Hirebolt

Hirebolt is an AI-powered recruitment platform specifically designed for the hospitality industry, disrupting traditional hiring by reducing time-to-hire from months to under 3 days. Founded in 2021 in London and backed by Y Combinator's Summer 2021 batch (S21), Hirebolt automates candidate sourcing, vetting, and matching for restaurants, hotels, cafes, and service businesses. The platform addresses critical hospitality pain points including high no-show rates (reportedly 80% in London's hospitality sector), irrelevant applications, and time-consuming manual screening. Hirebolt's AI-driven system filters through CVs to identify candidates who are actively looking for work, delivers vetted candidates daily to employers, and uses automated messaging and chatbot outreach for candidate engagement. The platform includes one-click interview scheduling, direct-to-offer workflows, hospitality-specific vetting logic, and automated candidate notifications and reminders to reduce no-shows. Candidates can communicate directly with employers via WhatsApp groups, and the system provides ongoing follow-up to improve interview attendance. Founded by Alexander Zhou (CEO) and Lorenzo Sani (CTO), Hirebolt raised $1.5M in seed funding led by 7percent Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Entrepreneur First, Helium-3 Ventures, and Zentani Capital. The platform positions itself as a technology solution rather than a traditional agency, offering cost-efficiency relative to staffing agencies while maintaining speed and automation. With headquarters at First Floor, 57 Greek Street, London, Hirebolt operates primarily in the UK market serving small to medium hospitality employers struggling with traditional job boards and manual candidate filtering.