Contrario is an AI-powered hiring network that connects companies to top college engineering talent. We handle sourcing, screening, and shortlisting top candidates to eliminate headhunters and expensive recruiting agencies.
Companies working with us gain access to an exclusive talent pool that leverages graph neural networks and advanced NLP algorithmic matching to shortlist their perfect candidate.
Engineers who join our pool connect directly to top engineering roles with a single profile. We assess candidates with customizable technical interviews that use real-time conversational AI agents.
We officially finished our time at Y Combinator as part of the W25 batch, presenting at the in-person demo day at the SF Palace of Fine Arts.
We're excited to keep building Contrario (YC W25) to continue to help millions of workers across the globe find their next job. We'll deploy our own AI agents that autonomously build your candidate profile and test your skills with AI dev tools.
Silicon Valley is the best place in the world to build a startup from 0 to 1, and we couldn't be more grateful for the support of our group partners Harj Taggar, Tyler Bosmeny, Garry Tan, and Michael Seibel.
Awesome opportunity for new grads and interns to get connected with founders at top startups like Wispr Flow and Slash (YC S21) for AI/ML, Full-Stack, and Data/Infra roles. Expect salaries of $120–200K+, equity, direct founder access, and international student support.
Sign up here for priority consideration: https://lnkd.in/d4kvpkyd
Congrats to Arya Marwaha and Aditya Sood on the launch!
Contrario (YC W25) is building the world’s 1st autonomous recruiting agency powered entirely by AI.
Their self-improving LLMs act as human recruiters by sourcing and identifying top candidates. Nova, their conversational voice agent, conducts technical screens to assess how well engineers code with the latest AI developer tools like Cursor and ChatGPT. Evaluating this skill is now the best way to identify talented software engineers and Contrario is the only technical screening that specializes in it.
With the IT staffing market valued at $40B in the US and $120B globally, the opportunity for transformation is immense. As they scale beyond IT/software recruiting, Contrario will replace legacy staffing firms like Manpower, Robert Half, and Adecco.
Contrario was founded by Stanford dropouts Arya Marwaha (ex-BCG, led product at 5+ startups) and Aditya Sood (ex-NASA NLP, published at Stanford AI Lab x Anthropic). They met in their first-year dorm at Stanford and have been building together ever since. Their firsthand experience on both sides of the hiring industry—Aditya as a candidate, and Arya as a recruiter—drove them to build an automated solution that bridges the gap.
Learn more at https://www.contrario.ai.
Congrats to the team on the launch!
🚀 https://lnkd.in/gg6WCwah
Students graduating in 2025, or anyone looking for a full-time role in the United States, this post might be for you!
I recently had a conversation with Aditya, CTO & Co-Founder of Contrario (YC W25) – an AI-powered hiring platform that directly connects you with top startups in the US to help you land a tech job.
Roles available include:
- Full-stack Development
- AI/ML
- DevOps
- Other technical roles relevant to startups
If you’re from a Tier 1 college (IITs, NITs, BITS, etc.) and want to join their talent pool, you can register via the link below:
👉 tinyurl.com/ycintern
Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity to kickstart your career in the tech industry!
Contrario (YC W25) is building the world’s 1st autonomous recruiting agency powered entirely by AI.
Their self-improving LLMs act as human recruiters by sourcing and identifying top candidates. Nova, their conversational voice agent, conducts technical screens to assess how well engineers code with the latest AI developer tools like Cursor and ChatGPT. Evaluating this skill is now the best way to identify talented software engineers and Contrario is the only technical screening that specializes in it.
With the IT staffing market valued at $40B in the US and $120B globally, the opportunity for transformation is immense. As they scale beyond IT/software recruiting, Contrario will replace legacy staffing firms like Manpower, Robert Half, and Adecco.
Contrario was founded by Stanford dropouts Arya Marwaha (ex-BCG, led product at 5+ startups) and Aditya Sood (ex-NASA NLP, published at Stanford AI Lab x Anthropic). They met in their first-year dorm at Stanford and have been building together ever since. Their firsthand experience on both sides of the hiring industry—Aditya as a candidate, and Arya as a recruiter—drove them to build an automated solution that bridges the gap.
Learn more at https://www.contrario.ai.
Congrats to the team on the launch!
🚀 https://lnkd.in/gg6WCwah
This YC Startup is Redefining Hiring for AI-Native Engineers
Contrario (YC W25) started as an AI-powered mock interview platform. But after joining Y Combinator, founders Arya Marwaha and Aditya Sood realized they were solving the wrong problem.
Through relentless iteration and customer conversations, they pivoted to an AI-powered technical hiring platform—focusing on engineers who use AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot better than anyone else.
