oh, let's try

again. But for me, there was so much at

stake. It was everything I built for,

all the work I put in sort of going to

nothing. And then I had responsibility

to my co-founder as well. And uh I

couldn't tell him the news because it's

hard thing after hard thing after hard

thing. I think the two things that kept

me going was one like this

responsibility this like if I don't do

this this company will die you know I

have this responsibility to make it work

there's no other option than surviving

and continuing so that was one the other

one was actually a lot of like things

were going on in my personal life as

well like um friends and family and then

I actually realized that oh other people

have like pretty difficult problems too

in life I then reflected whatever I'm

going through right now at the time was

something that I inflicted upon myself

like I chose to start this company. I

could have not done that. I chose to

move here to the US and be based here.

You know, I chose to apply for this

visa. Like, you know, it's all like

something that I chose to do. And there

were a lot of people in my life who had

problems and they didn't choose that. It

wasn't within their control. And so, I

think that was actually in a weird way

encouraging as well. We were just like,

oh, like maybe this is actually not that

big of a deal. Like, you know, at the

end of the day, I I wanted to try this.

Um and so that gave me the energy back

uh to sort of stand back up and and

continue to go. Yeah.

You know, it turns out the visa thing

was like some process issues, so it's

all fine now. We actually ended up

making a hire for Hightouch for the

director of engineering. Hightouch told

us that that hire took like 18 months.

That role was open for 18 months. They

tried everything out there. They tried

recruiting agencies, other tools, job

boards, and just nothing worked. And to

do that within a month and a half with

our product gave us a lot of conviction

that this is going to work. And I think

our customer actually saw that too. And

so they reached out to one of their

investor connections and said, "Hey,

like what these guys are building, I've

tried so many recruiting products in the

past. I'm obsessed with this problem and

none of it worked. Uh, but this is

different. This is special." So he

introduced us to uh our seed round

investors. I remember my co-founder and

I the next morning surprised and um all

uh happy sort of like biking to their

office and we presented for one hour

just like our product. There was no

pitch deck. We didn't even prepare for

fundraising. We didn't even think we

were fundraising. Actually, we just

thought we were meeting them and they

texted us saying like, "Hey, do you guys

want to grab drinks at at 5:00 p.m.

tonight?" And we were like, "Okay." And

then we went and they just said, "Hey,

like we really love what you're doing. I

think you guys are doing something

special." Uh so they gave us a term

sheet and let our seed round uh that

same day. I actually my analogy that I

would give is uh going deeper and deeper

and deeper like you're not going deep

enough. You could at the surface just

say hiring is very difficult but

actually I think we understood the

problem at a very high level and then

did something to solve that. It's very

easy to go hey like doing XYZ is

difficult so let's go solve it but

actually why is it difficult? Talk to

users about it. You know what they do

makes the problem inefficient or

difficult. And I think that was the

mistake we made first round and then

like the subsequent attempts we dig

deeper and deeper and deeper into the

problem until we actually found the the

root cause and I think that's when

things started clicking. I see a lot of

um people when they start a business or

a company where they have this one idea

they try it out for a little bit and

they go ah actually, it's not really

working so try something again try

something again. It actually takes like

a lot more energy than most people think

to like keep switching. Instead, what we

did was we had a lot of conviction in

the problem space. 110% conviction that

this is the problem we need to work on.

If you think you're going deep, you're

probably still not deep enough. And so

encouraging them to do that. Yeah.

If you could go back and sit across from

the virgin of you who was in the library

at 3:00 a.m. in Australia, what would

you tell him?

I would tell him to keep doing what

you're doing. at the time it's hard to

imagine everything we've achieved and

everything that we will achieve uh in

the future have that same conviction and

I think that's kind of like what I still

tell myself maybe like if I look back 5

years 10 years 20 years from now and

look back to this moment maybe that

might feel like the 3 a.m. every

situation again. So I think keep going

uh have conviction. Yeah.

