Prism

Prism is an AI-native recruiting agency from Y Combinator's P26 batch, founded by Theo Kitsberg and Axel La Pira (the company was previously called HireGlide). Rather than selling software for recruiters to use, Prism runs the entire hiring process as a managed service: you brief the team on a shared Slack channel, and they handle sourcing, outbound outreach, screening, and candidate calibration. You step in only to interview finalists and make the offer.

The service is built around proprietary AI tooling for talent search. According to Prism, their engine scores 89.6 on the People Search Benchmark (PSB), more than 21 points ahead of the strongest published baseline — a paper is published at tryprism.com/papers/people-search-benchmark.pdf. The search runs across the open talent market, public web data, and major people datasets, rather than starting from existing agency rolodexes or active job seekers.

Pricing is contingency-based: no retainer, no setup fee, no monthly platform charge. Clients pay 15% of the candidate's first-year salary, billed only when a candidate signs an offer. If no one is placed, nothing is owed. The team positions this as roughly half the cost of traditional recruiting agencies, which typically charge 20-30%.

For recruiters who would rather run their own desk, the underlying platform is also available as a SaaS product.

Key Features

• End-to-end managed recruiting — Sourcing, outreach, screening, and candidate engagement handled by the Prism team; clients only interview and offer.
• PSB-benchmarked search engine — Proprietary people search scoring 89.6 on the published People Search Benchmark.
• Slack-based briefing workflow — Clients run searches through a dedicated Slack channel for fast, transparent updates.
• Open-market sourcing — Searches go beyond existing networks and active job boards to reach passive, high-fit candidates.
• Contingency pricing — 15% of salary on signed offer, no retainer or platform fees.
• Recruiter SaaS option — Same underlying platform available as software for independent recruiters.
• Parallel search infrastructure — Searches run independently and in parallel, with compounding benefits as candidate context accumulates across roles.