My Story

I became a solo entrepreneur in 2025 after over 25 years living the corporate dream of getting a steady income, affordable health benefits, and climbing the corporate ladder in pursuit of title, compensation, and interesting challenges. To others, I had it made: a PhD, a top-tier MBA, and several VP-level positions.

Then everything changed.

I was part of the wave of tech layoffs in 2024. At first, I tried to find a job the same way I’ve done before. I reached out to people in my network who have helped me in the past and actively reconnected with many others at successful, growing companies. However, none of them were hiring for my role and didn’t know anyone who was.

This had never happened to me before and I experienced a mini mid-life crisis. Some time off and some soul-searching led me to make a critical decision.

Why did I decide to go solo?

Corporate life felt safe and predictable, but it had its downsides that gnawed at me. First, I didn’t get to choose my coworkers and managers. I had the joy of working with people who were brilliant and kind, as well as the pain of working with people who were boneheads and jerks.

The second reason was control of my time and destiny. When your boss schedules a late Friday afternoon meeting but your kid has a sporting match you don’t want to miss, it’s still hard to say no to your boss. When you see the C-suite make decisions that negatively impact the company, there are only so many ways you can make your voice heard.

How my job application process evolved.

To keep my unemployment checks coming, I had to apply to open job positions like everyone else, checking LinkedIn, Indeed, and company career sites, sending in my resume as soon as possible and sometimes writing a heartfelt cover letter. Like many of you, I was frustrated to see that by the time I applied, so did 100 other applicants.

Having been a hiring manager before and having worked with recruiters, I also understand the perspective on the other side. Going through the resumes of hundreds of applicants is mind-numbing and boring, and many applicants were so obviously unqualified I became annoyed and even sometimes angry that they applied and wasted my time.

Because of that, I asked the question:

“How do I showcase myself, my experiences and accomplishments, in a way that best fits what the job requires?”

Every job, even with the same title, has different requirements, so ideally, I would spend the time to tailor every resume. However, I estimated that process would take around 15-30 minutes per application, and if I didn’t apply to at least 10 jobs per day in addition to networking and outreach, I had almost no chance of getting enough interviews.

I also tried getting ChatGPT to help, but it was a major hassle cutting and pasting bullets into different parts of my resume and it just felt clunky.

I briefly tried some online resume tools as well, and was shocked at how badly they implemented AI. They did little more than rewrite my resume’s bullets, and often they hallucinated and added false details, such as “increased market share by 18%” and other random BS. Even if I scored an interview, how would I explain half the things on my resume to my interviewer?

How did Hirecarta get started?

I was a software engineer and user experience designer for 10 years before changing my career to sales and marketing, so with the new capabilities of AI, I wrote a simple web app where I could create a user profile, in effect, a source of knowledge about me, then have AI use that to generate the resumes and cover letters specific to every job. The AI used only my profile information and did not hallucinate because it didn’t need to.

I shared it with my friends and family and much to my joy, one was able to get a job offer within a week and another in 3 weeks. These success stories prompted me to reach out to my users and ask them what challenges, if solvable with software, could radically transform the way they approached their job search.

With a complete rewrite of my code based on everything I learned, the result is Hirecarta.

What is my vision for Hirecarta?

The vision of Hirecarta is a map (Carta) that would help people get Hired. From applying to jobs and tracking applications to preparing for interviews and providing career guidance, it would help people fulfill their dreams. New features will address how to make Hirecarta the one-stop solution from the beginning to the end of your job search.

My vision is also to run my business in a way is counter-intuitive to things taught in business schools and corporate boardrooms about “extracting maximum customer value” from people.

Many people have already said I’m crazy to follow these principles:

1. I will not turn this into a subscription model. You don’t subscribe to Hirecarta, you only pay for how many months you wish to use it after the trial period. You will not see surprise charges on your credit card.
2. I will not nickel-and-dime my users, meaning I won’t have lots of charges for different add-ons. The only time I will charge for an add-on is if it incurs significant cost to me.
3. I will not sell your data without your consent. That means I will not sell your profile information to recruiters or do things that are not directly related to delivering the best service to you or helping me reach people like you who are searching for jobs.

As a solo entrepreneur, I will always welcome your feedback, questions, and suggestions. Let’s embark on the journey to help everyone find jobs that are a best for their skills and experiences!