I was actually on a business trip to New York and that's when I met my co-founder Jeff at Parapform. So I went around asking uh other people around us uh which were mostly founders asking them what is your number one problem right now and how much would you pay us to solve it? Uh and almost all of them said uh hiring and they said they would pay us 40k per hire. So we were like hey maybe if we make five hires each this year you know that's like maybe equivalent of like a salary. So maybe this is a good business to start. So we set out on a journey to make five hires each. So the first thing we did was actually become recruiters ourselves. What we started doing was like we scraped the web. We looked at, you know, your Twitter profile, your GitHub profile, like everything really online about you and we sort of try to combine that with like your professional experience, like your LinkedIn, your resume. And then, um, you know, 3 months, 4 months in, we were not even close to making five hires, let alone one. And so, we were like, okay, like clearly this is like super inefficient. What should we do? While we were exploring the problem space, we realized like it's actually like trust, access, and relationships. I could find a great engineer at Facebook or OpenAI right now, but doesn't mean that person will respond to me or know me or even interested in the opportunity, right? Whereas like maybe if your friend reached out, you might consider the opportunity or someone you respect, right? So the next idea we pivoted to was a referral marketplace, referral platform where essentially our startup customers could post bounties, referral bounties like 5 10k for the engineers they were trying to hire and turn anyone in the world to your recruiter. But there was not much retention. Um I think we overestimated how many people each person knows, how well connected someone is, and um it wasn't like their main profession and job. So they um didn't come back to the platform. You release it to the market and no one wants it. I think that you know it wasn't great. We were sort of hitting a dead end for three four months. Nothing was happening and then um one user group started uh using it a lot. We saw that uh user group growing and these were like independent recruiters, recruiting agencies, head hunters and it made so much sense. They're very well connected compared to most people. Uh it's their job. It's their profession. They're financially incentivized. So they started sort of um coming back and using the platform continuously. And I think that's when we realized, oh, we, you know, built something people want and then it scaled to where Parapform is today. We're really focused on how do we match the right person to the right opportunity. That's done not by giving them a thousand options and telling them to choose, but giving them, you know, three or four that actually really match what they're looking for. When you don't use AI correctly, I think it loses meaning and makes things not special, if you will. I think the word special is basically directly correlated to scarcity and directly correlated to quality over quantity. I think maybe AI can make you know 70 80% of what recruiters do and automate that. But I think it's like the last sort of 20% like the human touch I think is like very very important. Meaning comes from scarcity.

