About

Founded by two people who hired for years, to build the help they lacked.

Håkon ran in-house hiring for years. David built AI and data products. They founded Vouch after listening to around a thousand recruiters, and a team in Oslo builds it with the people who use it.

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The founders

Håkon HøgetveitCo-founder and CEO

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Before Vouch: Ran in-house hiring at Aker BP, Aker Energy and Aize, and recruited around 80 people across product, design and engineering. Before that, M&A, investor relations and brand.
At Vouch: Out with customers and users, to understand what drives them.

Håkon's family has a long tradition with mattress production. Ask about spring vs foam mattresses and he'll talk for an hour straight.
Studied in Bath, big fan of British alternative rock. Radiohead and Arctic Monkeys are usually on repeat on his headset.
Hosts his own podcast about founder journeys, Støttehjulet. Maybe you're the next guest?
Has a million side projects on the go. Currently football coach, marathon runner, pizza baker, and slide producer in his spare time.

David LiuCo-founder and CTO

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Before Vouch: Product engineer at Cognite, working on AI and data modelling. Before that, Microsoft, Venmo and Yelp.
At Vouch: The platform end to end, and the search that decides which candidates come back up.

Travels constantly, and announces it late. He will drop it into the Monday meeting: by the way, off to Italy tomorrow, the flights were a bargain.
The tea guy. Brings his own kettle to the office, and the whole floor gets the smell whether it asked for it or not.
Still plays Age of Empires II. A game old enough to have its own archaeology.
Loves a bargain on anything. Flights are just where it shows up most.

We tried the smaller versions first.

FirstA marketplace for people who were not looking. Getting someone hired through the person who already knew them worked well enough that vouching is still in the product, and still in the name.
ThenAI screening, sold on top of whatever system a customer already ran. It helped, but it never changed how the day went, because it could see the candidate and nothing else.
SoOnce you can say in seconds whether someone fits a role, the brief, the application, the interview guide and the shortlist all want rebuilding around that answer. That is a system of its own, so we built one.

Around a thousand recruiters have shaped it, four hundred of them in interviews over two months. What they said was the same every time: the tracking is fine, the help is thin, and what the team already knows never comes back out.

What we will not build.

Each of these has been asked for, and each was decided against. If we change our minds, this page changes first.

~~An AI interviewer~~An interview is two people reading each other, and the judgement running both ways is the point of it. The assistant prepares you, joins to take the notes and remembers what was said. It does not take the seat.
~~A score out of 100 on a person~~A verdict comes in words, with the reasons beside it. Where the evidence is thin, it says so.
~~An assistant that rejects applicants~~It reads every application and sorts the list. A person decides who goes on, and who hears no.
~~Messages sent in your name without you~~The assistant drafts and you send. Only receipts, such as “application received”, go out by themselves.
~~Sourcing sold as a solved problem~~Lookout finds people and screens the first few. Getting someone to consider a move is a relationship, and that part stays yours.
~~Training AI models on your candidates~~Their data is used to help you hire, and not to train general AI models.

What we build on.

Take the admin off the person, and leave the judgement.: Drafting, screening, scheduling, summaries and translation are where the hours disappear. Clear them, and you get back the part of the job you were hired for.
Every search should start where the last one finished.: The expensive thing a recruiter produces is the thinking around a candidate: the read, the notes, the reason it was not right in March. Vouch keeps it with the person, so the next search starts from it.
Understand the job before you judge the person.: Two sales roles can share a list of requirements and be nothing alike. So the work starts with the role, talked through in detail, and everything after is written from that.
An assistant that agrees with you is not helping.: It asks where a brief is still vague, says what a rating has no evidence for, and marks what to test in the interview.

The person who knows the candidates should win.

Everything above is our attempt to make what they know last longer than one search. Some of it will look different in a year, and when it does, this page changes with it.

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