Cambridge-Based Talvy Raises $2M Seed to Reinvent Hiring with Video Profiles
Talvy has raised $2M in seed funding led by Link Ventures to rethink the resume. The Cambridge-based startup replaces traditional CVs with short-form video profiles, allowing recruiters to evaluate candidates’ communication style and presence before interviews. The platform uses natural language search to surface talent amid rising AI-generated applications.
New TikTok-meets-LinkedIn platform allows candidates to be seen as “people instead of PDFs” through video-first profiles
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–Talvy, a platform that’s pioneering video-first professional profiles, today announced its $2M seed round led by Link Ventures. In the current hiring market, employers are struggling to find meaningful ways to evaluate candidates at scale, especially as application volume has exploded with AI-generated CVs flooding recruiting pipelines.
Talvy replaces static resumes with short-form video profiles, allowing job seekers to share stories that highlight their craft, mindset, and growth. These videos form a new layer of human signal by capturing communication style, energy, and interpersonal presence that resumes have never been able to hold. For employers, Talvy’s natural language search surfaces a shortlist of candidate video profiles, so hiring teams can see someone before they meet them, getting the instinctive culture-fit read that usually only emerges in an interview. Recruiters can also invite candidates from their own applicant pools to submit Talvy profiles into a private review group, giving them the same upfront read before any interview is scheduled.
“We built Talvy because we’ve been the candidate who got filtered out for the wrong reasons, and we’ve been the hiring manager drowning in AI-generated noise. There had to be a better way,” said KJ Hardrict, CEO and co-founder of Talvy, a Stanford PhD dropout and content creator who built the platform after seeing firsthand how often exceptional candidates are filtered out before anyone ever speaks to them. “Every job I’ve ever landed came from people seeing me – not reading about me.”
Imagine a recruiter scrolling through talent the way people scroll TikTok – meeting real candidates, hearing real stories, and feeling real presence in seconds. In the age of AI, what matters now is whether someone can actually show up, communicate, and connect. That’s what Talvy captures.
“We invested in Talvy because the hiring system is blind to real potential. The best leaders, builders, and operators don’t always stand out in a LinkedIn world,” said Frazer Anderson, Managing Director at Link Ventures. “Talvy’s video profiles give job applicants a voice beyond their resume.”
Alongside the launch, Talvy is introducing Talvy Spotlight – a curated program for exceptional candidates that Talvy has personally vetted and would confidently hire themselves. Spotlighted candidates are actively championed by Talvy’s team, introduced directly to hiring managers in their network, and featured publicly, including on a Times Square billboard.
About Talvy
Talvy is a video-first networking platform that lets professionals showcase who they are, not just what’s on their resume. By enriching static resumes with authentic video responses, Talvy helps employers see the humans behind the PDFs and make better hiring decisions. Founded by MIT and Harvard alumni, Talvy is led by CEO KJ Hardrict, an engineer, investor, and creator with over 115K YouTube subscribers. Hardrict previously worked as a founding and senior engineer at multiple startups, and as a Principal Investor at Link Ventures. The founding team also includes co-founder CTO Yoeal Efrem (ex-Palantir), Product & GTM Lead Lisa Vo (5x founder), ML Engineer Yaateh Richardson (ex-Meta), and Chief of Staff Sebastian Esquivel (ex-Unilever). The company is based in Cambridge, MA, and has raised $2M in seed funding led by Link Ventures.