So, uh, at the time, um, I was actually in Australia trying to get my visa to come back to the US. The time zone is obviously really difficult. I remember my routine was sort of waking up at 11:00 p.m. and then um, working throughout the night to overlap with San Francisco time and then going to sleep at like maybe lunch or after lunch and then repeat. And we didn't even have an office. So, I used to go to my old uh, college uh, library to work there um, just in a booth. So when people saw me, they probably thought I was just like a student. It was like a weird feeling because it was a school that I dropped out of and I'm like in the library um trying to build my company. And I remember the way we got customers because we had no brand name was just pure hustle like just going door to door uh emailing people one by one. No like email automation tool or anything like that. Just reaching out. And so each customer was very very valuable. Like uh when they said yes, I want to try it out, it meant the world to us. And there was this one customer uh called Hightouch. Uh they're like a AI marketing platform. I remember they were the first sort of uh company that it wasn't our friend or some connection. It was like a company that through our own effort and hustle we got. They were hiring like a director of engineering which is like a very important hire. And we felt very grateful that they trusted us to do such an important job for them. And so we got started. But um I remember like it was like 3:00 am at the library over and over again every day trying to make it work for that customer. One of the recruiters messaged us saying like, "Hey, we haven't been impressed with the quality of candidates uh and the experience. If you guys don't turn this around in the next 10 days, we we can't be a customer anymore." In the middle of that, I heard my visa got rejected. Actually, most people get it approved on the spot, but uh for some reason, mine didn't get approved for the first time. It was definitely mental breakdown, not being productive, all these struggles. So, I couldn't fully focus um because it's almost like a company killing event. What failing a visa interview actually means is never being able to come back to the US. Maybe for some people it's just like, oh, let's try again. But for me, there was so much at stake. It was everything I built for, all the work I put in sort of going to nothing. And then I had responsibility to my co-founder as well. And uh I couldn't tell him the news because it's hard thing after hard thing after hard thing. I think the two things that kept me going was one like this responsibility this like if I don't do this this company will die you know I have this responsibility to make it work there's no other option than surviving and continuing so that was one the other one was actually a lot of like things were going on in my personal life as well like um friends and family and then I actually realized that oh other people have like pretty difficult problems too in life I then reflected whatever I'm going through right now at the time was something that I inflicted upon myself like I chose to start this company. I could have not done that. I chose to move here to the US and be based here. You know, I chose to apply for this visa. Like, you know, it's all like something that I chose to do. And there were a lot of people in my life who had problems and they didn't choose that. It wasn't within their control. And so, I think that was actually in a weird way encouraging as well. We were just like, oh, like maybe this is actually not that big of a deal. Like, you know, at the end of the day, I I wanted to try this. Um and so that gave me the energy back uh to sort of stand back up and and continue to go. Yeah. You know, it turns out the visa thing was like some process issues, so it's all fine now. We actually ended up making a hire for Hightouch for the director of engineering. Hightouch told us that that hire took like 18 months. That role was open for 18 months. They tried everything out there. They tried recruiting agencies, other tools, job boards, and just nothing worked. And to do that within a month and a half with our product gave us a lot of conviction that this is going to work. And I think our customer actually saw that too. And so they reached out to one of their investor connections and said, "Hey, like what these guys are building, I've tried so many recruiting products in the past. I'm obsessed with this problem and none of it worked. Uh, but this is different. This is special." So he introduced us to uh our seed round investors. I remember my co-founder and I the next morning surprised and um all uh happy sort of like biking to their office and we presented for one hour just like our product. There was no pitch deck. We didn't even prepare for fundraising. We didn't even think we were fundraising. Actually, we just thought we were meeting them and they texted us saying like, "Hey, do you guys want to grab drinks at at 5:00 p.m. tonight?" And we were like, "Okay." And then we went and they just said, "Hey, like we really love what you're doing. I think you guys are doing something special." Uh so they gave us a term sheet and let our seed round uh that same day.

I actually my analogy that I would give is uh going deeper and deeper and deeper like you're not going deep enough. You could at the surface just say hiring is very difficult but actually I think we understood the problem at a very high level and then did something to solve that. It's very easy to go hey like doing XYZ is difficult so let's go solve it but actually why is it difficult? Talk to users about it. You know what they do makes the problem inefficient or difficult. And I think that was the mistake we made first round and then like the subsequent attempts we dig deeper and deeper and deeper into the problem until we actually found the the root cause and I think that's when things started clicking. I see a lot of um people when they start a business or a company where they have this one idea they try it out for a little bit and they go ah actually it's not really working so try something again try something again. It actually takes like a lot more energy than most people think to like keep switching. Instead, what we did was we had a lot of conviction in the problem space. 110% conviction that this is the problem we need to work on. If you think you're going deep, you're probably still not deep enough. And so encouraging them to do that. Yeah.

If you could go back and sit across from the virgin of you who was in the library at 3:00 a.m. in Australia, what would you tell him?

I would tell him to keep doing what you're doing. at the time it's hard to imagine everything we've achieved and everything that we will achieve uh in the future have that same conviction and I think that's kind of like what I still tell myself maybe like if I look back 5 years 10 years 20 years from now and look back to this moment maybe that might feel like the 3 a.m. every situation again. So I think keep going uh have conviction. Yeah.