Shutdown
Aug 2021Tracxn described Sourceress as a deadpooled company and listed no investments or acquisitions.
SourceSourceress is an AI recruiter that is reinventing how people find jobs. With tailor-made machine learning models, we rigorously define what a company is looking for in a role, identify great candidates, and engage candidates with highly personalized introductions. Our process creates a stream of int
Company research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 30, 2026
Overview
Sourceress was a San Francisco-based AI recruiting/sourcing company that used tailored machine-learning models to define role requirements, identify passive candidates, and engage them with personalized outreach. Public sources conflict on founding year (2016 on LinkedIn/company data vs. 2017 on Y Combinator), and third-party profiles later describe the company as deadpooled/inactive.
Primary product
AI-powered recruiting / candidate sourcing platform
Founded
2016
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States
Team size
1-10
Work style
Flexible
Industry
Technology, Information and Internet
Sub-industry
AI recruiting / HR tech
Offices
121 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110, US (HQ)
121 2nd St 7th floor, San Francisco, CA, US
121 2nd St Fl 7, San Francisco, CA 94103, US
San Francisco, CA, US
Business model
B2B SaaS
AI recruiting platform
human-assisted candidate sourcing service
Funding
Stage
Seed
Total raised
$3.5M
Latest round
Seed · Nov 2017
Latest amount
$3.5M
Nov 2017 · Lightspeed Venture Partners
People & investors
Work & culture
Mission-driven recruiting startup centered on helping people find work that matters, with an emphasis on personalized outreach, fast follow-up, and a team with ML and engineering backgrounds.
Work style
Flexible
Compensation
Public YC job postings showed salary ranges of about $140K-$350K for machine-learning roles and $170K-$350K for infrastructure/founding product roles; no public benefits package was found.
Product & market
Pricing
Not publicly disclosed; appears to have been sold as a demo-led, enterprise/B2B recruiting product.
Differentiators
- —Tailor-made machine-learning models for each role
- —Personalized candidate introductions and outreach
- —Focus on passive candidates rather than inbound applicants
- —Human-assisted AI workflow
- —Uses public web signals beyond standard keyword matching
Technology
Python
Django
MyPy
RE2
SaltStack
Nginx
uWSGI
PyDev.Debugger
Customers
Airbnb
Medium
Shift
Benchling
Ginkgo Bioworks
Competitors
Andela
Shapr
Fetcher
Wonderkind
Strive Talent
Scale & contact
Estimated revenue
under $1M (reported around $600K)
Signals & risks
Shutdown
Sep 2023A Forbes profile on the founders’ later company, Imbue, referred to Sourceress as one of their now-defunct startups and noted that Sourceress stopped growing fast enough before they moved on.
SourceLatest news
Forbes · Sep 2023
Mentioned that Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht had launched two now-defunct startups, including Sourceress, before focusing on Imbue.
Tracxn · Aug 2021
Described Sourceress as deadpooled, summarized its HR-tech product, and listed funding, investors, customers, and competitors.
FinSMEs · Nov 2017
Summarized the same seed round and named backers including Lightspeed Venture Partners, OpenAI researchers, Y Combinator, and Dropbox co-founders.
TechCrunch · Nov 2017
Reported Sourceress’s $3.5M seed financing and explained its machine-learning approach to understanding hiring-manager requirements and surfacing suitable candidates.
Jobs and careers at Sourceress
0 jobs at Sourceress
No open positions
Check back later for new openings