AskFora creates solutions that help you work better with people you know. By bringing the power of AI to the Future of Work, AskFora’s technology maps the skills of employees and candidates in rapidly evolving talent pools automatically, delivering better outcomes for employers and workers. Pulse 2.0 interviewed AskFora founder Omer Trajman to learn more about the company.
Omer Trajman’s Background
Trajman spent most of his career working on AI and analytics infrastructure, helping some of the largest organizations in the world adopt a data-driven approach to their business. And Trajman said:
“I co-founded my last company, Rocana, ten years ago to bring a smarter approach to IT infrastructure monitoring. We competed with and eventually sold the company to Splunk.”
Formation Of AskFora
How did the idea for AskFora come together? Trajman shared:
“After selling Rocana, I spent some time thinking about other areas that I was passionate about and were underserved by the powerful AI technologies that are available today. As a founder, CEO, and long-time hiring manager, I started focusing on how to discover the skills of people in my professional network. In particular, I wanted to find people who weren’t necessarily just top-of-mind when I happened to be searching.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Trajman’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Trajman reflected:
“Before launching AskFora Teams, we had a basic version of AskFora that was focused on helping individuals looking for freelancers in their professional networks. The first day, when we got our messaging right and our ad targeting right and I woke up to find more new users that day than we had had during our entire beta, I knew we had something unique to offer.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Trajman explained:
“The core of AskFora is a skills-mapping platform. We start by crawling the internet for public data about an organization’s employees and people in their professional networks. We use data from LinkedIn, Facebook, X (Twitter), as well as ‘about pages,’ certifications, degrees, blog posts, etc.”
“This all feeds into an AI engine that automatically builds a skills map with zero effort. The AskFora skills map gives organizations a view into their talent ecosystem. They can then use the map to, for example, find opportunities for existing employees in order to fill open positions before those employees leave.”
“As a result, they retain great employees and save time and money on recruiting and hiring. AskFora Teams is also used to support smarter workforce planning, and to personalize learning and development programs. Taking a skills-based approach to discovering talent helps reduce bias and increases opportunities for a more diverse candidate pool for any given position.”
Challenges Faced
After asking Trajman about the challenges faced in building the company, he acknowledged:
“As with any startup, the biggest challenge is finding a product offering that is a fit for what the market needs today or in the near future. It’s an iterative process that requires making lots of decisions with very little data. Our primary value today – filling open positions by discovering internal talent to save time and money on hiring and recruiting – is resonating broadly with HR teams, but it wasn’t a straight line to get there. Organizations are just starting their journey to understanding how to use skills to upgrade their HR stack. We need to figure out how best to support them on that path.”
Evolution Of AskFora’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Trajman noted:
“In AI applications, the critical need is data. We had to start with basic heuristics and mappings using whatever data we could access from our beta users. As the platform grew (now over 60k users and 5 million contacts) we’re able to properly train a model. We also have enough data to start layering in analytics and visualizations to make it easier for users to discover people based on their skills.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of AskFora’s most significant milestones? Trajman cited:
“Certainly our first 100, 1k, 10k, and 50k users. With the launch of AskFora Teams, we’re looking forward to our enterprise customer milestones.”
Funding
After asking Trajman about the company’s funding information, he revealed that they recently announced a fundraising of $1.5 million in angel and pre-seed funding.
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Trajman assessed:
“When we look at the money spent on recruiting and lost to talent who could be retained, factoring in the costs of hiring and onboarding, and the opportunity for fractional work, we see a total market of $59 billion dollars today. That may ebb and flow as talent market liquidity changes, but for the near term, we’re only expecting it to increase. This highlights the importance for organizations to find the best roles for the talent they have based on their skills.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Trajman affirmed:
“Most organizations today are aware that they need to move to a skills-focused view of talent management. They just don’t know where to start. Building a skills map of their talent ecosystem is a daunting challenge. AskFora solves that problem instantly, by creating a skills map automatically using public data sources. We provide the baseline that organizations use to refine and focus their skills-based initiatives. We also provide modules on top of the skills map to make it easy to source talent from among employees and candidates, to tackle workforce planning, and to deliver better learning and development.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Trajman pointed out:
“For organizations, having a view into their talent ecosystem is unlocking a wealth of ideas among our customers. They want to be able to think about succession planning, compensation, and productivity. Those are big steps that will require both technology support and cultural change as we move into a skills-based economy.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics to discuss? Trajman concluded:
“The shift to a skills-based economy is the biggest innovation in HR since NCR created the personnel management department over 100 years ago: both profound and inevitable. When we talk about a ‘skills-based economy’ and the urgent need to understand the ‘talent ecosystem’ in an organization, the two biggest drivers are the retiring generation of Baby Boomers and the incoming Gen Z workers.”
“Though Baby Boomers are stepping away from full-time roles, they still have a wealth of experience and skills that can be leveraged in part-time capacities. At the same time, Gen Z workers are entering the workforce with an array of skills unparalleled by previous generations. They are ambitious, seeking constant challenges, and are proactive about their career growth. If employers stay complacent and don’t adapt to this skills-first approach, they will lose out in the intense race for talent, missing the invaluable experience of Boomers and the potential of Gen Z.”