In this week’s Maven Club newsletter, we dive into their YC journey, how they pivoted, and the scrappy growth tactics that got them traction.
Key Takeaways for Founders:
🔹 Why YC forces founders to iterate fast and pivot when needed
🔹 The unique insight that helped Contrario stand out in the crowded recruiting space
🔹 How they manually built a talent pipeline by flying to hackathons and outbounding YC startups
🔹 Why validating demand through spreadsheets is better than building a product no one wants
Some key takeaways:
- Validate Before Building – Before investing in automation, Contrario manually tested their hiring platform using spreadsheets and direct outreach.
- Find a Unique Insight – They realized AI-native junior engineers were outperforming traditional senior engineers, giving them a strong market positioning.
- Do Things That Don’t Scale – From cold outreach to flying to hackathons, they scrappily built their talent pool before automating growth.
- YC’s Fast-Paced Environment is a Growth Catalyst – They compressed a year’s worth of learning into three months by focusing on customer conversations and rapid iteration.
- Vision for Scale – Their long-term ambition is to make AI-powered hiring fully automated, seamless, and the go-to standard for technical recruiting.
YC accelerates everything. What might take 12 months outside happens in 3 months inside—if you focus on talking to users and building what people actually want.
Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/g6bTfqKN
For more actionable insights from top founders, subscribe to Maven Club!
Always a pleasure to head back to Stanford University to judge the annual BASES Startup Challenge, which featured an incredible set of companies with equally ambitious student founders.
Congratulations to Arya Marwaha and Aditya Sood for winning the Grand Prize! Excited to see where Contrario (YC W25) goes from here.
Does Contrario (YC W25) spell the beginning of the end for human #tech#recruiters?
It is another great practical use case for #AI in fairness and could bring candidates to the last mile of the hiring process without human intervention.
On the other hand, there is alot that can be learned by meeting people face to face (virtually or in person).
The automation is great to take the process to a certain stage, but it will be important to incorporate people into the process at right point.
#ai#techRecruitment#automation#recruitment
Contrario (YC W25) is building the world’s 1st autonomous recruiting agency powered entirely by AI.
Their self-improving LLMs act as human recruiters by sourcing and identifying top candidates. Nova, their conversational voice agent, conducts technical screens to assess how well engineers code with the latest AI developer tools like Cursor and ChatGPT. Evaluating this skill is now the best way to identify talented software engineers and Contrario is the only technical screening that specializes in it.
With the IT staffing market valued at $40B in the US and $120B globally, the opportunity for transformation is immense. As they scale beyond IT/software recruiting, Contrario will replace legacy staffing firms like Manpower, Robert Half, and Adecco.
Contrario was founded by Stanford dropouts Arya Marwaha (ex-BCG, led product at 5+ startups) and Aditya Sood (ex-NASA NLP, published at Stanford AI Lab x Anthropic). They met in their first-year dorm at Stanford and have been building together ever since. Their firsthand experience on both sides of the hiring industry—Aditya as a candidate, and Arya as a recruiter—drove them to build an automated solution that bridges the gap.
Learn more at https://www.contrario.ai.
Congrats to the team on the launch!
🚀 https://lnkd.in/gg6WCwah
Currently trying Contrario (YC W25), the idea looks awesome (they are building the world’s 1st autonomous recruiting agency powered entirely by AI) and the UI and UX are really nice.
They are currently being backed by Y Combinator, so they are in good hands!
Can't wait to see their next features, and how this project will evolve.
Good luck!
Contrario (YC W25) is building the world’s 1st autonomous recruiting agency powered entirely by AI.
Their self-improving LLMs act as human recruiters by sourcing and identifying top candidates. Nova, their conversational voice agent, conducts technical screens to assess how well engineers code with the latest AI developer tools like Cursor and ChatGPT. Evaluating this skill is now the best way to identify talented software engineers and Contrario is the only technical screening that specializes in it.
With the IT staffing market valued at $40B in the US and $120B globally, the opportunity for transformation is immense. As they scale beyond IT/software recruiting, Contrario will replace legacy staffing firms like Manpower, Robert Half, and Adecco.
Contrario was founded by Stanford dropouts Arya Marwaha (ex-BCG, led product at 5+ startups) and Aditya Sood (ex-NASA NLP, published at Stanford AI Lab x Anthropic). They met in their first-year dorm at Stanford and have been building together ever since. Their firsthand experience on both sides of the hiring industry—Aditya as a candidate, and Arya as a recruiter—drove them to build an automated solution that bridges the gap.
Learn more at https://www.contrario.ai.
Congrats to the team on the launch!
🚀 https://lnkd.in/gg6WCwah
