In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar sits down with Anoop Gupta, co-founder and CEO of @SeekOut — an AI-first company transforming how organizations discover, hire, and manage talent.

They explore: 1) SeekOut’s evolution from LLM-powered workflows to the launch of SeekOut Spot, their agentic AI solution that delivers hires in as little as 3 days. 2) Why "service as software" is the future of recruiting. 3) How founders and talent leaders can reimagine hiring in the age of AI agents. 4) Lessons from building an AI-native company through market shifts. 5) The real business model shift from tools to outcomes.

With customers like Discord, 1Password, HP, and even Madrona itself, SeekOut is redefining what fast, high-quality hiring looks like.

Transcript: https://madrona.com/rise-of-agentic-ai-in-recruiting-seekout-anoop-gupta

Chapters: (00:00) Introduction (01:56) SeekOut Background and AI Evolution (03:55) The Role of Agentic AI in Recruiting (07:59) Business Model and Flexibility (12:59) Recruiting Process and Efficiency (16:49) Navigating Challenges and Product-Market Fit (20:29) Focus on Outcomes not on Hype (22:25) Do you Need a Data Moat? (23:45) Don't build a recruiting org too early (25:50) The biggest hiring mistakes (29:15) Agentic AI for recruiting is here