Hirefly

Inspiration

Hiring is broken for small companies. Large applicant tracking systems are built for enterprise teams with dedicated HR departments — not for a lean startup trying to move fast. We wanted to fix that.

The spark came from watching founders and small ops teams drown in inbound applications, spending hours manually triaging resumes instead of actually talking to candidates. The real bottleneck wasn't finding applicants — it was the time between "application received" and "interview scheduled." We wanted to collapse that gap.

We focused specifically on smaller companies, who tend to be more open to trying new software and have the most to gain from streamlining their pipeline.

What it does

Our tool streamlines the hiring process end-to-end: it helps small teams review applications faster, surface the strongest candidates automatically, and get more people into interviews — without the overhead of a traditional ATS.

The goal is simple: send more applicants to interviews, faster.

How we built it

We used the tech stack below:

• Claude Code — for AI-assisted development throughout the build
• Next.js — frontend and API routes
• Supabase + PostgreSQL — database, auth, and real-time features

Claude Code was central to our workflow. We used it not just to write code, but to think through architecture decisions, debug edge cases, and move faster than we could have alone.

Challenges we faced

Getting the scope right was our biggest challenge. "Hiring Software" is a crowded space dominated by tools designed for large enterprises. We had to keep pulling the focus back to smaller companies who are under served and more willing to adopt new tools.

Defining the audience clearly also shaped every product decision. Once we committed to small companies as a central customer, the feature set became much clearer.

What we learned

The biggest lesson was about using LLMs in the development process itself. Shipping with Claude Code changed how we think about building software.

We learned to trust the model more, prompt more precisely, and treat AI-assisted development as a first-class workflow rather than a shortcut. The speed at which we were able to go from idea to working product was genuinely surprising.

Built With

• claude
• groq
• next.js
• postgresql
• typescript